Rules of Engagement and Battle Logs

[A1Kaid]

I want to know what is Centcom's view regarding this issue? Can we get a statement from Maj David Nevers?

 

[VCheng]

I have to disagree here. The act of surrender must be accepted at any time, even AFTER the combatant has killed to the exhaustion of his ability to continue the fight, be that exhaustion is physical or resources. But relevant to the starter comment, corollary to the act of surrender is equally important that custodial possession be possible, in other words, there must be someone available to take the surrendered into custody and security. A helo cannot do that. The aircrew is under no obligation to exit the aircraft and become custodians of the surrendered. But shooting them is equally problematic legally and morally. If the aircrew is not under legal obligations to take custody, does the act of surrender itself permanent, meaning does the act rendered the combatant morally and legally obligated to cease hostility even though no one is available to take him in to custody? If so, then shooting them is morally reprehensible and legally liable. But if not, then shooting them may be morally reprehensible but not legally liable.

It is an interesting subject to debate in a rational manner because it is applicable to all but soon enough the anti-US trolls will degenerate the scholarly and intellectual discussion into nothing more than an anti-US hate fest.

I based my post on this:

The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict by Leslie C. Green

ISBN-10: 1929446292
ISBN-13: 978-1929446292

Surrender may not always be acceptable.

 

[silko]

so what will happen if a talib kills 20 and still has ammo to fight but surrenders?

so by that account anyone who has killed atleast one person cannot surrender? tough ask i would say..

well, then he does something good by surrendering and not continuing. but if we where to go by this rule you can bomb the crap out of someone and then when you are left with nothing, just surrender and get prison, rehabilitation or in worst case death.

 

[VCheng]

........

This is what the Article 23 of the Hague convention 1907 has to state

"it is especially forbidden
......
(b) To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;".....................

Especially forbidden to kill or wound individuals of the hostile army?

Then what is the problem? We all should be singing kumbaya forever!

 

[gambit]

Aaahhh...We got two posts deleted by the admin staff...Wonder what was in those posts......Just as I predicted.

 

[A1Kaid]

Aaahhh...We got two posts deleted by the admin staff...Wonder what was in those posts......Just as I predicted.

No it wasn't what you think it was, just irrelevant posts that had nothing to do with the topic...So your prediction hasn't come true yet.

 

[gambit]

That's exactly what I'm getting at here, good post. In the situation I read, It didn't seem there were any ground forces in the immediate area to undertake the surrendering of the militants, but apparently they may have been some troops nearby (I suppose not deemed close enough to the area of operation), and after the aircrew radioed to their superiors they were given the approval to attack the militants even after their surrender. Interesting scenario. So I suppose militants should simply not bother surrendering to any AH, as they may remain viable targets even after surrender. I think the militants do learn and adjust their tactics and their own rules of engagements.

It is important to note on why a combatant feel the need to surrender.

Let us go back to the Iraq soldiers and UAV incident...

The US Navy -- Fact File: RQ-2A Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

...while still over the horizon and invisible to the defenders, the USS Wisconsin (BB 64) sent her Pioneer over the island at low altitude. When the UAV came over the island, the defenders heard the obnoxious sound of the two-cycle engine since the air vehicle was intentionally flown low to let the Iraqis know that they were being targeted. Recognizing that with the "vulture" overhead, there would soon be more of those 2,000-pound naval gunfire rounds landing on their positions with the same accuracy, the Iraqis made the right choice and, using handkerchiefs, undershirts, and bedsheets, they signaled their desire to surrender.

For the most...A combatant surrender because he feels his further actions will be futile, not for the cause he is fighting for, but for his IMMEDIATE situation which have become futile. The act of surrender is an explicit statement that he rendered himself, of his own volition, UNWILLING to do further combat. That is UNWILLING, not INCAPABLE. Only the wounded would generally be incapable but even then a wounded combatant may still resist and WILLING to fight to his literal end.

So the act of surrender is an explicit statement that say for the time being, a combatant is unwilling to further actions that may be detrimental to his opponents. But if he is unwilling at this time, he may change his mind at a later time, or reassert his willingness to fight, when he feels an opportunity is available to him. It is this uncertainty that opposing troops usually approaches the surrendered with utmost caution. There are plenty of online information about Imperial Japanese troops who surrendered, committed suicide rather than surrendered, or fake a surrender just so he can get close enough to kill just one more enemy soldier. Instances of the false surrender happened so often that many Allied soldiers simply killed rather than become custodians of surrendered troops out of that fear, earning moral condemnations without context.

Such treachery is called 'perfidy' and is codified to be forbidden under accepted rules of war...

A NATION AT WAR: GENEVA CONVENTIONS; Public Opinion Effort Leans on Rules of War - New York Times

The prohibition against many battlefield ruses, including using the flag of surrender under false pretenses, is called perfidy in the law of war. It has been informally prohibited ever since war had rules, legal experts said. The prohibition has been codified several times.

Perfidy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Article 37.-Prohibition of perfidy
1. It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:

(a) The feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;
(b) The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;
(c) The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and
(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.

2. Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

The reason why perfidy is illegal but ruses are not is situational. In a ruse, you misled the enemy into a false sense of security by hiding your ability to perform combat. Under perfidy, however, you misled the enemy into a false sense of security by an open declaration of cease of hostility ON YOUR PART in order to secure his unwillingness to kill you.

There is a two-way street here: If you declare to kill, then you must accept the understanding that the other guy will also make the same declaration. Likewise for him. But if you declare non-intention to kill, then you effectively demanded that he reciprocate the same for you. Likewise for him. If there is no respect for this two-way street understanding, then wars would be genocidal. No distinctions will be made between combatants and non-combatants and it will be regardless of age and sex. Such wars have occurred and its horrors compelled humanity to codify certain behaviors, even in wars, as exceptionally morally atrocious. The act of the false surrender or perfidy is one such morally atrocious behaviors and why initial custodial actions by soldiers to accept a surrender is equally as dangerous as combat itself.

In going back to our situations with the helo and the UAV, the surrendering Iraqi troops were never in any situations where custodial actions can be taken in safety for all sides. Least of all for the US soldiers who were never there in sufficient numbers to secure their own safety if they have to be come custodians of non-combatants who may change their minds at any time. There is only one way to ensure safety and that is physical restraint of all surrendered troops.

So the problem have several intertwined issues, most problematic of all is what moral principles that are currently codified have not kept pace with technological changes. When Imperial Japanese troops were under bombardment by enemy battleships, could they have surrendered? No, they could not because the act of surrender required presence of both parties. So does remote presence qualify? If a combatant declare his intention to become a non-combatant, there is a burden and an expectation. The burden is upon the opposing side to acknowledge such a declaration. The expectation is upon the (now) non-combatant to confirm that acknowledgement. In other words, both sides must see each other and confirm what the other said:

1- I surrender.
2- Yes, I acknowledge your surrender.
3- Yes, I confirm that you received my message of intent.

The Imperial Japanese troops could not surrender to the commander of the battleship that bombards them. They know that there exists humans who are doing the utmost to kill them but the immediate situation deny them the opportunity to signal their intention of becoming non-combatants.

The Iraqi troops had a small benefit the Japanese did not have in that even though their enemy were not available in physical presence, certain things and actions at the immediate situation indicate a high level of awareness by their enemy of their conditions. But when they signaled their intention to surrender, acts 2 and 3 are absent. Their enemy could neither acknowledge their message nor secure their physical restraints. And they could not confirm that their enemy have received any message of intent.

The problems for US are clear: Moral and Physical.

Morally speaking, we are (or arguably were) obligated to cease combat actions when confronted with a message of intent to surrender.

Physically...So should we just leave the Iraqi troops alone since we could not physically secure them? After all, a major feature and desire of war is to reduce the number of combatants on the other side, either through combat deaths or removal of combatants from the battlefields if they are alive and deny them the ability to return, aka prison camps. By leaving them alone, what if they returned to the battlefields? In wars, self interests trumps the other side's well being and that self interests include fellow soldiers.

The moral burden is clear but the physical problem was non-achievable. The safest legal option, and morally unattractive since the laws of war have not kept pace with technological changes, is to keep (or perceive) those Iraqi troops as combatants. It is not a morally questionable situation that anyone here have faced or want to face, assuming the person have a reasonable amount of humanity and civilized behaviors in him.

 

[Zabaniyah]

I've been reading about Rules of Engagement for US Forces in Iraq.

One thing I thought was interesting is, militants attempting to surrender to a AH; their surrender cannot be deemed valid and hence are still valid targets. Hence, the AH can still engage the targets though they are surrendering. Situation like this did happen in Iraq, after militants exited a dump trunk and surrendered to an AH (not sure how they conveyed this but they did), US soldiers in the AH radio back to superiors, superiors/lawyer stated though militants are surrendering they cannot surrender to an AH hence are still viable targets, the AH fires a hellfire missile at the two militants.



May be we can make something out of this thread, but this subject is complex and very interesting.

That's because militants do not wear a standard uniform.

 

[Leviza]

Hang on with all this ,....

US always claim they are in Afghanistan to bring some people responsible for 9/11 to justice, that means putting them in court of justice ???
killing someone if that person is surrendering is against the LAW on which UN allowed NATO to go into afghanistan...

but they are killers and they will keep on killing innocents ... and american people cant think of their own, they all are brain washed by US media ....

otherwise for a moment they could atleast think about why the hell in this world millions of muslims being killed ? are they all terrorist or is it killing of millions comes under collateral damage?"

they cant think, they think what US media wants them to think ...

 

[forcetrip]

Surrender is not acceptable when it is made after resistance has become futile, for example, a sniper giving up when he has run out of ammunition. So if militants are surrendering after being cornered and outgunned, their surrender is not acceptable under Rules of Engagement.

You have lost your marbles.. Where did you gain this information? By your logic, if a militant or soldier raises the white flag / hands after he runs out of ammo, he is supposed to be shot?

It is not a morally questionable situation that anyone here have faced or want to face, assuming the person have a reasonable amount of humanity and civilized behaviors in him.

Till you are in that situation there should never be an understanding for a person to say that they will shoot an unarmed surrendering combatant. Every time anyone asks this question the answer should be a "no". When the situation dictates you kill unarmed combatants because you had a risk to your own life should be judged by the person in that situation.

 

[VCheng]

You have lost your marbles.. Where did you gain this information? By your logic, if a militant or soldier raises the white flag / hands after he runs out of ammo, he is supposed to be shot?..............

All I am saying is that his surrender may or may not be acceptable depending on the situation. It is not a given that it must be accepted.

As I said before, all those expressing outrage may want to read this:

...........

The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict by Leslie C. Green

ISBN-10: 1929446292
ISBN-13: 978-1929446292