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CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

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into national revolutionaries. 129 In 1972 the over-reaction of British troops to<br />

provocations during an illegal Civil Rights Movement march in Northern Ireland,<br />

undoubtedly had the effect of hardening republican opinion, damaging Britain’s<br />

international standing and aiding the recruiting efforts of the Provisional IRA. On the<br />

other side of the coin, rebels, insurgents and terrorists have sometimes provoked a<br />

greater back-lash than they intended by acts of particular atrocity. The Omagh bombing<br />

in 1998 seriously undermined support for the Irish republican paramilitaries both at<br />

home and abroad. In 2004 the massacre of children at a school in Beslan, Russia, did<br />

serious harm to the international sympathy for the Chechen cause.<br />

Drawing on more recent experience, Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster quotes an<br />

anonymous US Army Colonel in Baghdad in September 130 2004: ‘If I were treated like<br />

this, I’d be a terrorist!’ In conflict of this kind the otherwise neutral population can<br />

become a political battleground – their ‘hearts and minds’ an objective for both sides. It<br />

should be obvious then, that careful treatment of them becomes a strategic necessity.<br />

Equally it is a strategic necessity for the asymmetric opponent to win on this<br />

battleground. Improper conduct, whether heavy-handedness or abuse, is an opportunity<br />

to be exploited in this key campaign. We can include in this, what some<br />

commentators 131 have termed ‘lawfare’ – the attempt by asymmetric opponents to<br />

exploit the legal asymmetry by highlighting and publicising any actual or perceived<br />

infractions by us whilst himself remaining in any case unbound himself.<br />

Colin Gray, recognising the historic reality that asymmetric warfare provokes<br />

misconduct and abuse, argues that, contrary to the prevailing view, repression does<br />

work as a means of counter-insurgency:<br />

It is only fair to point out that irregular warfare almost invariably drives the<br />

regular belligerent to behave terroristically towards the civilian populace that<br />

provides, or might provide, recruits or support for the guerrillas. The irregular<br />

warrior is obliged by his relative weakness to be elusive. That structural reality<br />

about irregular warfare tempts the regular combatant – German, French,<br />

Russian, British, American, Portuguese, and others – to strike at those it can<br />

reach. Those who the regular can reach are the inhabitants of the civilian sea in<br />

which the guerrilla fighter must swim, to employ Mao Tse-tung’s famous<br />

metaphor. The winning of ‘hearts and minds’ may be a superior approach to<br />

quelling irregulars, but official, or extra-official but officially condoned, military<br />

and police terror is swifter and can be effective. The proposition that repression<br />

295

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