Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service March 27, 2003
U.S. officials say Iraqi tactics tantamount to war crimes
By Richard Whittle
WASHINGTON _ Nasty things happen in war, but U.S. officials say the Iraqis are resorting to sneaky, vicious tactics that constitute war crimes.
The Iraqi low points, the officials say: forcing civilians to serve as human shields; faking surrender, then opening fire on "captors"; disguising themselves in U.S. or British uniforms; misusing Red Cross vehicles or hospitals for military purposes.
"The practices that have been conducted by these paramilitaries and by these others who are out there, sometimes in uniform, sometimes not in uniform, are more akin to the behaviors of global terrorists than they are to a nation," Air Force Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations for the U.S. Central Command, said in Qatar.
Officials say Iraqi tactics won't stop the U.S.-led coalition from winning the war and toppling Saddam Hussein. Nor will they cause American troops to change the way they fight or use any less care to protect civilians, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Wednesday.
"It is not changing the overall game plan," she said. "One of the aspects of the overall game plan, the strategy, was to be able to adapt and adjust as appropriate, depending on what the enemy does."
While the Iraqi tactics might cause coalition troops to be more careful, "we won't change our rules of engagement," said Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, deputy director for operations of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.
But such tactics are war crimes, Clarke said, and "people that we can find and hold" will face charges.
Iraqis in and out of uniform have waved white flags, then opened fire on American and British troops who tried to accept their surrender, according to reports from the front.
McChrystal said he believed the Iraqis were trying "to get an overreaction from coalition forces so that we'll fire on people who are trying to surrender."
Other Iraqis dressed in rags begged food from Marines near An Nasiriyah on Saturday, then paced off the distance back to a mortar position to get the range needed to attack, said Brig. Gen. Andrew Davis, chief Marine Corps spokesman.
Some Iraqi forces have used rescue vehicles to courier military messages, fired on Marines from a hospital, stationed tanks and anti-aircraft guns in civilian residential areas and used Iraqi civilians as human shields, U.S. officials said.
"What we have seen over the last several days is Iraqi citizens being marched out in front of irregular formations while they are firing," Brooks said. "Iraqi civilians are being killed on the battlefield by Iraqis."
Clarke said she has seen a report that U.S. troops had found a dead Iraqi dressed in an American military uniform with explosives strapped to his body _ an apparent would-be suicide bomber.
"We have seen some absolutely unbelievable examples of how little they care about civilians and how little they value life," she said.
Brooks said U.S. commanders "had information that this regime would seek to gain U.S. and UK uniforms in order to commit atrocities," then try to blame them on coalition troops.
These kind of tactics apparently are being spearheaded by the Fedayeen Saddam, paramilitary loyalists recruited and led by Saddam's son, Uday. Fedayeen Saddam _ literally, "Saddam's Men of Sacrifice" _ has a total strength of 18,000 to 40,000 men, according to GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based organization that has studied Iraq's military capabilities.
If the Republican Guard is Saddam's elite military force, Fedayeen Saddam is his internal police force, responsible for keeping the civilian populace in line. Among these forces, most recruited from regions loyal to Saddam, are special units known as "death squadrons" who carry out targeted executions, analysts say.
An annex to the Hague Convention IV of 1907, "Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land," specifies that, "Ruses of war and the employment of measures necessary for obtaining information about the enemy and the country are considered permissible."
In the 1991 Gulf War, for example, the U.S. coalition sent landing ships and other vessels off the coast of Kuwait to feint an amphibious landing that was never launched but tied down Iraqi forces.
But Article 23 of the annex declares, "It is especially forbidden to make improper use of a flag of truce, or the national flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy."
Hospitals are protected under the laws of war _ unless the enemy is using them for military purposes, noted Marine Corps Lt. Col. Wendy Stafford, head of the international and operational law branch of the Marine Corps Judge Advocate Division.
When U.S. officials vow to investigate such incidents, they are not engaging in empty talk, Stafford said. They are investigating even as the fighting goes on.
"Everything will be investigated, no matter how the actual alleged violation is raised," she said.
A Marine lawyer, she said, was wounded on just such an investigation. Lt. Col. John Ewers, staff judge advocate for the 1st Marine Division, was looking into an alleged Iraqi war crime in the Az Zubayr area with five other Marines in two Humvees, she said.
The group suddenly came under fire from rocket-propelled grenade, automatic weapons and small arms "from sandbagged rooftop positions in the vicinity of their route of travel," Stafford said. "He received some serious wounds."
Any trials, of course, must wait until there is a new government in Baghdad and could be conducted by that authority, by the United States or by an international court.
Whatever happens to them on the battlefield, McChrystal said, the coalition troops will play by the rules.
"One of the things our soldiers are remembering is we are there to liberate the people of Iraq," he said. "And because we've got what we consider a noble purpose in this case, the tactics and techniques and procedures won't change."
Copyright © 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
