The practice of human shielding affords conflict parties significant tactical advantages in warfare, deterring the attacking party from targeting military objectives or compelling that party to breach its obligations under international humanitarian law at a high political price. These advantages were quickly recognized and leveraged by the Islamic State (IS) in its fight against the U.S.-led Anti-IS coalition in west Mosul and Raqqa. As IS fighters lost territory, civilians were forced to serve as human shields in the remaining areas under occupation. IS repeatedly laced civilian infrastructure with explosives, mined exit routes to prevent civilians from leaving conflict areas, and positioned fighters in densely populated areas to reduce the overall use of coalition strikes and artillery. While these human shielding tactics created a difficult operational environment for the coalition forces’ campaign, the coalition did not alter its strike assessments despite multiple rounds of hostilities and high civilian casualty rates.

This Note examines whether the U.S.-led coalition violated its legal obligation to take all feasible precautions in attack by failing to adapt its target selection and engagement tactics to changing circumstances, specifically IS’s use of civilians as human shields. Discussion will focus predominantly on the precautions relating to the verification of non-civilian objectives and the methods and means of attack. The examination proceeds in four parts, briefly reviewing the use of human shields as a tactical tool in asymmetric conflict, the legal frame-work, and the compliance of the U.S.-led coalition to the feasible precautions requirement within its operations in west Mosul and Raqqa. Ultimately, it concludes that while feasibility is a flexible standard that accommodates different operational realities, it does not obviate the need for coalition forces to adapt precautions to lessons learned from past experience.

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