The daily activity logs of Ground Self-Defense Force personnel deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2006 — disclosed last Monday after it was falsely claimed they were lost— indicate that the troops carried out their humanitarian mission in extremely tense conditions, with repeated references to "fighting" taking place even in what the government called a "noncombat zone." The question that must be asked is whether these vital records have been — or will be — used as a teaching tool for subsequent SDF missions or in formulating policy for such activities.
The deployment to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion was the SDF's first overseas mission in a country where conflict was taking place. Under one-off special legislation enacted for the mission in 2003, a total of some 5,500 GSDF personnel were dispatched to the southern Iraq city of Samawah to engage in reconstruction aid such as building schools and other infrastructure, supplying water, providing medical guidance and so on. Although fighting was still taking place in various parts of the country after the end of the initial large-scale military operation, no SDF troops were killed or injured during the mission.
The government at that time said the GSDF members were being sent to "noncombat" areas of the war-torn country, as stipulated by the legislation that was crafted under the constitutional ban on the use of force overseas. It has become known, however, that the GSDF camp in Samawah faced repeated mortar and rocket attacks. The nearly 15,000 pages of Iraq mission logs, which covered 435 days, also mention fighting taking place between various forces in the areas where the Japanese personnel were operating as they kept records of the local security situation.