Afghanistan and Ireland – Same old story!

Afghanistan and Ireland – Same old story!

Posted by Gerry Adams

Last month this blog stood in the Guildhall Square in Derry and watched as the relatives of the 14 innocent victims of the British Parachute Regiment expressed their delight at the Saville report’s conclusion that the 14 were innocent victims.

At the time the dead were labelled as terrorists by the British government. The British system and to its shame much of the British media, accused those who had been shot of being ‘gunmen’ and ‘bombers’. Lies were told and a cover-up concocted and the British establishment closed ranks to defend the actions of its Army. That lie persisted for decades.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for what happened. I am sure the words of regret and remorse he made that day were heartfelt and the people of Derry welcomed them. However, Mr. Cameron then sought to expunge the violent record of the British Army in the north by claiming that: “Bloody Sunday is not the defining story of the service the British Army gave in Northern Ireland from 1969-2007.”

He was wrong. Bloody Sunday did define the British Army’s role in the north. In Ballymurphy six months earlier the same Regiment – the Paras –shot dead 11 innocent victims; in Springhill five month later they shot dead 5 more. The victims were accused of being ‘gunmen’ or in one case a ‘gunwoman’.

On Friday in a welcome development the Catholioc Bishop of Down and Connor gave the families of the Ballymurphy Massacre archive documents, including eye witness statement from Church records of the time. They validate the families case.The Ballymurphy and Springhill killings were par for the course for the British Army.

In countless actions over decades of war the British Army and RUC strategy employed shoot-to-kill operations; plastic bullets; mass raids on homes; torture; curfews and intimidation, and collusion between state forces and unionist death squads, to kill many hundreds of citizens and tried to intimidate a whole community.

The full resources of the British state including legal, judicial, and propaganda were brought to bear. It was claimed that victims were gunmen or women whose weapons were spirited away by hostile crowds; or who made actions which gave the soldiers cause to believe they were armed or a threat; or who ran away from patrols justifying their being shot; while others were accused of attacking patrols or trying to run them down in cars. The truth is still denied to relatives in many of these cases. It was also often said that the north was the British states training ground for its military and intelligence system.

The truth of that is evident in the revelations contained in some of the 90,000 US military files that have been posted on the Wikileaks website and carried in detail in a number of newspapers, including the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegal.

The files are from a variety of NATO military sources operating in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009 and they reveal a depth of failure to the military strategy of NATO than has heretofore been evident in the media coverage of the war.

The Afghanistan experience and the techniques and strategies and propaganda employed in that war are not exceptional. They fit a pattern which will be familiar to people in Ireland and especially the north.

The Wikileaks documents provide previously unreported actions in which Afghan civilians were killed or wounded. In 144 incidents detailed almost 200 civilians were killed and hundreds more injured. This is almost certainly a serious underestimate of the true scale of civilian casualties.

The Wikileaks files provide a list of actions involving the British Army. These are some.

November 15th 2006: In Helmand the British Army’s Marine Commandos fired warning shots at a vehicle, killed two civilians and wounded two others, including a child.

October/November 2007: a cluster of shootings by British soldiers in Kabul lead to the death of the son of an Afghan general. The British soldiers are unidentified and the US report reveals that; ‘Investigation controlled by the British. We are unable to get [sic] complete story.’

March 12th 2008: Helmand. British troops call in gunships and claim three enemy dead. The bodies of two women and two children are later found.

November 19th 2008: Marine Commandos fire ‘warning shots’ at a vehicle. They kill a child.

January 19th 2009: Marine Commandos use a drone to attack the Taliban. Two children are wounded.

January 27th 2009: Marine Commandos shoot at two people ’watching the patrol’. A man and a child are wounded.

May 19th 2009: Ghurkhas call in air strike and kill 8 civilians and destroy a family compound.

September 30th 2009: Helmand. The Rifles regiment call in an air strike on a compound housing two families. 7 killed.

November 10th 2009: Helmand. Coldstream Guards kill a driver of a vehicle.

When asked to respond to these accusations the British Ministry of Defence said: ‘We are currently examining our records to establish the facts in the alleged casualty incidents raised.’

The British Army is not alone in carrying out these kind of actions. French troops shot at a bus full of children killing 8. A US patrol did the same and killed 15. In another incident US Special Forces dropped six 2,000lb bombs on a compound killing up to 300 people.

Human Rights Watch which reported on the war in the north of Ireland and is now doing similar work in Afghanistan said: ‘These files bring to light what’s been a consistent trend by US and NATO forces: the concealment of civilian deaths.’

Also revealed is the existence of Taskforce 373 – a covert operations unit whose task is to ‘remove’ the enemy. All of this just scratches the surface of another dirty war that is being fought using modern versions of old strategies and techniques, and is failing.

Will the publication of the battlefield and intelligence documents by Wikileaks make a difference? ‘None’, according to the British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

His retort could just as easily have come from the mouth of Reginald Maudling or William Whitelaw or Roy Mason or Tom King or any of the previous British Ministers who had responsibility for prosecuting the British war in Ireland. And whose policies sustained a conflict that could have ended much earlier. But then should we be surprised? Should those of us who survived be taken aback by the stupidity of the British military and political mind?

A former Commander of the British Army in Afghanisatan Colonel Richard Kemp recently claimed that the British Army won the war in Ireland. If Colonel Kemp, who presumably was the British Army’s key strategist in Afghanistan, could get it so wrong in our country why should anyone expect him to get it right in Afghanistan? And if he and William Hague are reflective of British thinking today then the British are destined to make the same mistakes in that part of the world they made here.

Comment:

Gerry Adams has every right to criticize the British military and their actions in Northeast Ireland during the armed conflict there. The Ballymurphy Massacre was a horrific incident in which 11 innocent victims were murdered. However, he fails to mention the equally horrific maiming and loss of innocent lives in incidents such as Bloody Friday, the Le Mons Hotel, and Enniskillen bombings. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!!!

His comments regarding the British army’s involvement in the current war in Afghanistan are also his prerogative as are those regarding U.S. and NATO forces there. But, if he is going to criticize American involvement in Afghanistan, he should at least be consistent. Don’t level criticism on America for trying to eliminate a breeding ground for another potential attack on our country such as 9/11 in one breath and then come here seeking our political, moral, and monetary support for the peace process and the fledgling Stormont government in Northeast Ireland.