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Amnesty International says three months of Russian air raids have killed hundreds of civilians in Syria, many in targeted attacks that could constitute war crimes.The rights group said on Wednesday that there was evidence Russia had lied to cover up attacks on a field hospital and a mosque, and was using internationally banned cluster bombs in civilian areas.Some attacks “appear to have directly attacked civilians or civilian objects by striking residential areas with no evident military target and even medical facilities”, said Amnesty’s Middle East director Philip Luther.”Such attacks may amount to war crimes,” he said, adding that it “is crucial that suspected violations are independently and impartially investigated”.
The report focuses on attacks in Homs, Idlib and Aleppo provinces between September and November, which killed at least 200 civilians and around a dozen fighters, the group said.Amnesty noted that Russian authorities “have claimed that their armed forces are only striking ‘terrorist’ targets. After some attacks, they have responded to reports of civilian deaths, by denying they killed civilians; after others, they have simply stayed silent.”In one of the deadliest incidents, Amnesty said three missiles were fired at a busy market in the Idlib locality of Ariha, killing 49 civilians.Local media activist Mohammed Qurabi al-Ghazal quoted as saying: “In just a few moments, people were screaming, the smell of burning was in the air and there was just chaos.”In another suspected Russian attack, at least 46 civilians, including 32 children and 11 women sheltering in the basement of a residential building, were killed in October in Ghantu, Homs, Amnesty said.Video footage showed “no evidence of a military presence”, and weapons experts said the nature of the destruction “indicated possible use of fuel-air explosives, a type of weapon particularly prone to indiscriminate effects when used in the vicinity of civilians”.
On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian air strikes had killed 2,132 people since the campaign began at the end of September, including 710 civilians.The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes since it broke out in March 2011.
The UK, US, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey voiced “deep concern” over Moscow’s actions as Russian jets carried out a third day of airstrikes in the war-torn country.
They said in a statement they are especially concerned about “attacks by the Russian Air Force on Hama, Homs and Idlib since yesterday (Thursday) which led to civilian casualties and did not target Daesh (IS).
“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalisation.
“We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL (IS).”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s jets appear to be targeting rebel groups trying to topple his ally Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
They reportedly hit a camp operated by a rebel group trained by American CIA agents.
However, Russia says its Sukhoi-34 jets are attacking IS forces, and destroyed a command centre and training camp used to prepare “terrorists”.
Moscow says it has carried out 18 attacks in Syria since Thursday night, with 12 of them hitting IS targets.
The Kremlin has denied reports that its strikes have killed at least 36 civilians, including five children.
:: Why Is Putin Joining The Syrian Conflict?
The US-led coalition criticised Russia as Mr Putin held talks with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris to try to overcome differences on whether Mr Assad should stay in power.
The Syrian President is Russia’s main ally in the Middle East, while Western leaders are firmly opposed to his rule.
Mr Hollande told Mr Putin that Russian airstrikes must be confined to targeting IS militants.
And Mrs Merkel added the leaders “said very clearly that Daesh (IS) was the enemy that we needed to fight”.
Mr Putin left the Paris meeting without comment and did not appear alongside the French and German leaders.
Russia’s raids have triggered discussions in the Pentagon about whether America should use military force to protect US-trained and equipped rebels if they are bombed by Moscow.
US President Barack Obama said: “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.”
He said Russia is also failing to differentiate between IS and more moderate insurgents in Syria.
“From their perspective, they’re all terrorists. And that’s a recipe for disaster,” said Mr Obama.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said it had been forced to suspend planned humanitarian operations in Syria, including evacuating the wounded, due to a “surge of military activity”.
Malik, who was born in Pakistan and lived in Saudi Arabia for part of her life, moved to the US after meeting Farook first online and then in person when he traveled to Mecca for a religious pilgrimage in 2013. Farook was born in the US.
Malik was allowed to enter the US on a K-1 “fiance” visa. That program is now under more scrutiny, with the US government considering stronger screening measures for applicants. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating the issuance of Malik’s visa by Homeland Security officials.
Her application lists addresses in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, including in Punjab Province and Riyadh, where Malik has lived in the past five years.
Farook also wrote the following “intention to marry” statement as part of Malik’s visa application. In the statement, signed on January 20, 2014, Farook wrote that he and Malik “intend to marry within the first month of her arriving in the US.”
House Judiciary Committee
A stamp on the document shows that Malik was admitted into the US on July 27, 2014.
Malik and Farook had both reportedly been radicalized before they met.
And a friend of Farook, who has since been arrested, allegedly told authorities after the attacks that he was planning other attacks with Farook in 2011 and 2012.
Malik also reportedly posted a message on Facebook pledging allegiance to the leader of the terrorist group ISIS — aka the Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh — while the San Bernardino attack was ongoing. She and Farook died in a shootout with police later that day.
Audio interviews of attitudes of the newly announced Saudi coalition against Islamic State and terrorism in the region.
BBC: Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition against IS and is also leading a military intervention in Yemen against Shia Houthi rebels.
The list of 34 members: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinians, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
A joint operations centre is to be established in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, state media reported.
Countries from Asia, Africa and the Arab world are involved in the alliance but Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival Iran is not.
It comes amid international pressure for Gulf Arab states to do more in the fight against so-called Islamic State.
Saudi Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman said the new alliance would co-ordinate efforts against extremists in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.
Neither Iraq nor Syria, whose governments are close to Shia-ruled Iran, are in the coalition, nor is Afghanistan.
Two things stand out immediately about this new Saudi-based Islamic Coalition.
The Shia-majority nations of Iran and Iraq are noticeably absent, as is their ally Syria.
It is far from clear how, in practice, the coalition would conduct counter-terrorism operations in IS-plagued Iraq and Syria without the agreement of those governments.
Secondly, there is the question of the exact definition of terrorism. The Saudi authorities’ interpretation of it extends far beyond the violent actions of armed insurgents.
Recent legislation has branded peaceful opposition activists and reformers, whether online or in the street, as suspected “terrorists” and a security risk to the state.
***
CBC: Saudi Arabia’s defence minister gave a rare press conference on Tuesday to announce a new military coalition of 34 Muslim countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to fight terrorism in the region. The coalition includes a broad range of countries including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan.
The announcement was welcomed by some, and met with skepticism by others, given that Saudi Arabia has long been accused of turning a blind eye to support for terrorism coming from inside its own borders.
By Wednesday, several of the countries involved, including Pakistan and Malaysia, expressed confusion at having been named as members of a military coalition, and began distancing themselves from the commitment.
Aya Batrawy reports on the Arabian Peninsula for the Associated Press. She was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
David A. Weinberg is skeptical of Saudi Arabia’s new military coalition. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington.
For a sense of how the American government might be thinking, we were joined by James B. Smith. He was the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2013. He’s now the president of the policy consulting firm C and M International in Washington.
We did make multiple requests for comment from the Saudi Arabian embassy in Canada, but we did not receive a response. The Saudi embassy to the United States declined our request for an interview.
NDTV: London: Hackers in Britain have claimed that a number of ISIS supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
A group of four young computer experts, who call themselves VandaSec, have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP’s London offices, the ‘Daily Mirror’ reported.
Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number. The hacking collective showed the newspaper details of the IP addresses used by three separate so-called “digital jihadis” to access Twitter accounts, which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda campaigns.
At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.
The newspaper learned that the British government had sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.
After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The government owns millions of unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for hardworking taxpayers.
“We have sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their customers to connect to the internet. We think carefully about which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this internet connection is beyond our control.”
The UK government has not revealed how much money it has made from the sale of IP addresses.
Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., FBI Director James Comey revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the two Islamic State-inspired shooters in the May 3 attack in Garland, Tex., “exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist” the morning of the attack. He followed up by saying that the FBI was unable to read those messages. His implication? Better regulation of message-disguising encryption technology could have revealed the shooters’ plans earlier and could help prevent attacks.
However, regulation of encryption is unlikely to provide the government with the counterterrorism benefit it says it will. Jihadists’ main tool for planning and executing attacks in recent years has been social media — to which the government has full access — not encrypted messaging. In addition, regulation of one messaging technology will lead to immediate adaptation and the creation of ways to circumvent it.
In recent years, smartphones and social media have enabled users from around the world to communicate easily, safely and free of charge. Programs facilitating such communications sprouted, and jihadists — the Islamic State in particular — quickly adopted them as their main means of communication. For over three years, Twitter has been the Islamic State’s most important platform. High-level operatives within the group have used Twitter’s unencrypted direct messaging to recruit, give instructions for donating and plan attacks. Jihadists even rely on Twitter to promote their channels on other platforms, such as Telegram, which supporters would otherwise have difficulty finding.
Jihadists’ presence on social media has also spread the Islamic State around the world, with people of all ages, sexes and ethnicities leaving their families and friends to join the group. Social media use has been linked to executed and attempted lone-wolf attacks in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Denmark and other Western nations.
The Garland, Tex., shooting — the only example Comey used as an impetus to regulate encrypted technology — in fact makes the opposite point. Attacker Elton Simpson, who was under previous FBI terror-related investigations, used Twitter to openly follow and communicate with high-profile terrorists. His account was followed by prominent English-speaking Islamic State fighters and recruiters Abu Rahin Aziz and Junaid Hussain — both of whom for a long time were known to provide manuals on how to carry out lone-wolf attacks from Raqqa, Syria, before they were killed. Simpson also followed and communicated with Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, a known American jihadist in Somalia who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Relatedly, the incitement for the Texas shooting came from Hassan’s 31st Twitter account. Simpson, a friend and follower of Hassan, retweeted the call and later requested that Hassan send him a direct message. We at SITE, using only open-source information, reported on the call before the attack took place, and the FBI had a week to investigate the matter before the shooting. Though only nine Twitter users retweeted the call for attack, the FBI failed to prevent it.
The encrypted messages Comey mentioned before the Judiciary Committee were discovered by the FBI only after the attack took place, but Simpson’s open-source communication was available far in advance. There is in fact no evidence that this or any of these other lone-wolf attacks could have been prevented by regulation of encryption technology.
In stark contrast, a proper, targeted open-source investigation could have. Yet the FBI is reluctant to recognize open-source as an important — arguably the most important — tool to track jihadists online.
It’s also important to note that jihadists are very quick to adapt online. In the past year alone, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters have moved quickly from WhatsApp to Kik, Wickr, Surespot, then to Telegram – all different encryption programs created to give smartphone users safe and free text messaging available across multiple devices. Jihadists are constantly ranking, debating and explaining which of the services is the safest and most effective. Regulation of these programs will take jihadists next to no time to circumvent; the U.S. government would be the one taking years to catch up. And even if successful, they may be able to regulate companies based in the United States, but such programs would appear everywhere else, from Russia to India to China
SITE’s leadership and continued success do not stem from access to secret databases. Our research, investigations and reporting are based on open-source information — social media, forums, websites, blogs, IP addresses — which can be immensely powerful if used wisely. Government agencies, however, seem blind to this bountiful intelligence resource, and too often rely solely on classified documents and back-end access to websites.
Rather than try to create backdoors to encrypted communication services, or use the lack thereof as an excuse to intelligence failures, the U.S. government must first know how to utilize the mass amount of data it has been collecting and to improve its monitoring of jihadist activity online. A focused approach of this sort is much more likely to lead to success in the war on terrorism.
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AirandSpaceMagazine: A few minutes past 2 a.m. on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base 40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (“one-seven”) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west.
Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. A Taliban fighter shot the helicopter out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade and all aboard were killed—the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war. Those killed ranked among the world’s most highly trained and experienced commandos, including 15 men from Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, popularly called SEAL Team 6. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. In light of that raid’s success, the shootdown of Extortion 17 incited a flurry of conspiracy theories: The Taliban were tipped off; it was a trap; it was retribution for the killing. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Instead, two rigorous U. S. military investigations followed every moment of the mission to determine what went wrong on Extortion 17’s final flight.
The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. As two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, an Air Force AC-130 gunship, and a small fleet of unmanned surveillance aircraft orbited overhead, a platoon of the 75th Ranger Regiment and members of an Afghan special operations unit stormed down the rear ramps of the Chinooks and into the night. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahir’s compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin.
When the two Chinooks had first touched down in the village, a group of eight fighters armed with AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers bolted from the compound. One AH-64 crew, after identifying the men as enemy combatants, fired on them with their gunship’s 30mm cannon, killing six. The remaining two fighters ducked into a stand of trees and disappeared from the Apaches’ infrared scanners. Three hours after disembarking from the Chinooks, the assault force had secured the compound and detained a number of Tahir’s men, but they hadn’t found Tahir himself. Through sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, U.S. forces observing the mud walls and terraces of the village saw new groups of fighters gathering and maneuvering. Mission commanders, believing that Tahir was likely among one of the groups, deployed an Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) to interdict them while the Rangers held the compound. Planners then chose a new landing zone for the IRF, but it was large enough to accommodate only one Chinook.
Faced with the possibility of confronting nine or 10 Taliban fighters, planners increased the reinforcement team from 17 to 32 men, formed around the 15-man SEAL group. The IRF also included two SEALs from another team, five Navy special operations support personnel, three Air Force special tactics airmen, seven Afghan National Army commandos, a translator, and a combat assault dog. The IRF commander then made a critical decision: In order to get everyone on the ground as quickly as possible and deny the Taliban time to react, he ordered the entire force to fly in Extortion 17. Extortion 16 flew empty.
Commanders frequently request CH-47 Chinooks to insert troops. The helicopters are capacious and fast, and they can perform well in Afghanistan’s performance-degrading high altitudes and heat. U.S. Special Operations Command possesses its own specialized Chinooks—MH-47s—flown by the ultra-secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers.” The MH-47s’ modifications include inflight refueling probes, additional and upgraded sensors, more powerful engines, and more powerful defensive weapons than their conventional counterparts. Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin.
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/77/c7/77c79562-4261-45db-b818-71bfc7255547/04z_dj2105_map_inset.jpg__800x450_q85_crop_upscale.jpg The crash took place about 40 miles from Kabul, in the Taliban-thick Tangi Valley.
Extortion 17 and 16 weren’t MH-47s and their crews were not Night Stalkers. The mission was flown by conventional pilots flying unmodified CH-47Ds. “It’s a math problem. There are more operations than can be supported by the 160th at any given time,” says Major Matthew Brady, a former 160th pilot and company commander.
The pilots and crew of Extortion 17, however, had ideal experience and abilities for the mission that night. At the flight controls were David R. Carter of the Colorado Army National Guard and copilot Bryan J. Nichols, a Kansas-based Army reservist. Nichols had deployed three times to combat zones, and Carter, with more than 4,000 hours of flight time, was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the U.S. military. He was also an instructor at the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (see “Triple Threat: High, Hot, and Heavy,” Aug. 2014), where many U.S. and foreign helicopter pilots train for mountainous and high-altitude flying, often before deployment to Afghanistan.
During a previous deployment to Iraq, Carter’s unit flew dozens of similar raids, which he often planned and led, and gained a reputation for working well with special operations troops. “Our area of operation was the entire country of Iraq, and every mission was at night,” says David “Pat” Gates, a pilot with Carter’s unit , the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (2-135th), a Colorado Army National Guard unit based in Aurora, Colorado. “We were on goggles the whole time. We were supporting special operations, but not to the degree of the 160th. We didn’t do fast-rope inserts, building insertions, or anything like that.” Subsequent to their Iraq deployment, the unit flew the SEALs of Team 6 on practice raids around Fort Carson, Colorado, and during nighttime urban training in Denver, further cementing the 2-135th’s reputation with special operations units. At the time of the Juy Zarin raid, the battalion had been flying in Afghanistan for about two weeks.
Flying to the Tangi Valley for the second time, Extortion 17 and 16 took a different route, approaching from the northwest instead of the south. Six minutes from their estimated landing time, Extortion 16 broke away from the lead Chinook and orbited at a location close enough to help if needed. Extortion 17 sped alone toward the landing zone.
For helicopter crews in Afghanistan, the most dangerous times are landing and taking off. Approaching to land or having just taken off, the craft is flying slow and low, so it presents a tempting target. But even a precisely aimed shot fired from an unguided weapon by a seasoned fighter is subject to the ballistics-altering whims of atmospheric variation, subtle and undetected flaws in launcher or projectile, and uncontrollable environmental factors such as wind gusts, large temperature variations, or even particulates in the air.
“There are a lot of bullets out there that say ‘To whom it may concern,’ ”says Major Doug Glover, a U.S. Marine F/A-18D weapons and sensors operator who was a senior watch officer for the Marine air operations center in southern Afghanistan. “The RPG is not a laser. It does not fly in a straight line, and there is no way to know what exact path it will take—just a fairly good idea of its trajectory.”
Sometimes the enemy succeeds in delivering one of these “To whom it may concern” projectiles. In July 2010, an RPG-wielding fighter put a round into the tail boom of a Marine AH-1W Super Cobra, downing it and killing both pilots. In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade connected with the rear transmission of a 160th MH-47E Chinook as it attempted to come to a hover, downing it; all 16 on board were killed. In March 2002, two MH-47s were downed by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire while close to ground level. “What we saw is that if the enemy knew where you were going to attack, they would back some guys with RPGs off 500 meters or so, to shoot during an ingress,” Glover explains.
***
Now deep in the Tangi Valley, their night vision goggles showing the world around them in greenish hues, the IRF team members readied to hit the ground running as the pilots slowed Extortion 17 and descended toward the village. At 2:36 a.m., Extortion 17 requested an infrared spotlight, visible only through night vision goggles, to illuminate the landing zone. The crew of Slasher 02, the AC-130 circling above, flipped the switch on their powerful light. “Burn is on,” they radioed. Through the goggles, the landing zone shone brilliantly. Carter and Nichols continued the descent. “LZ is ice,” transmitted one of the Rangers on the ground, indicating the landing zone was free of enemy activity.
Seconds later, with the Chinook just over 100 feet off the ground and traveling at 58 mph, two or three previously unseen fighters emerged from the tower of a two-story building roughly 220 yards south of the helicopter, shouldering RPG launchers. They may have seen Extortion 17 and its landing zone through their own night vision goggles or simply aimed by sound alone. Two fired at roughly the same time. The first round sailed past the helicopter. The second slammed into one of the Chinook’s rear rotor blades and exploded, severing 10 feet of it. The torque of the spinning rotor assembly, now catastrophically imbalanced, ripped the rear pylon off the Chinook’s fuselage. The forward rotor system then tore off, stressed by the imbalance and the strain of carrying what would normally be a shared load. Less than five seconds after the RPG round hit, the helicopter spun uncontrollably, plummeting into a dry creek bed and erupting in a ball of fire that killed all on board.
The United States military continually works to improve protection for transport helicopters and their occupants, according to Glover and Brady. One of the most significant tactical evolutions of the Afghanistan conflict is the ever-heavier use of unmanned aerial systems and other airborne intelligence-gathering systems. Capable of loitering overhead for hours undetected, small fleets of unmanned craft passed imagery to mission planners before and during the raid at Juy Zarin, allowing them to recognize individual fighters, learn their habits, pinpoint where they slept, and identify the types of weapons they carried.
But U.S. forces didn’t know about every fighter during the raid, and they lost track of at least two—one of whom fired the deadly shot. Since the shootdown of Extortion 17, the military has continued to gain vital experience and equipment to enable an ever greater understanding of an enemy force, aiming to know every combatant and potential combatant and his weapon system before a raid. According to Glover, improved systems in place enable U.S. forces to monitor a target for days or even weeks prior to an operation, so they theoretically will know of even well-hidden potential RPG shooters throughout a village before transport helicopters first touch down.
The military has worked diligently to more tightly integrate gunship escorts with transport craft, according to Brady. While classification veils the specifics of these tactics, particularly for special operations raids, manned gunships can detect potential threats through a range of sensors and immediately attack if needed. Another tactic sometimes employed by gunships, according to Glover, is a show of force, in which pilots and crew fire into an empty field or stand of trees just before a transport helicopter prepares to land, using the sound of a gun alone to keep enemy heads down and fingers off triggers.
The two military investigations, one conducted by United States Central Command and one by the multi-service Joint Combat Assessment Team, pored over the details of the crash with excruciating focus and concluded that no planners or participants bore any fault regarding the circumstances leading to the shootdown of Extortion 17. Though both noted that airborne sensor coverage and closer AH-64 gunship escort should be considered in future operations, nothing could have kept the shooters from firing their RPGs that night. The Joint Combat Assessment Team report further noted that despite a robust deck of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, none identified the location from which the shooters fired prior to the helicopter downing.
The shooters’ origin remains a mystery. The two may have been those who escaped Apache cannon fire, or they may have split away from either of the groups that formed after the start of the raid. The duo may also have had no ties to Tahir or any of his suspected fighters, and attacked the helicopter on their own. Should the Apache pilots have fired into the stand of trees after the two fighters ducked out of sight? Should the Apaches, or the AC-130 overhead, have fired upon the groups of suspected Taliban that gathered in the village after the raid began?
Restrained by strict rules of engagement in force at the time, the helicopter crews could not have fired without a strong indication of hostile intent. Afghanistan has long been a counter-insurgency campaign: The United States’ strategy has been to win Afghan trust through cooperation and aid. Having studied and directly observed the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, I’ve watched commanders and individual American troops consistently lean far to the side of restraint to encourage Afghans to side with American interests long after U.S. forces have left. Because unarmed villagers, unaffiliated with the Taliban, could also have been in those trees and among the groups milling about the village, the gunships could not have fired. Following a “scorched earth” tactic may have killed the two shooters—and possibly a greater number of innocents—prior to Extortion 17’s return that night, but counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that such tactics lead to potentially far worse long-term consequences.
With a keen understanding of the propaganda value of downing Coalition helicopters, the Taliban single them out as targets. Classified reports, published by Wikileaks, teem with notes from pilots and crew of all types of military helicopters who saw RPG attacks throughout the war. According to one Army report, in the three months prior to the Juy Zarin raid, as many as 17 RPGs were fired at helicopters over Wardak and Logar provinces, a relatively small part of the country. And while all military helicopters carry countermeasures for guided missiles, nothing can interdict the dumb luck of an unguided RPG round sailing through the air. The vast majority miss. “Chance is still part of the battlefield,” says Brady. “For every one that gets lucky, there are hundreds, even thousands, that zip by you.”
“As we’ve seen a number of times, there’s a point that a lucky shot is going to get you and there is only so much you can do to mitigate it,” says Glover, the Marine aviator. “To remove the risk of rocket-propelled grenades downing helicopters in Afghanistan 100 percent, you’d have to remove the opposable thumbs of every fighting-age male in the objective area, and that’s not how we win a counter-insurgency.”
