(in Afghanistan they weren't allowed to pro-actively engage the enemy and had to wait to be shot at first).
This was the ROE for all the countries almost all the time. Only in pre-planned assualts the ROE is different.
Mandates are constricted in different ways. Being the kind of missions you want to go on, the type of gear you are allowed to bring, what weapons you can use at what time, etc.
THere's a lot more to mandate than ROE and the ROE is determined theatre-wide. In Afghanistan (as with every insurgency) the ROE is based upon international law. When you are not fighting a state, you do not have a clearly marked and uniformed enemy. So the only people you can engage are combatants. Civilians are only combatants during and only for the time they are taking part in hostilities. After that you are not allowed to engage them, only to apprehend and arrest them for terrorism/murder. Rules the U.S. breaks often and it is the basis of why Gitmo is illegal. The U.S. claims the prisoners there are POWs, but they can't be because they're not uniformed enemy combatants) So Germany's ROE was the same as ours, or the English. For lack of German mandate, Afghanistan is a bad example, they were reasonably sorted at the time. The Kurd training mission is a far better example:
- Americans/Brits: no limitations, were active on front line
- Italians: not allowed to come within 15km from front line, even for supllies, they had to make a 40km detour in logistical lines.
- Dutch: were not allowed to take heavy weapons (.50 machine guns, anti-armour weapons) because of the training nature of the mission, even though this was request by mission commander.
- Germans: were not allowed to leave their compound on the airport. They served only a training purpose there and deplpyed no other actions where every other nation did.
- French: did whatever they wanted, but chose not to go to the front too much.
We are Not Back in fucking Vietnam where you Just Napalm the Shit Out of a Village because you suspect enemys in there.
False, this actually did happen, just not with napalm.
And not to bitch too much, it's an insurgency, not a civil war.