2009-04-11

Soldiers as street fighters

“I never imagined that one day I would train in a camp which my former enemies had run,” Colonel Pierre Esnault said with a smile. “The Wall is well and truly down.” At that moment, November 2007, the colonel was in command of the French army’s first infantry brigade from Epinal taking part in exercises at Altengrabow, the former Soviet base some 60 km south of Berlin, which also served as a prisoner-of-war camp during the second world war. Today abandoned to exuberant vegetation, its memorials mark the victorious march of the Red Army on the German capital. This camp, maintained by the Bundeswehr, is the sole site in Europe capable of staging a massive urban warfare exercise – thanks to its endless rows of disused barracks stretching over almost 8 sq km.

Berliners – who hadn’t seen occupying troops since the early 1990s – were well warned about the event but were still astounded by such a huge influx of French soldiers: 1,500 men, 450 vehicles including 100 armoured cars, dozens of helicopters and aircraft, special forces, military intelligence, even dog handlers, were lifted 900 km from their base in eastern France for three weeks to play out a “Battle of Rosenkrug”, simulating the recapture of an important nearby town.

Around France itself urban war games are becoming more frequent, and more realistic. During April 2008, some 800 soldiers with 200 armoured vehicles were deployed in the town of Sedan for a series of logistical manoeuvres focused on treating the wounded, protecting convoys and evacuating French nationals. These, according to the defence ministry, were created to “replicate current military involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast and Lebanon”.

The following month “Anvil 08”, held as part of Nato’s rapid reaction force training, involved 1,500 men and four French navy warships around the beaches and town of Fréjus to “secure and evacuate a populace faced with hostile paramilitary groups and terrorists”. In 2007, the 11th parachute brigade led a large-scale urban combat exercise in the centre of Cahors, involving 1,200 troops and substantial air support.

Since 2005, under the banner of Action in Urban Zones (AUR), two large French army brigades have been following specific orders to “strengthen their ability to engage in urban areas, no matter how intense the fighting, acting in a humanitarian way even when faced with an enemy whose weaponry and methods are continually changing”. The directive was extended last year to include every army brigade, tasked with familiarising themselves with warfare in “inhabited zones”.

Demography is important: the population of towns and cities has multiplied five times since 1900. Worldwide, there are over 280 conurbations with more than a million people, 26 of which now count over seven million souls. By 2025, two-thirds of the planet’s population will be urban, and some say 85% will be by 2050. Large cities hold the levers of power – political, economic, social, cultural. As a communications crossroads (transport, telecoms, media), they are society’s echo chamber.

Twentieth-century world wars, followed by East-West hostilities, produced armies designed to fight in open countryside over vast tracts, with fronts formed by advancing or retreating infantry battalions supported by tanks, artillery and air strikes. “During the 45 years following Germany’s 1918 surrender,” says General Yves Jacops, former head of the Infantry Technical College at Montpellier, “generations of soldiers trained for all-out war – Warsaw Pact countries pitted against the West. Urban warfare was virtually unknown. In the infantry rules of engagement this was euphemistically called ‘fighting in places’” (1).

When war became urban – Berlin, 1945, or more recently in Grozny in Chechnya – the impact of heavy arms left cities and people ravaged. “We won’t fight the Battle of Stalingrad again!” an imaginary General Urban states in an army HQ video, playing the role of an AUR counsellor. “It’s no longer acceptable to raze places to the ground as in 1945.”

According to another officer, the deal has changed. “New methods must minimise collateral damage. The army gets involved primarily to calm things down but passes the baton to the police and civil authorities as soon as practicable. We’re not interested in destroying what will have to be rebuilt the next day.”

A briefing paper by the Strategic Research Foundation (2) notes: “During World War Two whole cities like London and Dresden were bombed; in Vietnam it was city neighbourhoods; today in Iraq or the Palestinian territories attacks focus on a single building, even a window on a certain floor of that building” (3).

In contrast to large theatres of war fought across national frontiers or whole regions, urban space is a multi-dimensional labyrinth: underground cellars, shafts, sewers, car parks, metros, subterranean tracks; streets, squares, dead-ends; and buildings of all shapes and sizes (historic centres, business complexes, skyscrapers). Such confusion, particularly when – as often these days – there is some support from residents, hands the advantage to adversaries technically less strong but able to use cities as a protective cloak.
Victims who may be activists

In this new battlefield, the urban population comprises victims who may also be activists – turn by turn, separately or simultaneously. “Everywhere is a potential threat,” stresses Col Franck Nicol. “Each street, each neighbourhood can become a mini theatre of operation. Combat units are often isolated or broken up. The enemy is all around, whatever the weapons used. You must somehow pinpoint the local inhabitants who are involved, active and dangerous – and those who aren’t. It’s a very delicate process. And all the time you are in a media spotlight.”

Col Pascal Langard, who leads the French battalion at the heart of KFOR, the Kosovo peacekeeping force, said – after a series of incidents at Mitrovica in March 2008 (4) – that “fighting in the midst of a civilian population is one of the most difficult challenges because all-out destruction is not an option”. Like many others, he underlines “the need to master violence”, a complex task made more difficult because a single crowd of protestors could include people with quite different motives, roles and capability; situations can evolve rapidly, both in terms of place and time. These scenarios demand “great control, perfect coordination and complete faith in one’s subordinates” (5).

Containing violence, particularly in serious incidents verging on guerrilla warfare, calls for direct action, mostly at the point of contact; with surgical precision, soldiers look for a target. For Major Charles Arminjon, this type of combat demands “powerful intellectual concentration”, each unit finding its own methods and solutions, often amid general chaos.

“It’s a case of taking control by ensuring that everybody understands each other across disciplines down to the lowest ranks,” says Col Vincent Pons, commander of the 27th mountain infantry brigade, “and by supplying armoured protection for all.”

Col Didier Leurs, AUR’s coordinator since 2007, adds that “urban warfare combines all our efforts and systems”. Action, often taken at very short notice with any number of logistical problems, demands 10 times more munition supplies than in the open countryside, together with sufficient armoured vehicles to provide support and protection. Above all, this means troops under constant training: “Within six months you can easily forget the correct reflexes and procedures,” adds an instructor at the Centre for Action Training in Urban Zones (Catuz).

At staff HQ there’s a move to measure this 
new form of combat against the American experience in Baghdad; the British in Basra; the Russians in Grozny during the 1990s; European Union forces at Pristina and Metrovica, in Kosovo; and Israel faced with Palestinian insurrection. There remain far-off memories of the 1957 Battle of Algiers, when French paras commanded by Col Marcel Bigeard fought the FLN hand-to-hand in the kasbah.
The army was out of its depth

At the French defence ministry the sequence of events known as “Hotel Ivoire”, at Abidjan in Ivory Coast during November 2004, has been minutely dissected. Following bombardment of the French Licorne peacekeeping force’s barracks at Bouaké and the destruction, on the French government’s order, of the small Ivory Coast air force, heavily armed French soldiers found themselves outnumbered, facing a hostile crowd. Riot control was the context. “That day the army was out of its depth,” an officer recalls. to the control shown by units stationed in front of the hotel there was a minimum of casualties (6). But it could have developed into a mass lynching. When you don’t have specialised riot forces at your call there should at least be infantry units trained to maintain order and equipped for the job” (using non-lethal weapons).

Counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland since the late 1960s and peacekeeping in the Balkans during the 1990s gave British soldiers “useful reference points” for Afghanistan and Iraq. In France, infantry practice has been rethought. Action is now coordinated – each infantryman wears protective gear, has a radio and night vision equipment (7). New-generation arms, previously reserved for security forces, are appearing in infantry units. “Feline”, the so-called “future infantryman”, will be better adapted to urban combat than previous versions.

Faced with rockets and “improvised explosive devices” – the current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly in urban areas – standard precautions to minimise harm have been adopted and detection devices reinforced. Some vehicles with front and light armour now have panoramic vision, extra armour and remote-controlled guns to limit the exposure of soldiers on vehicle roofs. The use of equipment dating back to the cold war – like the heavy Leclerc 56-tonne tank – has also been reviewed, as well as air support from helicopters and, increasingly, unmanned drones.

The US army, with more than 20 interventions in urban or near-urban theatres during the past 30 years, did not work out a strategy for such action until after the disastrous Mogadishu operation of 1993 (9). Techniques developed for dispersed but interconnected combat groups, localised action, armed drones and so on were put to the test in the 2002 Millennium Dragon exercise in California, then subsequently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using these new tactics, the US Marines claim to have substantially reduced losses (10).

The Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk, Louisiana, commissioned in 1993, is equipped for inter-arms training in an urban setting stretching over 56 sq km, which some experts still consider “tiny compared with what real action involves”. If the JRTC includes non-combatants in its training programme, “this innovation only scratches the surface of future operational complexities”, according to a former lieutenant-colonel (11).

The National Training Centre at Fort Irwin, California, the world’s most extensive training installation for ground forces, has “thousands of square miles of challenges” (12) where the basics of classic fighting in open country are taught. But, says this officer, it is “almost devoid of population” and takes no account of “refugees, the media, curfews, crowd control, community administration, street gangs, schools, armed citizens, illness, massive losses, police, cultural sites, billions of dollars’ worth of property, infrastructure or religion”. All these, increasingly, are part of urban warfare. “Tomorrow’s objective won’t be a hilltop,” he says. “It will be found in the middle of a building surrounded by non-combatants.”

France has 20 or so sites used for manoeuvres, firing ranges or war games: in recent years 400 army units have learnt the principles of urban combat, taking a maximum of one company (130-160 men) at a time. Staff HQ stresses the progress of its urban training centre, opened at Sissone (Aisne) in 2006: the centre is being equipped to train a whole regiment simultaneously in highly realistic conditions.

From 2011 a purpose-built set-up for urban training will allow a permanent “enemy” force the size of a company to be deployed. An artificial town of 3,000 inhabitants will reproduce the whole gamut of spatial conditions in which fighters must operate. For Col Leurs, Catuz will then be the first establishment of its kind in Europe, working within a “multinational, inter-army cooperation framework, which in the long run brings together ministry departments, international organisations and NGOs”.

But organisers admit it’s proving difficult to create the all-essential menace: they not only have to set out a credible scenario and environment but to sprinkle it with people capable of representing the enemy – soldiers, reservists or just plain civilians. To animate the “players”, the simulation must include all the possible actors. Real or imaginary “journalists” can be injected into the action. That’s how soldiers learn the best ways to react when faced with witnesses, how to cope with a press party, how to reply (or not to reply) to questions. Soldiers are also taught the rudiments of conflict law and, most importantly, how to interpret the rules of engagement. Faced with very different levels of strife in the same town, a soldier might have the right to open fire on one side of the street but not on the other.

Since the fusillade outside the Hotel Ivoire the French army has systematically deployed an infantry company specialising in crowd control for its overseas operations. This is “the military version of maintaining order”, suggests the Secret Défense website (13). Unlike gendarmes – for whom an armed force facing a crowd represents the top end of their training – soldiers put maintaining law and order at the bottom of their role, a stopgap to limit escalation of violence, and are ready to take a more aggressive stand – with the help if needed of armoured vehicles, bulldozers, marksmen and dogs.

The French army publication Fantassins, introducing a dossier on crowd control, asks if “this kind of action in fact causes new problems – inciting unarmed civilians to confront force with impunity as inhibitions about using arms lead to risks from terrorist actions” (14). Anti-riot police, given soldier status yet effectively an intermediary between police and army – and increasingly involved in missions outside France – believe they are better equipped to practise controlled force and to handle non-lethal weapons (15).

Some experts, fearing a mix of professions, remind soldiers not to forget their trade, while the decision to attach the venerable Gendarmerie Nationale to the interior ministry from this January illustrates current confusion about defence and security. It was in September 2001 that the first combined force of the French army started training for urban conflict. This was a coincidence, but also a symbol of things to come.