Defining conflict and responsibilities

Dodging bullets and makeshift explosive devices will seem child’s play to coalition troops and their political masters, compared to the damage they are doing to their own prestige and standing.

These undefined conflicts, a ‘war on terror’, which apparently is not a war is in serious danger of increasing casualties from the friendly fire of semantics and spin.

The military elite and their masters proudly trot out the ‘rules of engagement’, but it is becoming obvious that these instruments are more window dressing than hard fact.

The fact seems to be that the rules and definitions of these ‘non-wars’ are being made up on the trot, with consequent ‘outrages’ rebounding badly on the defenders of what is apparently good and noble about our great cause. The following report from the Sydney Morning Herald gives a glimpse of this situation:

DETAINEES captured by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan are not being given prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions, because the Federal Government says there has been no declaration of war and it is not an armed conflict between nation states.

This means that prisoners have no right to a fair trial and no right to be released at the end of the hostilities.

The situation, confirmed by Defence this week, has been criticised by an international law expert because it sets a bad precedent and means that in future conflicts, Australian troops who are taken prisoner might lose the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

Devika Hovell, the director of the international law project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, says: "The problem with refusing to apply the law in the short term is that you lose its protection in the long term."

Very detailed POW provisions which were set out in the Geneva Conventions after World War II, and which Hovell said were designed to inject a "modicum of humanity into warfare", will not be applied.

These provisions include the right of prisoners not to be interrogated, other than to give their name and rank, and the right not to be punished for mere participation in hostilities.

The situation is the same with Canadian troops in Afghanistan, who have been told the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of POWs do not apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured on the battlefield.

These non-wars are having devastating effects on the troops in the front line. A recent British finding says that close to 60 military personnel are reporting severe psychological stress every month. That represents an attrition rate of nearly 10% of the British troops.

In part that stress must come back to poorly defined actions which no amount of spin or semantics can ameliorate.

These are the same conditions which are encouraging excesses among the US forces, from prisoner abuse to sick parodies and outright murder.

It is time for proper considered definitions to replace the ad hoc, politically motivated spin, which is guaranteed to simply bounce back on the US led coalition again and again.

If it is not war, what is it? What are acceptable rules of behaviour, and who will set them? It seems the first real casualty of these non-wars in not simply the truth but the trust that we really did belong to honest, reliable societies.