British soldiers resort to 'baiting' Taliban to beat rules of engagement

It just keeps getting worse and worse in the War in Afghanistan.  General George Patton and Sir Winston Churchill are rolling over in their graves.

The article is from The Independent.

British soldiers resort to 'baiting' Taliban to beat rules of engagement


British soldiers in Afghanistan are being forced to act as bait in an attempt to draw the Taliban into opening fire, a serving platoon commander has alleged.

Soldiers are risking their lives to get round strict rules of engagement that allow them to shoot only if they are being attacked or are in "imminent danger".

The Taliban are increasingly exploiting the rules by hiding weapons in undergrowth near patrol routes – meaning British forces cannot act against them until they actually pick up their guns.

The claims are made by Lieutenant Jimmy Clark , a platoon commander who recently returned from a tour of Afghanistan.

Shocking scenes to be broadcast in a documentary, Our War, on BBC Three this evening reveal how it was only by luck that soldiers survived a bomb while on a patrol nicknamed "Op Bait" late last year.

Lt Clark from 2 Mercian, who was leading the patrol, describes his frustration at the rules of engagement, which led to soldiers acting as bait to tempt the Taliban into attacking them. "It's difficult really to 'fight' an enemy we're not allowed to fight. Under our rules of engagement we can only really return fire and sometimes it's very frustrating." Footage of Op Bait, shot from headcams on soldiers' helmets, released by the Ministry of Defence, shows how the plan almost backfired.

Lt Clark sums up the approach: "You have a foot patrol which has air support… you get contacted, you're being fired at and the helicopter can come in and kill that guy." For the avoidance of doubt, he adds: "Our job was to get shot at."

As they prepare to go on the patrol, soldiers try to hide their nerves by joking. One says: "Hi, I'm Lance Corporal Shepherd, this will be the last you see of me, I'm going on suicide." To howls of laughter, another says: "Hi, I'm Private Morgan, I'll be picking up Shep's legs."

The soldiers then silently move out on patrol, aware they are being watched by Taliban fighters just across the canal they are walking alongside. Suddenly two large explosions ring out followed by screams – the world temporarily turned to smoke. Amid heavy gunfire, the soldiers pull back. Miraculously, none of the patrol are killed.

In the aftermath, an exhausted Lt Clark says: "It is incredibly frustrating to be leading soldiers out on patrol with the purpose of getting shot at. There's a line between bravery and stupidity and so far we are pushing the limits."

In an interview with The Independent, Lt Clark said: "What the Taliban were extremely good at doing was walking around without weapons, having cached them in undergrowth or behind cover, walking up to those locations, which were already ready-made firing positions, and shooting at us."

The number of British soldiers being shot dead in Afghanistan has spiralled as new tactics stop them from shooting at the Taliban until they have been fired at. Fourteen have been killed by enemy gunfire in Helmand Province in the past four months, compared with three in the same period in 2011.

Last month it emerged that the US general John Allen, head of coalition forces, had instructed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) not to shoot first unless attacked, although the Ministry of Defence has denied this amounted to a change in the rules of engagement.

In a statement the MoD said: "We have always been very clear, as has ISAF, that our troops go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Recent amendments to the ISAF tactical directive reflect that commitment."

Now Without Bullets

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

Hat tip to IggyMom

The Rules of Engagement for our troops in Afghanistan are restricting in every sense of the word.  No attacks at night if it might wake up a civilian.  If the enemy shoots at you and then drops their weapons, you cannot shoot at them while they run to get more ammo or another weapon.  And now this order:  You are to keep your weapons at AMBER status.  For those of you who do not know what AMBER status is, it means the weapon has a loaded magazine, but the safety is on and no round is chambered.

Commanders have ordered a U.S. military unit in Afghanistan to patrol with unloaded weapons, according to a source in Afghanistan.

American soldiers in at least one unit have been ordered to conduct patrols without a round chambered in their weapons, an anonymous source stationed at a forward operating base in Afghanistan said in an interview. The source was unsure where the order originated or how many other units were affected.

When a weapon has a loaded magazine, but the safety is on and no round is chambered, the military refers to this condition as “amber status.” Weapons on “red status” are ready to fire—they have a round in the chamber and the safety is off.

The source stated that he had been stationed at the base for only a month, but the amber weapons order was in place since before he arrived. A NATO spokesman could not confirm the information, stating that levels of force are classified.

“Our overall aim is to defeat the insurgency which means we must gain and then maintain the support of the Afghan population,” said Lieutenant Commander Iain Baxter, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a statement to HUMAN EVENTS/ Guns & Patriots. “This must be the objective of every action taken by ISAF service members, and it calls for responses that de-escalate situations where the use of deadly force may not be necessary. In doing this, leaders at all levels make enormous efforts to ensure that troops balance their own protection with the protection of the Afghan population.”

Finish reading here.

We tried this idea of winning over their hearts and minds in Vietnam.  It didn't work then, it won't work now.  The next step will be to go on patrol without any bullets and to talk to the enemy instead of firing back.

Sheik Obama's regime has repeatedly hampered the hands of our fighting men in Afghanistan for the last 3 years.  While our men are dying, the enemy is laughing at us.  While we are retreating and leaving, the enemy is biding its time to retake that nation.  A failed military policy to go along with Sheik Obama's failed domestic, economic and foreign policies.  January 20, 2013 cannot come fast enough.

The Controversy of ROE In the Afghanistan War

Okay, I decided to go ahead and put up this article from Family Security Matters that speaks to the issue of the Rules of Engagement (ROE) that govern the actions of our military in Afghanistan even though I do disagree with a good portion of it. Now, this article was written by a retired Marine 1st Sergeant so I am not going to even profess to know more than this warrior of ours whose service I wholeheartedly appreciate, but I have an issue with some parts of it which I will point out.

But in essence, the author does show some extremely revealing reasons for the ROE in Afghanistan that everyone needs to read, such as:

I was brought into a thread started by a concerned citizen over the debacle in Afghanistan (the Pentagon really) and asked to put in my two cents. For what it is worth; here is what I shared:

We can fully expect the Rules of Engagement to continue to tighten and become even more deadly to our troops as time passes. The reason I say this has absolutely nothing to do with some ethereal ‘gifting’ some will imagine I possess but simply because I understand what has promulgated the need for them.

In the thread that was passed on to me earlier today; someone asked if there was a way to determine exactly how many American troops and Marines had been killed by the ROE and my answer is simple, perfectly logical, provable and without possibility of a proper retort; since June of 2009 – virtually every combat related death, in Afghanistan, can be laid at the threshold of the current ROE.

The fact is, within the first 6 months of our involvement in Afghanistan, we had managed to topple the sitting government, scatter the Taliban like the vermin they are, establish our puppet (Karzai) in Kabul and instill a requisite amount of fear into the people, government, Taliban and neighboring countries of Afghanistan. Over the following years, we lost focus largely due to our involvement in Iraq.

The President will find a reason to exit Afghanistan long before it becomes an election issue, Iran will have subverted the sovereignty of both Iraq and Afghanistan in less than two years, we will continue to distance ourselves from our only ally in the region, Israel and we, will become an anachronism.

Okay, that last paragraph excerpted above, I agree 100 percent with - it's absolutely spot on. However, I take issue with the worn out line about the Iraq War taking away all focus on the Afghanistan War and that is the reason for the prolonged struggle there. Now, I am not about to say that the Iraq War didn't divert attention and resources but at the same time, if you really research the War in Afghanistan, you will find that it started turning really bad, going south significantly the latter half of 2008 and of course, all of 2009 and into 2010...culminating in some of our worst casualties coming in the summer of 2010.

I agree with the authors take on the Pashtun issue in this war but I disagree with what I think is his minimizing both "foreign fighters" in the fray and excluding mention of al Qaeda in the theatre. I believe that the Uzbecks and now European jihadis and some of the Arab influenced al Qaeda forces coming from Pakistan have made a huge impact on this war. Look at the success rate of IED's in Afghanistan over the years - it didn't just improve for the Taliban, it CHANGED completely along the way and I am convinced that is a direct result of al Qaeda intervention.

But again, the point of this article is strong - that the ROE didn't change just overnight but the fact is they continue to constrict and constrict. And it is a travesty to every one of our soldiers and Marines involved in that war.

More on ROE, COIN, Governance and Apathy


I was brought into a thread started by a concerned citizen over the debacle in Afghanistan (the Pentagon really) and asked to put in my two cents. For what it is worth; here is what I shared:

We can fully expect the Rules of Engagement to continue to tighten and become even more deadly to our troops as time passes. The reason I say this has absolutely nothing to do with some ethereal ‘gifting’ some will imagine I possess but simply because I understand what has promulgated the need for them.

In the thread that was passed on to me earlier today; someone asked if there was a way to determine exactly how many American troops and Marines had been killed by the ROE and my answer is simple, perfectly logical, provable and without possibility of a proper retort; since June of 2009 – virtually every combat related death, in Afghanistan, can be laid at the threshold of the current ROE.

There is a general misunderstanding among those who are now ‘awakened’ about what those rules are, when such rules are dictated, by whom they are dictated and why they are as tight as they are at present. What I hope to do in the next few lines is to give you every bit of information you need to fully understand all of this as well as something you can use when you speak to your Congressmen and other ‘servants’ in government.

First you need to approach this with an understanding of just how ignorant nearly every one of our elected ‘servants' are on this subject.

Second, you need to understand that all of them feel they are indemnified, Constitutionally, from any type of penalty for faulty decision-making, willful ignorance, apathy, or half-hearted answers with the specific intent of placating seriously concerned citizens.

Third; you need to be illuminated on the history of Islam, Military protocol, Strategy, the relationship of the three branches of government with the Military and our collective relationship to the world.

Fourth; you will have to understand and more importantly make your ‘servants’ understand that the assessment that was done during the early planning stages of the war, on the enemy and the people of Afghanistan was fatally flawed, historically incorrect and doomed to place our troops in jeopardy from every component of Afghan society until our Marines and Soldiers are literally surrounded by an enemy that is 1400 years old.

Fifth; because of their shared religious heritage and worship of their deity Allah (who IS NOT the God of the Bible) and their desire to fulfill his mandates in the Koran to kill all those who will not take a knee to him, there is virtually no hope of reconciliation.

Sixth; because of our stubborn adherence to COIN and it’s damnable ROE, we have willfully turned over control of the battle field to the enemy.

The fact is, within the first 6 months of our involvement in Afghanistan, we had managed to topple the sitting government, scatter the Taliban like the vermin they are, establish our puppet (Karzai) in Kabul and instill a requisite amount of fear into the people, government, Taliban and neighboring countries of Afghanistan. Over the following years, we lost focus largely due to our involvement in Iraq.

By early 2009, we had re-focused on Afghanistan, but with a different vision and different purpose and therein lies the real problem. The real problem is not the ROE; it is the strategy that bore the ROE and that is Counter Insurgency Doctrine.

Although elements of COIN are readily found in almost every military engagement since the dawn of mankind and war, COIN as a stand-alone doctrine has only been with us since 1940. Since that time it has been tried by other countries and on other battle fields and in all but one instance – failed.

Because of the nature of COIN and the intent of the military force operating within that paradigm, it requires an unusually high degree of restraint when engaging the enemy and most especially around civilians. That is because, the actual intent is to strengthen the resolve of the people and their government to seek out and destroy the insurgency that has beset them. One of the problems in Afghanistan is that the Taliban has been erroneously identified as a foreign ‘insurgency’.

They are in fact an Afghan phenomenon whose ranks are filled largely by Afghans, Pakistanis and some foreign fighters of the same religion and similar philosophy of jurisprudence. The reason that I can say with absolute clarity that the insurgency, while part Pakistani, is a local phenomenon is because the border that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, effectively splits the largest communal tribe in the region, the Pashtun and they have never recognized it since it’s appearance in 1894.

Because we have already determined (falsely) that the Afghans were illegally infiltrated by the Taliban and that they were not welcome, it was determined that Counter Insurgency Strategy would best serve the needs of Afghanistan and the security interests of the United States by minimizing civilian casualties while ‘encouraging’ the ‘innocent’ Afghan people to take an active role in eradicating the Taliban. This goal, of course, was watered down even further under President Obama who even removed typical military jargon from the lexicon so as not to ‘create ill feeling’.

The ‘formal document’ detailing the level of restraint used on the battle field in which we find the ‘official ROE’, is secret and can only be viewed or discussed by people with the right security clearance. This makes a very convenient argument against hearings when they are demanded by our representatives. This argument, however, is ludicrous because the people who know our ROE the best, is the enemy; the Taliban.

I hope this has given you some indication of where we are at present. It is most frustrating for me to know that this is unlikely to ever be solved because there are very few in Congress – or anywhere in representative government for whom this is a front-and-center issue and given the results of the election; they are right.

The American people didn’t vote the way they did because of a concern for the plight of the military in Afghanistan; they did it for reasons of money and that is where your new crop of elected ‘servants’ will be focused. They can continue to be willfully ignorant while claiming adherence to the will of the people; the people can continue to believe what they have been told, that Islam is a religion of peace and the Pentagon can continue as they have against an enemy falsely assessed.

The President will find a reason to exit Afghanistan long before it becomes an election issue, Iran will have subverted the sovereignty of both Iraq and Afghanistan in less than two years, we will continue to distance ourselves from our only ally in the region, Israel and we, will become an anachronism.

Having said that; let me tell you this: You have listed the Oath on your web site but there is an equally important mandate handed down to each and every one of us who has actually ‘served’; they are the General Orders and the 5th general order is the one I want you to keep as your Holy Oath; “To Quit My Post Only When Properly Relieved’. I don’t know about you; but I am still breathing…

Semper Fidelis;

John Bernard