Radu,nu as lua foarte in serios ce spun baietii la o bere.Cine are kung-fu mai bun e discutie gen suporteri de fotbal.Australienii fiind mai de la tara e normal sa se uite de sus la englezi,mai oraseni.Pe urma e raca intre ei si neo-zeelandezi,etc...
Pana una alta englezii au trimis forte expeditionare de la nivel brigada in sus.Au avut si in Irak si in A-stan tarlaua lor.Australienii,exceptand FOS,au cam spalat blidele prin baze.
Nu zic ca nu exagerau. Dar erau atat de vehementi incat aproape ca 'maturau' cu tine daca aveai alta parere. A intrat acolo si un englez cu care am reusit sa ma inteleg civilizat. Au sarit si pe el fara mila. Spre deosebire de mine, insa, englezul avea dezinvoltura celui nascut in tara care a dat limba pe care 'aussies' o stalcesc un pic (macar ca sonoritate).
Nu erau prosti deloc, dar manifestau un exclusivism agresiv si uneori chiar sovinism care amintea ca "White Australia" nu e o poveste atat de veche. Cea mai surprinzatoare opinie mi s-a parut a unuia dintre membrii cei mai experimentati si mai echilibrati ai forumului. Acesta sustinea teza inferioritatii (intelectuale !) nepalezilor gurkha doar pe baza aproximativei stapaniri a limbii engleze de catre acestia. Nu sunt deloc adeptul lui political corectness, dar ceea ce spunea el acolo mi s-a parut nu doar scandalos, dar si o dovada de obtuzitate.
Independent, insa, de asta, am simtit ca le 'mirosea' ca eu, un strain, un nonanglo-saxon, un european, un civil, indrazneam sa intru in discutie cu ei. E drept ca am comis si erori, dar reactia lor mi s-a parut excesiv de caustica. Pe mail-ul privat, englezul mi-a spus ca nu are rost sa vorbesc cu ei, pentru ca nu sunt oameni deschisi. Repet, am citit opinii scrise de membrii acestui forum (mai toti militari activi sau in retragere) si am aflat lucruri instructive si interesante. Observam, insa, ca si fata de interlocutorii compatrioti de pe forum aveau uneori un sarcasm destul de pronuntat, chiar daca nu la fel cu cel adresat mie, outsider-ul.
Englezul si-a luat-o si el, dar nu parea sa ii pese prea tare. Nu le ramanea dator cu riposta, care nu era, insa, la fel de abraziva ca a lor. In cea mai mare parte erau gradati si subofiteri si se 'dadeau' urat la oricine afirma ca este ofiter. Englezul, de exemplu. Aveau respect (inteleg de ce) doar pentru ofiterii care anterior ADFA servisera la trupa.
Altfel a fost cand am intrat pe un site militar englezesc. Ma interesa tema Parachute Regiment, si in special, Pathfinder Platoon, elita lor inainte de aparitia Special Forces Support Group. Oarecum circumspect la inceput, unul dintre membri m-a intrebat de ce sunt atat de interesat de un asemenea subiect. I-am raspuns de ce (hobby, etc.), dupa care, plin de bunavointa (era un fost Pathfinder), mi-a raspuns la intrebari asa cum s-a priceput mai bine. M-a intrebat si el despre trupele de parasutism de la noi si i-am raspuns si eu ce stiam atunci.
A fost surprins sa afle ca avem o traditie atat de veche si de bogata in materie de parasutism si a fost impresionat si de efectivele de militari din aceasta categorie de arme pe care le detineam atunci. I-am spus ca, spre deosebire de regimentul lor de parasutism, unitatile de parasutism de la noi au avut si misiuni rezervate unitatilor de operatii speciale, insa fara a intra in detalii (oricum, nu prea cunosteam nici eu).
A(m) fost la Boar's head,au venit si ei la CENZUB...englezii sunt tipi valabiliseriosi si care au o atitudine foarte...gentlemen-easca fata de armata. Momentan,marina australiana are mare nevoie de specialisti,si iau englezi care fac parte din aia 17.000 care (la ei) trebuie sa plece.
Textele astea de forumuri cu "noi,pe noi,ai nostri" sunt valabile pe internet. În practica,chiar si cea mai buna armata din lume e fericita sa aiba aproape un NOSA sau un marksman britani,un genist elvetian,etc.
Radu,nu stiu chestiunea in modul concret,pt. ca nu am fost eu in locul tau.Dar in toate armatele din toate vremile,hobby-ul preferat de subofiteri si trupa a fost sa zica de ofiteri in cele mai colorate moduri posibile. Gurkhas si limba nu sunt o problema de ieri ,de azi.Autralianul pana la un punct pare sa fi avut dreptate,pt. ca degeaba ai un IQ de 140 daca nu pricepi ce vor ceilalti de la tine din cauza barierei lingvistice.Asa ca vei actiona ''prosteste''.Boribum chiar discuta ceva asemanator la un moment dat pe topicul legiunii,doar ca el o spunea un pic mai elegant.
White Australia,Apartheid si alte idei din astea retrograde poate ar merita o discutie in context.Dracul nu-i chiar asa negru(pun intended ) cum eram inclinat sa cred mai in tinerete.E doar off-topic
Brigadier Tony Hunter-Choat Brigadier Tony Hunter-Choat, who has died aged 76, was a special forces soldier who served with the SAS; his remarkable military career began, however, with the French Foreign Legion, with which he was three times decorated and took part in a coup to unseat Charles de Gaulle.
6:22PM BST 23 Apr 2012 Anthony Hunter-Choat was born on January 12 1936 in Purley, south London, the son of Frederick, who worked in insurance, and Iris, a schoolteacher. The family would later move to Ascot. Tony was educated at Dulwich College and then Kingston College of Art, where he trained as an architect. On holidays he hitchhiked around Europe, developing a taste for travel and an affinity for languages. In March 1957, having decided that architecture was not for him, he decided to indulge his thirst for adventure and made his way to Paris to enlist in the Foreign Legion. He was pursued by his mother, keen to get her errant son back to his studies, but by the time she caught up with him he had signed up. Hunter-Choat was sent for basic training to Algeria, then in the throes of increasing anti-colonialist insurrection, and volunteered to complete the extra training necessary to become a paratrooper. He was duly posted, on October 15, to the 1st Battalion, Régiment Etranger de Parachutistes (1e REP), with which he would be involved in continuous operations for almost five years. By the late 1950s the Algerian War of Independence had become a high-intensity conflict fought on a wide scale, and required the presence on the ground of 400,000 French and Colonial troops to maintain a semblance of order. Hunter-Choat and his comrades were involved in hundreds of operations, and suffered and inflicted considerable casualties. In February 1958, as a young machine-gunner, he took part in the battle of Fedj Zezoua, in the woods east of Guelma, in the north-east of the country. Two armed units of the rebel Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) were dug in on a hillside. The legionnaires began their attack at 7am and met stiff resistance, but after being dropped by helicopter (balancing precariously on a cliffside) in the midst of the FLN positions, they overwhelmed the enemy. Hunter-Choat was awarded the Cross of Valour – the first of three. He would also be awarded the Médaille Militaire. Less than two weeks later he was wounded as the 1e REP pursued FLN groups through the wooded territory close to the border with Tunisia. It was an odd fact of life in the Legion that one in four of his NCOs was German, and many had fought on the Russian Front. Hunter-Choat recalled that their homes had become marooned behind the Iron Curtain and that, to his brothers-in-arms named Adolf, Rolf, Hans or Karl, the Legion had “become their country”. Some of them were former SS troops and were, Hunter-Choat noted, “superb soldiers and great trainers of men”. “They would expose themselves to danger in order to bring on the young soldiers,” he said. After recovering from his wounds he was repeatedly involved in intense fighting against the FLN. But as the tide of war turned, and it became clear that Paris was preparing to negotiate Algeria’s independence, Hunter-Choat found himself fighting his own side. The Algiers putsch, as it became known, was a coup launched by four retired French generals to oust De Gaulle and seize control first of Algeria, then of Paris. Hélie de Saint Marc, commander of the 1e REP, agreed to take part, and, on the night of April 21/22 1961, Hunter-Choat was part of the plotters’ force which occupied key locations in Algiers. On April 22 the message was broadcast throughout Algeria: “The army has seized control.” The following day, however, de Gaulle appeared on television, wearing his uniform of 1940, and called for soldiers to back him. As his message was retransmitted through barracks, support for the coup collapsed. The 1e REP was disbanded; as its men were marched out of camp they sang Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. Shortly afterwards Hunter-Choat’s five-year term of service expired and he returned home. His father encouraged him to join the British Army, but his first application for a short service commission, in March 1962, was rejected by the War Office as he “exceeds the age limit for a commission under any existing procedures”. By April a second letter, written by his father, elicited a more positive response: “It has been agreed that you may be accepted, as a special case, for consideration.” After passing out top of his course at Mons officer cadet school he was commissioned into the 7th Gurkha Rifles (Duke of Edinburgh’s Own) and posted to Malaya. From there, in early 1963, he was sent to Brunei and on to Sarawak and Borneo, where he fought in what became known as the Indonesian Confrontation . The scale and ferocity of this war was considerably lower than Algeria, but the hostility of the climate and jungle environment made for hard soldiering. Jungle patrols often lasted several weeks and contact with the enemy, though infrequent, was frequently a vicious affair. While there Hunter-Choat took part in cross-border raids into Indonesia (officially denied at the time) as well as coastal raids. He was now keen to convert to a regular commission. Told that he was too old to do so in the infantry, he discovered that the Royal Artillery age limit was higher, and joined in early 1964. Upon transfer, he remained in Borneo, where he served as a forward observation officer until 1966, when he returned to Britain. Hunter-Choat attended staff college at Camberley in 1969-70, then served in 45 Regt RA before becoming a battery commander and second-in-command of 3 Royal Horse Artillery in Hong Kong. Between 1975 and 1977 he was on the directing staff of the junior division of the staff college at Warminster and then, unusually for an officer without a British special forces background, was offered command of 23 Special Air Service Regiment, a territorial unit. His accomplishments there were so highly regarded that he remained with special forces, in a variety of command and staff roles, for the rest of his Army career. He commanded 23 SAS until 1983, though the sensitivity of his work during this period means that, to this day, few details of his service can be published. From 1983 to 1986 he was a senior staff officer at Nato headquarters and a special forces adviser to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. His last post was a personal liaison between the Commander-in-Chief of BAOR and his American equivalent. He was appointed OBE. After his retirement from the Army in the rank of colonel he immediately became commander of the Sultan of Oman’s special forces in the rank of brigadier. He was responsible for increasing numbers in the Sultan’s special forces from under 1,000 to more than 2,000, and for improving their equipment and capability. In 1995 he was presented with the Omani Order of Achievement by Sultan Qaboos. He retired from the Sultan’s service in 1997, and in 1998-99 he helped verify the crumbling ceasefire in Kosovo, before becoming head of security for the Aga Khan. This involved helping to create a base for the Aga Khan, famous for his interest in the Turf, at the celebrated racing town of Chantilly, France. After the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hunter-Choat became head of security for the Program Management Office (PMO), which was involved in overseeing the distribution of billions of dollars of reconstruction funds to projects throughout the country. There he briefly became embroiled in controversy after the PMO awarded a contract worth $293 million to Aegis, a private security company headed by Tim Spicer. According to Vanity Fair, Hunter-Choat and Spicer had known each other for years. DynCorp, a rival to Aegis, lodged a protest with the US Congress, but this was rejected, and there was no suggestion that Hunter-Choat had behaved improperly. Hunter-Choat was later responsible for the security plans for US Aid in Afghanistan. He was also an accomplished lecturer on leadership and security issues. Hunter-Choat was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London. He was a former president and secretary general of the British branch of the Foreign Legion Association and also a keen Freemason. He was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 2001 and promoted Commander in 2011. Tony Hunter-Choat was regarded by his friends and comrades as an outstanding soldier and leader. He married, first, in 1964, Maureen McCabe. The marriage was dissolved, and he married secondly, in 1982, Linda Wood. He is survived by his wife and their son and two daughters, as well as by two daughters of his first marriage. Brigadier Tony Hunter-Choat, born January 12 1936, died April 12 2012
Corespondenta trimisa zilele trecute din Afganistan de 'Andy McNab' (fost SAS)pentru Financial Times:
A personal dispatch from Afghanistan
By Andy McNab Advised by the British, the Afghan National Army is now leading missions against the Taliban
I’m lying in the dust using a mud wall as cover and overlooking a wide valley in Helmand province, Afghanistan. In front of me, the Afghan National Army is returning fire as the Taliban try to halt their advance south: it is a massive demonstration of firepower. The incoming attack stops immediately, meaning the Taliban fighters are either dead or running for cover. I am taking part in Operation Now Roz (from “nowruz”, meaning “new year” in Dari) the largest, most dangerous and most complex operation the nascent Afghan National Army (ANA) has ever conducted. The action involves more than 1,000 ANA and Afghan police, working together with 1,000 British soldiers in the Gereshk area of Helmand province. The Yakchal valley stretching out before us is the nexus of Taliban activity in Helmand. Many of the Taliban’s IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are made here, and insurgent fighters plan their operations in the valley before heading out to other parts of the province. The aim of the ANA’s mission is, quite simply, to clear the Taliban out of the Yakchal. The ANA is fighting under the watchful eyes of UK soldiers, who have spent the past six months advising them on how to become an army. It is a key test to determine the Afghans’ ability to fight for themselves.
After a decade in Afghanistan, Nato’s 140,000 combat troops – mainly from the US and UK, but also from countries such as Germany and Georgia – are preparing to leave. If, before their departure by the end of 2014, they fail to train a robust Afghan army and police force, Afghanistan risks sliding back into the internecine conflict that tore the country apart. It was this conflict during the 1990s that created the fertile ground in which Osama bin Laden expanded al-Qaeda and pulled the US, UK and other Nato countries into perhaps their last big infantry conflict in history. The war in Afghanistan has taught western politicians that it costs too many lives, too much money and too much political capital to get involved in such messy and lengthy military operations. But, for the British soldiers I am accompanying, failure would mean the unthinkable: squandering the lives and limbs of their comrades and those of the nearly 3,000 coalition soldiers who have already died in Afghanistan.
The Afghan soldiers are a mixed group from various tribal backgrounds – some loyal to the current government, some not. Others are deeply pragmatic, with families sending one son off to fight with the Taliban and another into the ANA so as to hedge their bets on the final outcome of the insurgency. Many are here for the money – $240 a month in Helmand, $20 more than the earnings of those in less dangerous provinces. The Afghan government pays well considering the per capita income in the country is $614 per year. Just like any other army, soldiers are paid by electronic bank transfer. But unlike other armies, biometrics are used to identify each soldier before he gets his salary.
I have met many ANA on my visits to Afghanistan during the past five years, and have found their concerns to be similar to most other young soldiers. They complain about everything – part of any soldier’s job description – and always want to know when they will next be fed. But what I have witnessed above all is that the ANA are beginning to look more like soldiers. They now have body armour and helmets, even though some of them still choose not to wear them. There is no doubting their toughness. Speaking through an interpreter to a group waiting for the order to move forward, they tell me they aren’t too keen on the M16 assault rifles issued to them by the Americans – the Russian AKs they used to have didn’t break when they hit people with them.
The ANA radio traffic sounds like a high-octane family argument as we watch them take control of several compounds before moving on. These buildings, made of mud and wood and surrounded by high mud walls, belong to farming families and their animals. They are the areas of habitation that the Taliban want to take over – and frequently do. I watch ANA soldiers round up all men of fighting age for questioning and, before releasing them, record their biometric details to determine if any are Taliban members. Fingerprints, irises and faces are all scanned by a hand-held device that looks like an oversized camera. (In many cases, fingerprints found on the remains of IEDs have identified the person who made them.)
Already about six IEDs have gone off around us. As we move past one particular compound the ANA has just cleared, our front man Kevin Cooper, who is holding a Vallon mine detector, yells: “Stop!” We dive down among the rocks and it isn’t long before he finds the collection of buried plastic containers – “pop-and-drops” – filled with homemade explosives. These are the Taliban’s weapons of choice, responsible for hundreds of Nato deaths and injuries. Our patrol was just three steps away from becoming part of the casualty statistics, and I was just three men from the front.
The British approach – letting the Afghans lead operations and acting as advisers rather than instructors – is about 18 months ahead of the US military’s efforts to train the ANA. With so little time left before the bulk of troops leave Afghanistan, the US is now considering adopting the UK model even though it would entail a cultural change among US soldiers, who see themselves more as natural commanders than management consultants.
Sitting in the dust waiting for the bomb disposal unit gives me a chance to chat with Captain Terry Williams. He is the 28-year-old adviser-patrol commander whose toothy staccato laugh later helps me identify him back at camp, the only place he takes off the helmet and ballistic glasses that now hide his face.
He tells me he has seen great improvement in his Afghan counterparts and attributes a good part of that success to British adviser patrols such as his letting the ANA learn through failure.
“They are great fighters, but if they do not organise their own rations, for example, I do not help them by calling some in,” he says, adding that one lesson the Afghan recruits have learned is that trigger-happiness means running out of ammunition dangerously early in an operation.
The ANA bomb disposal team finally arrives. In the dimming light of early evening, the IED is detonated and the patrol cheers in relief. The observing British bomb disposal adviser gives his opinion on the size of the device: “That’s 40 K-Gs, easy. You wouldn’t want to step on that, would you? Well, if you did, you wouldn’t be stepping anywhere else.” It was the 15th IED the bomb disposal team’s Afghan officer had made safe that day. The ANA now disarms all of the Taliban’s explosive devices, leaving the British to train and advise them.
Before darkness falls completely, I survey my surroundings. In twilight the valley is a picture-postcard desert scene. It is March so the heat is not oppressive, but there is a layer of sweat under my Osprey body armour and helmet. My nostrils are caked with dust, as is my skin, and my hair feels like a Brillo pad.
The Yakchal’s 27sq km rectangle of battle space is also poppy country: the green patches of shoots look like fields of young thistles. Helmand is the world’s largest opium-producing region, responsible for 75 per cent of the world’s opium. Thus the Taliban fights here to protect its lucrative crop: this is an insurgency of politics, guns, drugs and power, not one of ideology.
For the UK government, Helmand has a wider significance. If the Taliban control the country it won’t just be poppy that will be free to grow but also al-Qaeda, which would once again have a safe haven from which to launch attacks against Britain. Or, as one of the ANA commanders puts it to me: “Taliban in Helmand means bombs in London”.
I have come here from London thanks to an invitation from Lt. Col. Bill Wright, the commanding officer of 2nd Battalion The Rifles (or 2 Rifles), the infantry battalion advising the ANA. Back in my day the Rifles was called the Royal Green Jackets and I spent eight years with the regiment before joining the Special Air Service, serving for a further 10 years. During my time in the SAS I was involved in operations in the Gulf, Northern Ireland, South and central America, south-east and central Asia and Africa. I met Wright in 2007 in Iraq, well after I had retired from the SAS and written Bravo Two Zero, my personal account of an ill-fated mission I led behind enemy lines in that country in the early 1990s.
Wright is now sitting in his office, a Portakabin in Camp Tombstone, which is part of Camp Bastion. The sprawling main British base in Helmand is equivalent in size to a city like Reading, with walls constructed from enormous sandbags. Wright joined the infantry in 1988 and is married with two children. Everything he says carries an air of infectious confidence, which probably comes with having a 300-year-old military family tree.
Wright’s role is to shadow ANA leader Sheren Shah and his brigade of six kandaks (Pashto for battalions), letting the Afghans lead. The 2 Rifles Brigade Advisory Group, BAG for short, brings to the table brigade-level tactical advice and the high-end military capabilities that the ANA does not have. This includes provision of US Marines capable of calling down artillery, precision-guided munitions, mortars – in fact anything that flies through the air and detonates when it lands. The 2 Rifles BAG has been advising for six months; other battalions filled the same role for 12 months prior to that.
Wright says that personal relationships and respect are crucial to getting things done. “We could have been seen as a threat to Sheren Shah and his kandaks. After all we are better trained and better equipped,” he tells me. “The BAG have to take that threat out of the equation, immediately, at all levels. For example, I call Sheren Shah ‘Sir’ and treat him the same as I would any other general. Besides, he has over 30 years of continuous war fighting experience and that alone commands huge respect.”
Brigadier General Sheren Shah Kobadi, who is 48 (though accounts of his age vary) and married with six children, is a legend in Afghanistan. He fought alongside the Russians against the Mujahideen, but revolted after becoming disillusioned with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan – a move that landed him in jail for a year. On his release, he immediately joined the Mujahideen and fought against the Russians. After the Russians were finally defeated, he rejoined the government army and served as a kandak commander against the Taliban during the civil war that followed.
When the Taliban took control of the country, Sheren Shah then fought against them alongside the Northern Alliance, the group to which Nato would lend overwhelming support in 2001 to rid Afghanistan of Taliban rule. He was then appointed to the fledgling Afghan ministry of defence before returning to operations as commander of the ANA in Helmand.
When I meet Sheren Shah the day before Operation Now Roz begins, I can see his appearance fits his warring background. He is so large and imposing that when we shake hands, mine looks the size of a baby’s. However, his demeanour is laidback to say the least. As we talk through his interpreter, he flings his arms over the chair and cracks pistachio nuts. His eyes keep straying over to the TV in his office, which is showing a Pakistani soap show.
It is obvious that he enjoys being in the company of soldiers and he clearly likes the fact that I am ex-SAS. Most of our conversation is about the operations the SAS carried out alongside the Mujahideen. From the late 1980s we supplied and trained the Muj on Stinger missiles to destroy Russian Hind gunships. I answer his questions as best I can. Knowing that at some point he had switched allegiances, I have to be careful to get my dates right to ensure the SAS was on his side.
He tells me he has been wounded seven times in combat and I see the results of one of those fire fights in the scar running down his chin. Over our third cup of black tea, we finally get to talking about Now Roz – or rather he tells me what is going to happen: “We will make the Taliban understand they no longer own the Yakchal. We do.”
Fair enough. But Now Roz, big as it is, is just one battle, and one during which the ANA still benefits from having the Brits in the wings. “What about the long term?” I ask. He takes a boiled sweet from one of the jars that are never more than an arm’s reach away and tells me his biggest concern is losing the UK’s support too soon. “It will take time to develop. Do not leave us too early,” is his blunt message.
I leave Sheren Shah to visit one of the patrol bases near the Yakchal as the ANA and 2 Rifles BAG prepare for the operation. I see rows upon rows of tents and shipping containers lined up as if on the set of a Vietnam war film. There is apprehension in the air because this is to be the BAG’s last big operation before their six-month tour ends. No one wants to get killed less than a week before going home.
The patrol base is Camp Bastion in miniature but much more brutal. A layer of dust and sand covers everything and everyone. There are no air-conditioned gyms, no hot or cold running water, and no purpose-built toilets. A “Desert Rose” (basically a hole in the ground) is used to urinate in, with anything else done in a Disposa-John – a plastic bag that is then placed into a binliner for burning after use. Showers are black plastic solar bags that heat up in the sun, and any furniture is made out of wooden freight pallets or steel wire sandbag frames.
When the riflemen are not on patrol, they sleep, eat, and train in their make-shift gyms. I meet 20-year-old Rifleman David James Goodwin pumping iron. He joined the army at 16 as a junior soldier after listening to a presentation at his school in Liverpool.
It is obvious he likes being an infantry soldier and gets “good press” among his peers in the Reconnaissance (Recce) Platoon. He doesn’t want to talk about Now Roz, but rather uses our chat to vent frustration about the way people like him are portrayed by the media. He complains about soldiers being seen as victims, even when they are not wounded. It’s a war they freely choose to go and fight. They are neither hero nor victim; they are doing their job.
He says he is glad he joined up, especially as many of his mates are now in prison or unemployed. “I love it. I like getting out on patrol and when I’m not, I hit the weights. I like being a soldier and I like going home with money in my pocket as well.” As for many Afghan soldiers, the money the army pays is an important part of the equation. Goodwin’s take-home pay is £1,600 per month, plus a £5,000 bonus at the end of his six-month tour and another £1,800 for taking a 10-week course to learn Dari.
Goodwin, who is on his first tour in Afghanistan, tells me his relationship with the Afghan soldiers is good. “I like eating with the ANA and practising the language. They make me laugh. They are funny f*****s when they all get together,” he says.
Not all relationships between Nato soldiers and their trainers have developed so amicably. The past months have been marred by Afghan soldiers attacking the UK and US troops who are training them. At least 16 Nato troops have died at the hands of Afghan soldiers, or insurgents who have infiltrated the ANA, since the start of the year. Afghans have also been killed by members of their own units, although the UK does not release body counts.
The Taliban has taken credit for some of the killings, which have come amid a series of serious setbacks that include a US army sergeant shooting 17 Afghan civilians and American soldiers burning Korans at Bagram air base. The US has insisted the burnings were unintentional. Even so, they prompted widespread riots in Afghanistan and there were suggestions that some of the shootings of US soldiers by Afghan recruits were a result of the incident.
But those “green on blue” shootings have left many soldiers I talked to, including Serjeant Tom Reilly, unfazed and unapologetic. His misshapen nose and missing teeth instantly identify Reilly as one of 2 Rifles’ “old sweats”. Married with two children and in his mid-thirties, Reilly has seen it all before. Having served numerous tours of Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, he believes that fighting an insurgency means some bad guys always get under the wire either physically or by turning ordinary soldiers against their trainers through blackmail and intimidation.
But there is another, simpler reason, he adds, noting that Afghans don’t always settle their differences diplomatically. “People have to remember these people know nothing but fighting. If they are pissed off about something, they sort it out the Afghan way. There are no anger management classes here. This isn’t Hampshire, it’s Helmand,” he says.
That is more than evident on the patrol base where all troops carry weapons. They even take them to the showers. They also carry tourniquets so they can stop any major bleed immediately. It is likely that the ANA soldier who killed two Nato soldiers in the Lashkar Gah Main Operating Base on March 26 would have claimed many more victims had the base not been armed. But it is not just the British who are targets. Sheren Shah never moves within bases without his Close Protection personnel.
I leave the patrol base and head to one of the ANA checkpoints at the northern end of the Yakchal valley battle space for the start of the operation. As I enter the operations room to meet Sheren Shah, I find he and Wright have set themselves up with tables and chairs on the roof. The third man at the table is Brigadier Patrick Saunders, Commander Task Force Helmand and the most senior British officer in the province. Sheren Shah, Saunders and Wright make up the triangle of power that is transforming the way the war is being fought in Helmand.
Saunders has a liking for Old Virginia roll-ups and continuously packs tobacco into brown cigarette papers, producing something that looks like a prop for a Mexican gangster movie. As the three men listen to ANA radio traffic, pore over their maps and drink black tea, it becomes clear that Sheren Shah is the dominant force among the three. More than anything else I have witnessed during this trip, this speaks volumes about the self-confidence of the two high-ranking British officers at the table. Saunders stands up and pats his pockets for a lighter and I get the chance to ask him how he sees things.
“Sheren Shah is our boss, it is as simple as that. We are not here to produce British soldiers. We are not here to replicate the British Army. We are preparing the ANA to function without us,” he tells me, giving away that his and Sheren Shah’s mutual respect has developed into friendship, with the ANA leader staying at his family home in Wiltshire. “There are problems, of course,” Saunders adds as he lights his roll-up. “All armies have them, and a particular one for the ANA is their line of supply. But that’s what we are here for – to get things sorted out.”
He says there has been an increase in fighting as the ANA has ventured to areas the British had not patrolled in the past, doing things “the Afghan way” with little regard for health and safety and unencumbered by western technology.
I leave Saunders up on the roof of the Yakchal checkpoint and move down below into the Improvised Operations Room as reports come in of IEDs and Taliban activity.
An American army major in rectangular reading glasses and a “whitewall” haircut sits in the background, his chest tag displaying the name Redfield. He hangs back from all the radio checks and map plotting going on in the room and I become curious about what he is doing there, just looking, listening and jotting the occasional thought on his notepad.
I discover that it is Jerry Redfield’s job to advise American General John R. Allen, Commander International Security Assistance Force (COMISAF), on strategic priority areas and to help improve Nato’s efforts across the entire ISAF operation. In other words he is like an Ofsted school inspector. What he tells me about Britain’s efforts to train the ANA leads to the biggest revelation of my trip. “This BAG, the Brit structure, is 18 months ahead of anything else in country,” he says. He puts it down to the British willingness not to impose a foreign structure on the Afghans, but to learn instead how best to let them do it the Afghan way.
“This method will be recommended to COMISAF to adopt for the post-2014 planning,” he says. In other words, the US – to whom the UK is often the little cousin out here – may end up doing the most important job left in Afghanistan, according to the British model. I suggest this may well prove a hard sell to US commanders accustomed to being in charge. Redfield doesn’t think long before coming up with an answer:
“We will have to re-educate people or they will just have to take a salt pill and say ‘Yes sir’”.
Reflecting on his words as I return to the Yakchal valley, I narrowly escape an IED. Others are not so lucky. While I am in Afghanistan, the BAG suffers casualties at the hands of the Taliban. There is one fatality, two young men lose limbs, and two more suffer gunshot wounds. Each of these men had only four to seven days left before they were due to return home.
Despite the heartache of those losses, I realise Sheren Shah has been proved right: the ANA do “own” the Yakchal – for now. During Now Roz, numerous Taliban were killed, 86 explosive devices were discovered, including a motorbike packed with high explosives for a suicide attack, and the ANA seized multiple explosives and bomb-making equipment.
Given the steady flow of bad publicity and the general war weariness in the UK and other Nato countries, it is not a level of success I had been expecting to encounter. But in spite of the progress in Helmand, and the killing last year of bin Laden by US special forces, much can still go wrong. Afghanistan could indeed fall back into the hands of the Taliban – and the past decade could prove a waste of thousands of lives and thousands of billions of dollars. The recent spate of deadly Taliban attacks painfully highlights that Sheren Shah and his men stand little chance if he and other ANA leaders do not get the continued support they need to pose a credible threat to the insurgents.
But, as it looks from here in Helmand, that failure is more likely to come at the hands of politicians eager to extract themselves from a war they can no longer afford than from the combat boots on the ground. Training Afghans to fight like an army only gets you so far. Western heads of state at Nato’s summit in Chicago next month will need to deliver sustained support to the ANA and Afghanistan as a whole if the ANA is to keep the Taliban at bay once the west’s troops head home for good.
Veterans find peace from horrors of war in charity's garden
Apr 23 2012
He said that, for many, the charity provide a respite from the effective but sometimes difficult clinical treatment they get from organisations like Combat Stress, based a few miles along the road at centre Hollybush House.
Sir Clive, chief fundraiser for Combat Stress, said: “With my experience of the really damaged veterans who come to Hollybush for treatment, Hollybush deals with the deep hidden wounds and Gardening Leave is the balm afterwards.”
The men find sanctuary in the sprawling grounds the charity have leased from Auchincruive Horticultural College.
They have transformed the gardens and helped them blossom again, and they have restored the large Victorian greenhouse that had become derelict on the estate.
The veterans suffer flashbacks, anxiety and depression and many are withdrawn from life. Some will drink to forget and they are often angry and aggressive, and unable to cope with day-to-day existence.
Pamela Smith, a horticulturist and trained psychiatric nurse, acts as a therapist for the charity and each day she gauges their moods and give them tasks to suit.
BEHIND a walled garden in Ayrshire, veterans of war are planting, laying paths and sowing poppy seeds.
Here they feel safe from the world outside, they hear birds not bombs and the smell is of flowers and soil, not death.
Above all, the men have each other and they have a mutual understanding of the mental scars they still bear from battle.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has left them suffocated but in the green landscape of trees and fresh air, the charity Gardening Leave are helping them to breathe again.
Their use of horticultural therapy has proved a simple but effective treatment.
The tranquillity settles their troubled minds and the gardening provides a physical distraction and sense of achievement which helps them forget the flashbacks that have broken them inside.
Sir Clive Fairweather, a veteran and former SAS deputy commander, is a trustee of Gardening Leave.
He said that, for many, the charity provide a respite from the effective but sometimes difficult clinical treatment they get from organisations like Combat Stress, based a few miles along the road at centre Hollybush House.
Sir Clive, chief fundraiser for Combat Stress, said: “With my experience of the really damaged veterans who come to Hollybush for treatment, Hollybush deals with the deep hidden wounds and Gardening Leave is the balm afterwards.”
The men find sanctuary in the sprawling grounds the charity have leased from Auchincruive Horticultural College.
They have transformed the gardens and helped them blossom again, and they have restored the large Victorian greenhouse that had become derelict on the estate.
The veterans suffer flashbacks, anxiety and depression and many are withdrawn from life. Some will drink to forget and they are often angry and aggressive, and unable to cope with day-to-day existence.
Pamela Smith, a horticulturist and trained psychiatric nurse, acts as a therapist for the charity and each day she gauges their moods and give them tasks to suit.
She said: “The walled gardens are important because they allow veterans to feel safe.
“No one needs to be green fingered, they can all find something useful to do.”
The charity were founded in 2007 by horticultural therapist Anna Baker Cresswell.
A centre regular is Bobby Jones, 42, from Ayr, who did two tours of Northern Ireland, served in the first Gulf War in 1991 and in Bosnia in 1994, as a private with The Queen’s Own Highlanders.
He came out of the Army in 1997 and was drinking too much, couldn’t hold down a relationship and had terrible mood swings.
Bobby said: “My whole personality had changed.
“I had been an outgoing, sporty guy but I became withdrawn and angry in the Army. I just got worse when I got out.”
His PTSD is rooted in many events that he went through in his tours of duty, but he is particularly haunted by his time in the Gulf.
Three friends in his regiment were among nine British soldiers who perished when American pilots mistook them for fleeing Iraqis and blitzed their armoured car early in 1991.
Bobby remains ashamed and ridden with guilt by the sights he saw and the way he felt towards the Iraqis.
He said: “I remember thinking it was their fault I was there.
“I looked at them through angry eyes and wanted revenge.
“Now I know that they probably didn’t even want to be there and that they were all someone’s son, someone’s brother. They were as much a victim of war as we were. That war has eaten away at me, like a cancer. ”
Like many Allied soldiers, he will never forget what became know as the Highway of Death, when Americans strafed and massacred Iraqis who were retreating back to Basra in a convoy out of Kuwait at the end of the war.
Bobby said: “You never forget the smell of death and burning bodies. Fireworks, barbecues, the smell of diesel, are things that take me straight back there.”
He was a damaged man when he left the Gulf and after another tour of Ireland, he was sent to Bosnia where he saw the dead bodies of women and children.
When he plucked up the courage to tell an officer that he had recurring nightmares and was struggling to cope, he was told to “give yourself a shake”.
But Bobby cracked and had to be taken out of Bosnia.
He was placed in a psychiatric unit and fed antidepressants.
When he came out, the grip of PTSD tightened.
Bobby said: “I was so lost. I drank to forget and then sometimes to remember, to try to piece it together. I was angry and a loner and I was aggressive.”
It was only through Combat Stress, a charity set up to help soldiers with PTSD, that he began to come to terms with his guilt.
Through Combat Stress, he was referred to Gardening Leave and it has changed his life.
Bobby said: “This place makes me feel as if I belong. I don’t go out anymore, I see the world as a minefield, but here I feel safe.
“When I leave here, I can’t wait to come back. There is a large wall and behind it, I can stop looking for dangers that aren’t there. It makes me relax. It makes me feel human again.”
Tam Anderson, 42, served with The King’s Own Scottish Borderers in Northern Ireland and the first Gulf War and, like Bobby, he will never forget the burned bodies of the Highway of Death, or the toys and children’s clothes scattered around blood-stained houses in Kuwait.
When he found Gardening Leave, he was chronically agoraphobic. Tam said: “I wouldn’t leave the house for months at a time. I was in a really dark place.”
His greatest therapy is the fly fishing the charity offer – in the river that runs through the grounds. Only the soothing, gurgling of the water silences the tinnitus left behind from the sounds of battle. Tam said: “Coming down to the river and fly fishing has saved my life.
“I also do a lot of joinery that needs doing, for the first time I feel a sense of achievement.
“I think I would be dead now without Gardening Leave. It has given me a reason to live.”
FOR the first time ever a member of the legendary Special Air Service (SAS) tells his story live on stage.
Pete ‘Snapper’ Winner is a larger than life character and boasts of being the last British soldier to be flogged. “I was the only sergeant in the British army with twelve stripes, three on each arm and six on my bum!”
Eighteen years in the SAS saw Winner, code-named Soldier ‘I’, survive the savage battle of Mirbat, parachute into the icy depths of the South Atlantic at the height of the Falklands War, and storm the Iranian Embassy during the most famous hostage crisis in the modern world.
Pete also details his close-protection work around the world, from the lawless streets of Moscow to escorting aid convoys into war-torn Bosnia. He also unveils the problems of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by many Special Forces veterans, and how he battled his own demons to continue his roller-coaster career.
He was amongst the eight soldiers who faced an enemy of 400 at Mirbat, one of the British army’s greatest victories since Rorke’s Drift. With the help of pictures and slides he takes the audience on a dramatic journey as Snapper tells of lost friends and great heroics during Britain’s ‘secret war’ in the Oman.
In the second part Snapper reveals how he got the title ‘Soldier I’ and, with original footage, take us into the Iranian Embassy, as the extraordinary bravery and skill of the SAS is famously revealed to a TV audience of millions across the world.
Nu stiu in ce masura autorul articolului exagereaza si cat are dreptate. Insa, dincolo de imaginea generala pe care vrea sa o descrie, exista detalii care sunt reale si care nasc semne de intrebare cu privire la capacitatea MoD si a Defence Staff de a gasi solutii la dificultatile pe care trupele din subordinea lor le intampina in Afganistan si, in trecut, si in Irak. Da, articolul nu este recent, dar problemele pe care le ridica sunt la fel de actuale, cred eu.
A decade of failure by FRANK LEDWIDGE Last updated at 3:25 PM on 8th October 2011
After a decade of military operations in Afghanistan — the anniversary of the 2001 incursion falls this week — colossal expenditure and a rising death toll, the British are no nearer victory over the Taliban. Nor can they claim to have brought good governance and security to the region. As I saw during a tour in Helmand as a civilian adviser, the British forces are now widely hated in Afghanistan because of this blood-soaked mess. Among Helmandis, Britain is largely viewed as a destructive foreign invader rather than the benign liberator of fashionable political rhetoric.
Even the Russians, who undertook the notorious invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, are far less despised than the British. After decades of Ministry of Defence chiefs telling us that they run the finest military in the world, the twin failures of Afghanistan and Iraq should have come as a rude awakening to them. But instead of honestly facing up to the weaknesses of their leadership, senior officers have resorted to a mix of self-delusion, spin and buck-passing. For example, they claimed that the campaigns in Helmand and Basra were not defeats but glorious successes. It is all just a matter of presentation.
Echoing his generals, David Cameron this week used his party conference speech to declare the Afghan campaign ‘a success’. But this is just a fantasy. The truth is that the British Army has inflicted huge amounts of damage, including the deaths of hundreds of civilians — while also sacrificing 382 of our own brave soldiers.
Our troops have suffered more than 5,000 injuries, yet despite all the courage of our frontline soldiers, there was never any sense that the British Army has been in control. As one SAS major put it to me: ‘We hold these tiny areas of ground in Helmand and we are kidding ourselves if we think our influence goes beyond 500 metres of our security bases.’
When not resorting to wishful thinking, the generals like to put the blame elsewhere. Of course, politicians are a favourite target. It cannot be denied that both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were launched during Tony Blair’s premiership, partly out of an almost neurotic determination to uphold the special relationship with Washington.
However, senior figures in the British Army had their own reasons for supporting military action in Afghanistan — battered by the humiliating British retreat from Basra in 2007, they saw the war in Afghanistan as means of restoring their tarnished credibility, especially with their disillusioned U.S. allies.
But the country’s military chiefs failed to subject the political policy to any real scrutiny, nor did they carry out any effective post-war planning. Equally aberrant was the failure to ensure that the necessary numbers of troops were provided for operations. What’s more, it was delusional to think that Helmand could be held with a force of 3,500 while all reliable estimates of the minimum needed for a region of that size and population was 50,000 troops. And of those 3,500 initially deployed, only 168 would actually be on patrol duties.
The mismanagement went far beyond mere numbers. As someone with a relatively wide range of experience in the Armed Forces, I have been appalled at the lack of real strategic thinking in these two conflicts. In place of hard analysis and planning, there has been the usual attitude of just ‘cracking on’, even when the strategy is not working. Within the top brass there is often a feeling that any sort of action is preferable to doing nothing. So patrols are sent out or targets attacked without any real productive purpose, but just to give the illusion of progress.
One classic example of this approach was the operation to transport a huge single electric turbine through 100 miles of hostile territory to the Kajaki dam on the Helmand river, ostensibly to provide electricity for the region. The task, involving 4,000 mainly British troops, was accomplished, but the turbine was never installed, partly because there was no local skilled labour to operate it, partly because no cables existed to transmit the electricity from the dam to southern Helmand. As one soldier said to me, the exercise was ‘a complete waste of time’.
Despite squandering their manpower on such ridiculous plans, the generals often cite a lack of resources, particularly in regard to equipment such as helicopters and armoured vehicles, as the reason for their failure to achieve targets in Afghanistan. But this was just a distraction from the real problem: a lack of any coherent military strategy. A huge increase in the number of armoured vehicles and helicopters would have done little in Basra or Helmand against the anti-Coalition insurgents.
Moreover, though Dannatt and his colleagues are fond of blaming ministers, those really responsible for procurement in the Ministry of Defence are senior officers themselves, who are supposed to have a unique insight into the needs of the military. Yet procurement in their hands has been an absolute scandal, with tens of billions wasted on flawed projects. Eager to boost its own sense of self-importance, the top brass prefer big, high-tech, advanced new pieces of equipment rather than just the basics.
The price of five Eurofighter Typhoons, retailing at about £120m each (we have 56 with another 160 on order,) dedicated to the care of veterans would ensure that no wounded soldier would have to fight for proper life-long care again. This cocktail of egotism and misuse of resources can be found on an even bigger scale in the bloated, top-heavy structure of our three armed services. The scale of senior hierarchy graphically exposes the fallacy, so sedulously cultivated by the generals themselves, that our military is underfunded. The statistics of this bureaucracy are truly astounding.
Today, there are more generals in the Army than helicopters or operational tanks, while the Royal Navy has more admirals than ships and the RAF has three times as many senior officers as there are flying squadrons. There are three times more senior officers than Apache attack helicopters which have played a vital role in Afghanistan. In the Army, we have only 10 deployable brigades, yet there are at least 170 brigadiers, 20 more than in 1997.
Similarly, we have just two armoured fighting divisions that could be put into the field (albeit with a great deal of notice,) yet the Army feels it necessary to employ no fewer than 37 major-generals. We have just a single army corps, yet enough lieutenant-generals to command 17 of them. The absurdity of structure is made even more clear when it is compared to other armed forces. In America, for instance, the mighty U.S. Army has 302 generals compared to the British Army’s 255.
Furthermore the 210,000-strong U.S. Marine Corps, larger than all our three services combined, has just 84 general officers, eight times less than the number of generals in Britain. The contrast with Israel, which has one of the world’s most formidable defence force, is striking. Though its armed services are roughly similar in size to Britain’s, 170,000 men and women, Israel has just one Lieutenant-General, 12 Major-Generals and 35 Brigadier-Generals.
This obsession with swelling the top ranks reflects a love of empire building, where chiefs tend to judge the strength of their authority by the number of senior staff they have under their command. But there are a number of serious consequences to this culture of hierarchical excess. One obvious one is that there is less money available for the front-line troops, sailors and airmen. Another is that there are simply not enough operational jobs for senior officers, so they end up in a host of administrative and staff positions which could easily be filled by lower grades.
Even worse is the diffusion of accountability, because chains of command are so confused in the sprawling hierarchy. In the event of setbacks, the chiefs can now find safety in numbers to avoid direct blame. The British Army used to be superb at rewarding success and punishing failure because responsibility was clear, but that tradition has been crushed under the weight of the hierarchy. It is telling that at the Chilcot inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Iraq, no fewer than 31 generals of two star rank or above gave evidence, that figure in itself an explanation of why the mission failed.
Determined to look after their own, like so many professional vested interest groups in the public sector, the top brass have ensured that not a single officer has been sacked or disciplined over Basra or Helmand. Not only is no one held to account, but promotion is almost routine. ‘For far too long, we have celebrated mediocrity,’ says Colonel Tim Collins. The two wars were a microcosm of this bloated system. In Basra, at least 14 Brigadier and 14 Major-Generals served in command roles, again weakening the focus of responsibility.
Many more worked as staff officers. The same is true of Helmand, which has involved ten Brigadiers and at the very least four Major-Generals. What was particularly striking for me was how, in both theatres, a vast bureaucracy accompanied each British force, making a mockery of all the complaints about resources. At Basra, the headquarters near the airport was a massive air-conditioned complex, full of offices, computers, administrators, managers, liaison personnel, communications staff, cookhouses, media operations, planners, and even a logistical office which effectively amounted to a travel agency.
The support operation was so big that the front-line was almost an irrelevance. Astonishingly, out of almost 8,000 troops, only 200 would be available for patrol on any given day. Other factors in the Army’s culture have led to failure, like the practice of six-monthly tours for personnel, which undermines continuity, promotes short-termism and encourages futile but dramatic gestures, like the transport of that turbine to the Kajaki or ‘signature’ battles such as the retaking of a village.
The structure of the Army has been driving the campaign, the very reverse of what should be happening. Just as disturbing has been poor intelligence and lack of cultural awareness bred of ignorance. In one classic case in Basra, an entire battle group of 600 soldiers were used to arrest several car dealers who were suspected to be insurgents. But it was soon found that they were entirely innocent. The so-called intelligence had actually been supplied to the British Army by a rival bunch of car dealers.
Part of this complacency has bred an excessive reliance on the supposed lessons of the counter-insurgency campaigns in Malaya in the 1950s and Northern Ireland during the Troubles between 1972 and 1994, both of which were ultimately successful in halting terror campaigns. In fact, American officers in Afghanistan grew sick of their British colleagues harping on about Malaya and Ulster and would roll their eyes when another British officer began a lecture about patrolling the streets of Belfast.
Neither place really had an relevance for Basra and Helmand, where, unlike Malaya and Northern Ireland, there was no stable government, no functioning civic structure, no effective police forces and precious little support from the civil population. The insistence on living in the past was all too indicative of how badly the Army’s commanders have lost their way. Much as our top brass might not like it, the American military has proved less inflexible and bureaucratic, and more resourceful and imaginative.
Our senior officers should stop being so defensive, so concerned to protect their elaborately constructed closed shop and admit that all is not well. Otherwise we will be heading for more failures in the future.
Forums
e fericita sa aiba aproape un NOSA sau un marksman britani,un genist elvetian,etc. 
