Reprint­ed with per­mis­sion from Alter­Net.

What happens when the aerial bombardment takes place against civilian areas where there is no sign of combatants?

The glob­al war on ter­ror — or what­ev­er it is called nowa­days — is not going well. From Afghanistan to Libya, the adver­saries of the West seem undaunt­ed by West­ern bom­bard­ment. The Tal­iban advances towards Lashkar Gar in Hel­mand Province (Afghanistan), while groups such as the Shu­ra Coun­cil of Beng­hazi Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and even ISIS hold their ground in cen­tral and east­ern Libya.

The advan­tage of the West and its allies (Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel) is its dom­i­nance of the skies. None of the groups — nei­ther the Tal­iban nor ISIS — has an air force or seri­ous ground-to-air capac­i­ty. They are at the mer­cy of the high-alti­tude bombers — includ­ing drones — that can fly over their ter­rain and hit them at will. But this aer­i­al advan­tage has a lim­it­ed abil­i­ty. It can destroy iden­ti­fi­able tar­gets — what its peo­ple on the ground or its eyes in the sky can see. This is pos­si­ble. What is less pos­si­ble is to oblit­er­ate — with­out major civil­ian casu­al­ties — the guer­ril­la fight­ers on the ground. They do not stand in for­ma­tion, wait­ing for anni­hi­la­tion from above. These fight­ers move in small groups, keep close to nat­ur­al cov­er and flit­ter in and out of civil­ian areas. To take them from the air is difficult.

When the bombers begin to cir­cle above them, the guer­ril­la armies of the Tal­iban and ISIS van­ish. This was appar­ent in 2001, when the Tal­iban, under heavy U.S. bom­bard­ment, took off their tur­bans and went home or crossed into Pak­istan. They wait­ed till the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose to raise up their guns in places where they knew they enjoyed suf­fi­cient sup­port. When the bomb­ing began again, they evap­o­rat­ed. One Afghan secu­ri­ty offi­cial told me, ​“the Tal­iban are like Jinns,” the ghost­ly crea­tures of Islam­ic mythol­o­gy. ​“They eat bones,” he said, quot­ing the Quran. It was their spec­tral aspect that inter­est­ed him. ​“We know where the Tal­iban hide,” he said, ​“but we can’t hit them. To hit them hard in some places means we’d have to oblit­er­ate entire civil­ian populations.”

Civil­ian casu­al­ties from these aer­i­al attacks come in large num­bers, but are report­ed with casu­al­ness. In the key bat­tle in north­ern Syr­ia for the town of Man­bij, the front­line drift­ed to a set of hous­es in the vil­lage of Tokkar. On July 19, West­ern aer­i­al bomb­ing against these huts killed over 100 peo­ple, with 73 bod­ies clear­ly iden­ti­fied as civil­ians (the rest were too charred to be iden­ti­fied). U.S.-backed troops — the Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces — made sig­nif­i­cant gains toward Man­bij, and would like­ly have tak­en the key town with­out heavy U.S. aer­i­al bom­bard­ment. What this bom­bard­ment has done is to sour the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion against their lib­er­a­tion from ISIS con­trol. Such key mas­sacres do lit­tle to raise the con­fi­dence of the peo­ple toward those who arrive under air cov­er that has inflict­ed such a ter­ri­ble toll against ordi­nary people.

Futil­i­ty of aer­i­al bom­bard­ment is most clear­ly appar­ent in Yemen, where the Sau­di gov­ern­ment has been hit­ting the coun­try with great feroc­i­ty since March 2015. A Pan­el of Experts assem­bled by the U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al reports that in the first six months of this year, the Sau­di coali­tion has struck civil­ian tar­gets, with one case of spe­cial­ly egre­gious vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law. In the case of a vil­lage in the south­ern Lahij province, on May 25, ​“It is almost cer­tain that the civil­ian house was the delib­er­ate tar­get of the high-explo­sive air­craft bombs.” Oth­er inci­dents remain under inves­ti­ga­tion. The Pan­el blamed the Houthi rebels for using civil­ians as human shields. What they sug­gest is that the Houthis should avoid the cov­er of civil­ian areas, stand in an open field and be anni­hi­lat­ed by supe­ri­or Sau­di air­pow­er. It is cer­tain­ly true that the stan­dards of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law insist that all com­bat­ants — despite the asym­met­ri­cal nature of the con­flict — should not endan­ger civil­ians. How­ev­er, this is a stan­dard guer­ril­la armies always resist.

What hap­pens when the aer­i­al bom­bard­ment takes place against civil­ian areas where there is no sign of com­bat­ants? On August 7, Sau­di air­craft bombed the mar­ket­place in Odhar vil­lage in the dis­trict of Nihm. There were no com­bat­ants in sight accord­ing to peo­ple on the ground. Nine civil­ians died. Forty peo­ple died when Sau­di air­craft struck a near­by mar­ket in Feb­ru­ary. No strate­gic gain came from these attacks, nei­ther for Sau­di Ara­bia nor for its prox­ies. The Saud­is and their allies lose what­ev­er shred of legit­i­ma­cy they might have had. An attempt to move a file against Sau­di Ara­bia for human­i­tar­i­an vio­la­tions in the insti­tu­tions of the U.N. has been stifled.

Much the same reac­tion meets any attempt to bring Israel and the Unit­ed States to the account for its vio­la­tions of the laws of war. An old Chi­nese car­toon from the time of the Box­er Rebel­lion has a pic­ture of an Eng­lish­man beat­ing a Chi­nese man. The cap­tion below that reads ​“Civ­i­liza­tion.” A pic­ture beside that of a Chi­nese man beat­ing an Eng­lish­man car­ries the cap­tion ​“Bar­barism.” The dou­ble stan­dard remains.

Sum­mer is the time when the Tal­iban aban­dons its shel­ter and comes out to inflict pain on the Afghan Nation­al Army and its NATO allies. All talk of the gains of the Surge are now gone. In Hel­mand Province, where the Surge had tak­en place, the Tal­iban is now close to seiz­ing urban cen­ters such as Lash­gar Gar. Once it does so, to root it out will require far more than aer­i­al bom­bard­ment. This is what the West and its allies find in Mosul (Iraq), Raqqa (Syr­ia) and Sirte (Libya) – and this is what the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment finds in Alep­po and what the armies of Gen­er­al Khal­i­fa Haf­tar find in Beng­hazi (Libya). To fight inside con­gest­ed urban areas means armies on the ground are required and that they will have to take sig­nif­i­cant casu­al­ties as they move from street to street.

To pre­vent loss of lives to their armies, the forces of the West and the Rus­sians, as well as their allies, rely upon aer­i­al bomb­ings and urban sieges. It is a tac­tic also used by its adver­saries. They might not have air­craft, but they use sui­cide bomb­ings. These are as effec­tive in break­ing morale as the bomb­ing from the sky. When the forces of Syr­i­an rebels (includ­ing the al-Qae­da backed rebels) broke through the ring around Alep­po, they formed their own siege. Their tac­tics are no bet­ter than those of their adver­saries. They fight in the bow­els of cities, break­ing the heart of society.

A few years ago, a fight­er in an al-Qae­da backed group in Syr­ia told me that the only adver­sary he respect­ed were the fight­ers from Hezbol­lah. They fought so close, he said, that ​“we could hear the chat­ter­ing of their teeth.” Much the same is report­ed of how ISIS sees the Kur­dish fight­ers. These are peo­ple who are will­ing to risk their lives to win back ter­ri­to­ry. They do not hide beneath bombers.

Per­haps this is why the West has sent back some of its Spe­cial Forces into Libya and Syr­ia, despite denials about their pres­ence in these bat­tle­fields. Pic­tures emerge of British Spe­cial Forces at al-Tanf inside Syr­ia near the Iraqi and Jor­dan­ian bor­ders. These sol­diers pro­vid­ed train­ing for the New Syr­i­an Army, one more of the ​“mod­er­ate” forces set up by the West. Their base was soon over­run by Syr­i­an troops, after the British sol­diers moved out. French sol­diers died in a heli­copter crash in Libya, sug­gest­ing their pres­ence along the Mediter­ranean coast. These are small detach­ments of fight­ers. They are there to pro­vide assis­tance to their allies. Gains even here are slim. Ter­ri­to­ry is tak­en, but hearts and minds are not won. These are lost imme­di­ate­ly when anoth­er bomb falls on a civil­ian mar­ket­place or home and kills anoth­er dozen children.

The mon­strous anger of the guns con­tin­ues. Space for a peace process des­ic­cates. The Sau­di-Yemen dis­cus­sions fell apart on Sun­day, while the Syr­i­an peace process lifts few hopes. There is no real con­ver­sa­tion toward peace in Afghanistan or Libya. Hope in aer­i­al bom­bard­ment as the pro­phy­lac­tic for peace is absurd. It has giv­en us insta­bil­i­ty and chaos. Oth­er roads have to be opened. Oth­er paths seeded.