Rules of Engagement of Self Defense Forces of Japan	No.617 January 13, 2009
		It was disclosed that the Air Self Defense Forces of Japan (ASDF), which had committed in the transport operations in Iraq till last December, had their own rules of engagement (ROE). Although they were restricted to act only within the so-called ‘no-combat zone’ as the Japanese law requires, the staff supposed a combat situation. The ROE specify procedures of arms usage in the state of combat, allowing ASDF soldiers to use weapons. The government at the moment is to legislate for military missions abroad on the eternal basis instead of enacting a tentative law and it works on a bill to crack down acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia. The New Socialist Party severely condemns the Aso government for its policies to destroy Article Nine of Constitution. SELF DEFENSE FORCES GO ON OVERSEAS OPERATIONS AND USE WEAPONS The government and the Defense Ministry, calling the ROE ‘Norms for Troops’ Actions’, intentionally blurs the facts. People do not understand to what actions the norms refer. The phrase ‘engagement’ means a combat. The authorities as a rule carefully avoid using a direct expression to cheat people, considering that the wording conceals a fact of breaching Constitution. A point to be stressed here is that the ASDF internal rules have actually opened a way to use weapons, let alone authorizing missions abroad. The ministry flatly defies Article Nine which prohibits ‘use of weapons as a means to settle international conflicts’ and its de facto concept of belligerency. Rules Compiled for Possible Combats Reportedly, the ROE which ASDF implemented in the operations in Iraq contain an article to allow troops to use weapons in a critical situation: if a C-130 transport aircraft should make an emergency landing and ‘aircraft should be surrounded by enemies’ and ‘looted’, soldiers and aircraft should face dangers with no option but to break through the siege. In the case of pillage, troops should be allowed to use weapons when they judge the situation be dangerous, even if the attackers are not armed. According to a media report, former Chief of Staff of ASDF Yoshida told it was ‘meaningless for pilots who control aircraft to distinguish a combat zone from those are not’. Deceptions are rampant around: the Special Law on Iraq stipulates that SDF could be deployed only in the no-combat zone, or then-prime minister Koizumi made a remark in the Diet that ‘such an area where Japan’s SDF are deployed is a no-combat zone’. A trick was exposed by the very personnel of Ministry of Defense and the Self Defense Forces. In addition, the ROE are not openly informed except to the minister. A civilian control is a verbal game. The fact that ASDF implemented their ROE in Iraq means that the maritime or ground SDF will employ the similar rules. More Attempts to Undermine Article Nine The coalition government and the Liberal Democratic Party work on a bill for overseas military operations on the eternal basis: it incorporates a clause that admits use of weapons to ‘crack down mobs’ and to ‘guard important persons’. As for anti-piracy policies in Somalia, the ruling bloc seeks both special and general laws in terms of sending SDF. At the moment a maritime patrol mission of the SDF is limited to ‘a circumstance in which a Japanese ship or citizen is attacked’, but the government intends to broaden the sphere beyond this restriction to patrolling and rescuing a foreign vessel and assisting a foreign warship in combat. It discusses relevant anti-piracy ROE. According to the recent UN Security Council resolution on the act of piracy in Somalia, it permits combat duties in its territorial air and water as well as inside the continental territory to control pirates. The installed government of Somalia, one of the warring parties, is backed by the United States which has once committed in the civil conflict but ended in failure. Media say that pirates’ bases are located in the region over which the provisional government controls, but from there the UN facilities are attacked. ‘Piracy’ is a resource to fund the civil wars of armed groups or an income on which poor fishermen depend for pure survival. The ROE issue is a device to dismantle the constitution principles so as to deploy SDF abroad and arm them to fight in combat, riding on the Big Powers’ scheme to retain interests in the military context.