Interesting story in the Sunday Star Times today, quoting among others former Afghan Foreign Minister and now Otago University lectuer Najib Lafraie.
Revelations about the SAS in Afghanistan last week suggest Prime Minister John Key broke his promise that the elite force would not fight alongside Afghan commandos, says political scientist Najib Lafraie.
Last year Key said that the SAS would not fight alongside the Afghan soldiers that the SAS would be training. Giving this information was part of Key’s “half-open approach” on the SAS, which he continued this week. Now he has gone silent, but Wayne Mapp has waded on in
“The actions that took place were essentially the domain of the Afghan national army, which, you can see from the photos, were the people actually engaged in the fighting.” The CRU was not directly involved in the action, he said, and neither were the SAS.
The CRU is the part of the Afghan army that the SAS has been training. However those on the ground have a different view
However, Norwegian defence correspondent and author of a book on the Norwegian special forces, Tom Bakkeli, said the CRU “absolutely were involved in the fighting” and “the CRU got a lot of acclaim for their counter-action against the attacking Taliban and suicide bombers”.
The National Government handling of the deployment, and recent events in Afghanistan has been a shambles. Both Key and Mapp on one hand seem to want to tell the world about where the SAS are and what they are doing, but are now regretting the consequences. I do not believe the SAS should be in Afghanistan at the moment, but if they are, surely we need some kind of consistent approach to ensuring their safety.
THis is the direct quote on Keys comments from the NZ Herald last October
Mr Key would not comment directly on the SAS troops’ duties, but said they would not involve “mentoring” Afghans by fighting alongside them, which he ruled out earlier in the year because it was “particularly dangerous”.
“What I can tell you is that a specific group of people deployed to train – in theatre – the Afghan Army or police is not part of the mandate we have.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10601491
So he ‘ruled out fighting alongside them’ but the photos show that is what they were doing.
There obviously some big lies being told – is it Key or the Army
Seems to me the secret use of SAS is in part a trick to allow us to use them in ways NZders would not be comfortable with and thus use them as a chip for getting vaguely better trade deals with the USA (or maybe just better photo oportunities).
To me beating up people about revealing where he is is a bit off message from the idea that no NZder should be there anyway.
Didn’t Key say recently while defending the naming of Apiata that he “wouldn’t lie to the NZ media”….. Yea Right! This is what I have come to expect from NACT. If you have to deploy the army, there are many more productive places you can do it….
the lecturer you quote grant has a fruit loop idea that muslim countries should put together a multinational muslim force in afghanistan to replace nato… yeah right, now there are only 32 soldiers in afghanistan from muslim countries, where are they going to get 80 thousand more from?
Mel heard of Morocco , Algeria, Tunisa, Egypt, Jordan,Yemen, Turkey ( also a Nato Member).
Their armies probably exceed 800,000 in total . Done and Done
@Mel i think Najib Lafraie would know more about the situation then you and I do but i would agree with his thoughts and i would think that it would be very easy for the Afghanistan Govt to get 80 thousand Muslim soldeirs because Muslims as a whole are far more united then we are in the West and because of their Faith they are compelled to help their fellow Muslims when they are in need so if Lafraie has said that then i would agree with him.
It would be far better for Afghanistan to have a Multinational Muslim force rather then a Western-dominated Nato Force because whenever an International force trys to fight against insurgency groups they are bound to lose especialy in a country like Afghanistan.
History has reapeatedly shown to us that Afghanistan is fiercly indepedent and does not take too nicely to Foreign intervention…Just look what happened to the Soviets when they invaded in 1979 although that was mainly because of American support but still the fact is that Afghanistan will always be hostile to Foreigners trying to tell them how to run their country.
Matt Afghanistan iss far more complicated tha we realise.
This British defence blog gives a good series of articles on the history and some background to the tribal/clan divisions
http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/2009/11/shadow-of-history.html
In reality Afghanistan and Pakistan are enemies, with the recovery of territories allocated to Pakistan ( previously British India) by the Durand line a long term aim of the Kabul goverment. Pakistan wants to destabilise any government in Kabul
matt you dont know what your talking about, muslims have fought each other all last century
Ok Mel give me an example of when Muslim countries have fought each other in the past century?
the Taleban and Al Qaeda do not count as they are not Countries but Extremist groups that the Majority of Muslims would not support in the first place.
The Nato countries wre having a go at eacch other last century too!…. and the century before that… and the century before that.
In fact in the tweveth century the muslim cuture was the advanced one and the backward west was the one sending maurauding bands to try to destroy them.
The Knights Hospitaller ( of St John) and Knights Templar were the equivalent of todays Al Qaeda
@ghostwhowalksnz You are exactly right mate the Crusaders were more inhumane in their fighting techniques then the Muslims under their Leader at the time(Saladin) were.
matt how about iran and iraq. how about sunnis v shiites. how about sauds against hashemites. how about hamas and fatah. how about iraq and kuwait. how about black september. how about somalia. how about the algerian civil war. how about the waziristan conflict. how about the war in yemen. how about the magreb insurgency.
@Mel Ok i see i have been wrong and overlooked certain conflicts but these conflicts have been the outcomes of tensions between sects(Sunnis and Shi’tes) ( which has also happened in other Faiths take for example Christianity, 15th Century Europe was torn apart because of the conflict between Catholism(the main sect of Christainty at the time) and Protestanism and England even created their own church as a result of this conflict),the result of having a secular Dictatorship with an aggressive Foreign Policy( Iraq under Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party) and an Islamic Republic under a strict form of Sharia Law(Islamic Law) next to each other and in regards to Fatah and Hamas one group is a Moderate Islamic Party and the other is an Extremist (and in some cases Terrorist) Organisation.
these conflicts are why muslim countries will never cooperate to get 80,000 troops into afghanistan to take over from NATO forces matt, it’s why their forces are too busy putting down conflict in their own countries, now jordan and egypt are the only muslim countries in afghanistan contributing 32 soldiers between them, where are they going to get the other eighty thou
Well like i said if the Afghan Govt wants to have a Muslim Multinational Force instead of Nato all they would have to do is to broadcast it to other Muslim countries and there would be a lot of Muslims who would join the force but your right its proberbly not very likely but it is possible and i personally think it would make the war against the Taleban and Al Qaeda a hell of a lot more effective