British troops give the US lessons in peacekeepingDespite their assurances that they would show the backwards Americans how it was done they ultimately came around to doing it our way.
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
A TEAM of British Army counter-terrorist specialists has been giving America’s toughest warfighters in Iraq special lessons in the art of softly-softly peacekeeping. After a formal request from US Central Command, the team of 14 officers and senior non-commissioned officers visited all the key American divisions in Iraq to expound the British way of winning hearts and minds. The acknowledgment from the Americans that they might have something to learn from the British experience of dealing with internal security operations, like Northern Ireland, is not expected to lead to an immediate change in strategy.
Until now, the Americans, most of whom serve in heavyweight armoured divisions which fought in the conflict, have maintained their warfighting appearance, wearing helmets and flak jackets for protection.
Critics of the American approach to postwar peacekeeping in Iraq have claimed that the perceived hostile attitude of the US troops has antagonised the Iraqi people. They also point out that since the war officially ended on May 1 more than 50 American soldiers have been killed in almost daily attacks by pro-Saddam gunmen, compared with six British troops shot dead in one incident in southern Iraq in June.
The British team, now back from five weeks of instructing American officers in Iraq, tried to outline different options for dealing with the country’s internal security, described as the “non-lethal” approach. One member of the team from the Operational Training and Advisory Group (Optag), attached to the Army’s Land Command, said: “We gave advice about adopting a lower profile in internal security operations, such as trying the handle of a door before putting your boot in. It’s a different way of doing things.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Angus Loudon, 43, the second-in-command of the Optag team and a veteran of Northern Ireland, said that the object of the training courses was to pass on British “best practice” in handling patrols, vehicle checkpoints and house searches, after 35 years’ experience in Ulster, the Balkans, Afghanistan and now Iraq.
Most of the American troops in Iraq had not served on peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, Colonel Loudon said. Generally, America’s lighter forces had been deployed on such operations. But it was the armoured units, without experience in winning hearts and minds in post- conflict missions, which were deployed in Iraq.
Colonel Loudon dismissed suggestions that there was any direct link between the tough approach adopted by the Americans in Iraq and the casualty toll that they had suffered since May 1. There were many different factors involved, he said, not least that the Americans were responsible for a largely Sunni population, the same ethnic group as that of Saddam Hussein. The British were in the South, dominated by Shia communities.
During the special “softer-approach” courses, attended by about 550 American military instructors, the British team visited the 1st US Armoured Division in Baghdad, the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment in al- Ramadi, and the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul. Colonel Loudon and his fellow instructors taught how British troops in Ulster and other internal security operations carried out house searches, combining “friendliness with thoroughness”, and also urban and rural patrols, using low-level, not high-profile, tactics.
Colonel Loudon who described the British approach as “the non-use of lethal force”, said: “We were not saying the Americans had got it wrong. Every environment is different although there are common denominators . . . what we were offering was a wider choice of options.” He said that the Americans who attended the courses appeared to have found them useful:, “The US has a stronger requirement for force protection and soldiers are mandated to wear helmets and flak jackets. The British strike a different balance (soldiers started wearing berets once the conflict was over).”
Colonel Loudon said: “I know we do bang on about Northern Ireland, but our tactics in Ulster have been tweaked and adapted after our experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo, and also Afghanistan and Iraq. Obviously you can’t just take your Northern Ireland experience and drop it in Iraq.”
The team of 14 instructors included two members who took part in the war in Iraq, one serving with the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and the other with 16 Air Assault Brigade.
In a sign of growing frustration among American commanders over the continuing Iraqi attacks on US forces, Colonel David Teeples, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, said that it was virtually impossible to stop escalating booby-trap and bomb attacks on convoys. He said that about 25 hardcore Baath party officials in al-Ramadi, Falluja and Habbaniya were financing the attacks.
“We have been attacked by subversive elements and I believe that these subversive elements are young males that can be paid a lot of money and receive weapons from former regime loyalists,” he said.
Please don’t attack Britain and British forces because of the jingoism of the British press. I think that all countries media like to praise their own militaries. This is no different in the US. The British forces cited in your article weren’t there to gloat but to try and help the Americans.
“Colonel Loudon dismissed suggestions that there was any direct link between the tough approach adopted by the Americans in Iraq and the casualty toll that they had suffered since May 1. There were many different factors involved, he said, not least that the Americans were responsible for a largely Sunni population, the same ethnic group as that of Saddam Hussein. The British were in the South, dominated by Shia communities”.
US forces under Petraeus have taken on board the classic counter-insurgency doctrine of hearts and minds and minimum acceptable force. It seems to have really paid off. The US military seems to have been astoundingly flexible and adaptive these last few years.