November 21, 2004
Ivory Coast Footage
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Little Green Footballs is hosting footage which apparently shows French troops opening fire on unarmed civilians in Ivory Coast. I’ve watched the footage and I’m going to give the French peacekeeping forces the benefit of the doubt.
The footage cuts away when the shooting begins, the cameraman clearly running for his life swings his viewfinder around catching nothing but blurry colours. All we hear is the cackle of automatic weapons fire and the screams of people wounded, killed and scared for their lives.
However if you listen to the fire there are at least 3 calibers of weapons fired. The snap of an AK-47 is heard amongst them (I may not be right on this but if you’ve heard an AK fire from various pieces of footage you generally don’t forget the sound). I may be wrong but somehow I don’t believe that’s the standard issue rifle for French troops, they were probably engaging a valid target.
Secondly the French military, although not as capable as British and American forces who enjoy superior training, retain decent fire discipline. I’d say that the first sporadic gunshots heard are from AK 47s fired at the peacekeeping forces and that the second set - a single sustained shout of massed automatic fire - comes from the barrels of French guns.
Although British drills for example, would normally order a rate of fire at about 1 round every 6 seconds (the combined fire of one squad is therefore sufficient to keep most targets pinned) it doesn’t mean that an SA-80 is never fired on full auto (for reasons that bewilder my friends in the RAF the single shot fire mode is called ‘rapid-fire’ on an SA-80). The French troops probably exercised all the control of a disciplined fighting force, even if they fired full automatic.
Thirdly, as much as I malign the spurious militaries of France and Germany, French troops wouldn’t fire without provocation, just like US and British armed forces.
In my opinion the actions of the marine in Fallujah followed a strict R.O.E. - there were other wounded insurgents in that footage who were vocal yet the marines didn’t fire on them, the reason the marine shot the wounded militant was probably for fear of encountering exactly what US have been encountering all year, a presumed-dead fighter triggering an explosive device or swinging round to spray the room with automatic weapons fire.
I give the same benefit of the doubt to the marine’s French counterpart. If the French troops did fire on unarmed civilians then there is no comparison between their actions and the marine’s in Fallujah, however there just as here I feel too much is read into footage which cannot by itself tell the whole truth.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at November 21, 2004 08:30 PM | TrackBack