What the Globe & Mail didn't tell you, again

Paul Koring wrote what I thought was a mostly fair article the other day, about escalation of force incidents:

Facing ever-present and deadly threats from suicide bombers, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan open fire almost weekly at Afghans getting too close to convoys or approaching checkpoints at high speed, according to the most complete public accounting to date of such incidents.

The exhaustively compiled summary shows at least nine Afghans have been killed and 22 injured in more than two dozen shootings when Canadian soldiers fired on approaching individuals or vehicles since Canadian troops deployed to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province in the spring of last year.

Every so-called "escalation of force incident" is investigated by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, an independent military police unit with a mandate to investigate serious and sensitive matters.

All Canadian soldiers involved in the 61 completed investigations have been cleared. Three shootings, including the killing last month of a motorcyclist and the wounding of his 12-year-old brother, remain under investigation. Another 11 completed investigations determined that Canadian soldiers weren't involved.

I say the piece was "mostly fair," because while Koring made an effort to show the difficult position Canadian soldiers find themselves in when guarding the lives of their mates through the streets of Kandahar City - I have the utmost respect for anyone who has ever ridden as air-sentry on a LAV in Southern Afghanistan - he paid only lip-service to the unglamourous preparation done by staff officers ahead of time to make sure the decisions faced by our soldiers are easier than they otherwise would be:

Most drivers in Afghanistan now know of the devastating consequences of disregarding such warnings and failing to pull over or stay well back from a military convoy.

One short sentence doesn't cover it, frankly.

ISAF, and specifically the CF, have made a significant effort to educate Afghans about how to interact with military convoys in Kandahar. To start with, there are signs on just about every vehicle sent outside the wire. They're about three feet long, and they're reflective.



Here's another shot of the signs:



Doug Beazley of the Sun Media group noted these signs last year, but wasn't optimistic about their use:

On the back of their armoured RG 31 vehicle hung a sign painted in bright red Arabic characters. "What does it mean?" I asked.

"It says 'Keep back 50 feet from vehicle,'" said Adams. "Which is kinda stupid, 'cause from 50 feet back you can't read the sign.

"And if you get close enough to read it, chances are we're already shooting at you."

Omar El Akkad, blogging for the Globe's Witness: Kandahar, provides a more up-to-date assessment of the signs' effectiveness, as well as some context for Koring's piece:

The occasional traffic officer tries to exert some control. At first he motions for the cars to stop, but no one stops, so he physically gets in front of the cars, but that doesn’t do the trick either, and for a minute he looks a little like an unenthusiastic bullfighter, dodging a parade of side-mirrors.

The only thing that consistently gets drivers to comply here is the most dangerous sign in Kandahar. It’s bright red, and features the outline of a man with his open palm outstretched. This is the sign warning motorists to stay at least 100 metres away, and it’s plastered to just about every NATO military vehicle that comes through the city. Because suicide bombers like to get their cars as close to NATO vehicles as possible, the soldiers consider anyone who ignores the sign and gets too close to be within the “rules of engagement.” This is military slang for when violence is about to happen.

Signs are problematic in Afghanistan, though, because of the dangerously low literacy rate (only 50% or so of adult males, which make up the driving population of the province). The CF addressed this issue by using not only text, but a graphic representation indicating vehicle spacing and the unambiguous outline of a man with his hand outstretched, palm up, indicating "back off."

Vehicles also have sirens and flashing lights, in case the bristling guns and bright, clear signage isn't obvious enough.

But the CF has gone even further than that to make the streets safer for both soldiers and Afghans. When Kandahar residents were asked "Do you or your household living at this address own an FM radio?" the results were compelling:



So the CF commissioned radio ads, which run all over southern Afghanistan. The public safety announcements (just in case you speak Pashto or Dari) are clear and simple:

Translation: Rana-FM would like to remind drivers to keep a safe distance of 100 metres from military convoys travelling on the streets and roads in Kandahar Province. Please pull over and stop. Do your part to keep Kandahar safe.

Each of the six spots gets fifty-six airings per week. That's one every half hour, every day. In other words, you can't miss them.

So with everything we're doing to prevent incidents, including instructing Afghans on how to interact with us safely and using escalation of force procedures, why are we still getting any incidents at all?

There's more than one explanation. First, the obvious one: some of those who get shot coming too close to Canadian convoys are extremists looking to blow themselves to Kingdom Come and take as many of our soldiers with them as they can. If they're not mentally disabled, these people couldn't be more deserving of their bullet.

Unfortunately, many of those sent on one-way mission aren't of sound mind.

Second: familiarity. How many times have you changed lanes without checking your blind spot, and received an angry honk from the car you cut off? It's not because you don't know what to do, just that you were careless for a moment. The same holds true for Afghans: at some point, the chaos of Kandahar driving and the never-ending danger must become somewhat commonplace, and that's when mistakes are made.

Third: fearlessness. Afghanistan is a nation that values bravery. The Canadian soldiers who work alongside Afghan security forces often shake their heads at bravery from their Afghan compatriots so bold that it ventures into foolhardiness. Add in the element of almost constant war and conflict for decades, now, and you have a population numbed by the never-ending prospect of mortal danger, and predisposed to displays of courage, even the most asinine kind. Think of Jackass on steroids.

Fourth: rotating troops. Much as troops train to drive in Kandahar long before they get here, there's nothing the CF can do that matches squarely with the reality on the roads. And even if they could, game day is different than the practice field, no matter how hard you train. Which means there's a learning curve for each new rotation, steepest for the drivers and sentries.

This is a dangerous situation for everyone over there. As Koring points out, to his credit, Canadian soldiers rarely have much time to make a decision:

Sometimes even split-second reactions are insufficient.

For instance, when a suicide bomber driving a van crammed with explosives accelerated out of a side road to attack a convoy carrying the general commanding all Canadian forces in Afghanistan last summer, there was no time for waving or warning shots. In that attack only the suicide bomber was killed, although one Canadian armoured vehicle rolled on its side.

And when we get it wrong - and even sometimes when we don't - we do the best that we can to fix things.

The only way to eliminate this peril is to make Kandahar a safer place overall. And to do that, our forces have to go outside the wire into an unsafe environment.

Until that much safer day comes, we should be thankful that we have professional information operations and intelligence personnel to mitigate this risk, and professional soldiers behind the weapons making the best decisions possible.