Irish Army in Afghanistan to serve under NATO

national | miscellaneous | news report

Saturday April 05, 2003 11:36

by James McKenna

jimmymac61 at hotmail dot com

The coalition of armies known as The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, to which Ireland is contributing troops, is to transfer operational command from US Central Command (CENTCOM) to NATO.

While CENTCOM is in supreme command of our troops in Afghanistan, structural command is shared between nations, transferred every six months : first Britain , then Turkey and now Germany and Holland. However according to Canadian news ,"NATO is receptive to taking over some of the leadership duties of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan."

Afghanistan is not going well for the US so they seem to be sub-contracting to NATO while they concentrate on the western flank of the Caspian Sea. The US has had to abandon Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Anaconda in the face of persistent guerrilla resistance supported by the local population and are suffering continual attacks even in their barracks.

The ISAF which was established under UN resolution UNSC 1386 and is "for operational purposes under the command of US Central Command". That's Tommy Franks and his butchers who are at present slaughtering their way through Afghanistan.

The ISAF are in Afghanistan to protect the US manufactured Kabul government and later oil and gas pipelines to India and through Pakistan to the the US ships waiting in the Gulf. The vast Caspian oil and gas riches are the real reason 20,000 people were bombed to bits in Afghanistan and our heads were filled full of lies about the Taliban being the greatest terrorists in the world.

Canada, Germany and the Netherlands want NATO to be used in Afghanistan to overcome problems when responsibilities for the peacekeeping mission are transferred to new national forces. They have proposed that NATO consider taking over the structure that supports the mission and possibly other operational responsibilities to provide continuity.

"You can't change over the leadership every six months or every year, it just makes it impossible, so if you have a key role for NATO, that becomes better," Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Thursday after meetings at the military alliance headquarters.

If you look up the Irish Defence Forces website you will find no reference to our illegal participation in the ISAF .

http://www.military.ie/

Supposedly the Irish government gave authorisation for the despatch of members of our army to Afghanistan on July 7th 2001 but despite requesting to see this authorisation under the Freedom of Information Act, I have been refused twice and the case is now before the Information Commissioner.

Our participation in this force leaves us open to war crimes charges by association. We are assisting in Baghram base where the US are torturing prisoners. The base from which four US special Forces men returned home to brutally kill their wives in the last few weeks. Will Irish soldiers also come home with such an insight into "pre-emptive marriage conflict resolution", or with new skills to display on out streets after twenty pints.

Coming to a town near you soon!

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Comments (7 of 7)

Check somewhere other than the homepage

by Mirabat

Mon Dec 29, 2008 23:26

'If you look up the Irish Defence Forces website you will find no reference to our illegal participation in the ISAF '

He's right. They only refer to the legal one.

www.military.ie/overseas/ops/asia/isaf/index.htm

Still waiting

by JJ

Thu Feb 25, 2010 18:54

Will Irish soldiers also come home with such an insight into "pre-emptive marriage conflict resolution", or with new skills to display on out streets after twenty pints.

Coming to a town near you soon!

Right, well that hasn't happened.

A Question

by Sean Og

Thu Feb 25, 2010 23:26

Where Is Goldstone Now? - Eitan Haber

Earlier this week, NATO forces hit several vehicles in Afghanistan and killed 27 innocent Afghanis, including four women and a child.

A short while ago, 13 other innocent Afghanis were killed after a missile mistakenly targeted a residential home instead of a Taliban position.

Now we a have a small question:

Where are you, Goldstone?

No one should misunderstand and take these words to mean that we endorse misguided lethal fire.
We are merely opposed to the hypocrisy of the world, which is suddenly overcome by paralysis.

The author was the chief of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's bureau. (Ynet News)

Probably at home with the wife and kids

by Me

Fri Feb 26, 2010 04:19

the very silly question by the very silly Israeli flunky person highlights the desperation of the Israeli State to try and grab some sort of moral high-ground, however meagre.

Goldstone was specifically tasked with investigating ONE particular set of incidents in one particular geographical area, within a defined timeframe.

He personally is not responsible for investigating every single outrage in every single conflict the world over.

I actually agree that there is a certain level of hypocrisy but I feel however it must be pointed out that the US incident, while thoroughly appalling in it's outcome and totally and utterly needless, since the Afghan war has little to do with any real attempt to combat 'terrorism', and a lot to do with pipelines and profits from opium, has some striking differences to the war crimes which Israel was accussed of having committed and which it has been investigated for, and subsequently found to have been responsible for according to the report produced by the investigation team.

The Israelis deliberately and repeated attacked a defence-less civilian population which they had previously made sure were utterly unable to extricate themselves from the area of military operations.

Essentially it confined the Gazan population in a small strip of land which served as, for all intents and purposes, an open-air prison/concentration camp and then they proceeded to attack it coldly, ruthlessly and callously with weaponry and tactics which were rightly considered to be thoroughly unsuitable for use in an extremely heavily populated urban area and which were in fact totally illegal for such use under International Law. These actions of the Israelis formed the basis for the charge of War Crimes

Not only that, but the actions of the IDF were overwhelmingly supported by the vast majority of the Israeli population - somewhere in the region of 90-95% of the population fully supported the IDF war crimes according to polls conducted at the time.

Again this sets Israel apart from the US since it should by now be evident that at least 50% or more of the US people do not in fact support the illegal foreign wars in which it is currently engaged.

None of that however absolves the US forces from their own war crimes - and it is striking that the Israeli's seem to think that the existence of other war criminals somehow absolves them of their own war criminality under International Law.

Personally I utterly condemn the US military and Gov't for such actions and if there were a UN investigation which produced a report accusing the US of war crimes in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in both, I personally would fully support the team that produced it and their findings, as I'm sure would all reasonable intelligent people with any shred of human decency

It's a pity you, Seanie, have not found it within yourself to behave as any reasonable intelligent person with a shred of human decency would, when it comes to the subject of the Goldstone report, though, isn't it?

Irish in afghanistan

by dm

Fri Jun 04, 2010 00:37

just FYI the irish troops in afghnaistan are there training ISAF and Afghan Police on bomb disposal and other anti IED techniques becaus the taliban use IRA bombing tactics that the IRA taught to hezbolladh who in turn taught the taliban. So the Irish army have the best experience in fighting these tactics

So the British Army have the best experience in creating these terrorists

by FYI

Fri Jun 04, 2010 01:47

Guess who taught those techniques to the IRA??
http://www.whale.to/b/northern_ireland.html

http://cryptome.org/mi5-dirty.htm

The most explosive allegations - the British secret services helped find infra-red technology that aided IRA bombing operations - will have serious repercussions for the British intelligence services, who already stand accused of colluding with loyalist agents.

So MI5 were secretly helping the IRA to obtain bomb parts and expertise while at the same time helping to arm, train, and provide intelligence info to the Loyaists - it's almost as if MI5 was running the whole war, on all sides - gee, I wonder why they would do that?

A look into the history of the Force Research Unit (FRU), the cover name it operated under in Northern Ireland, reveals the extent to which the British government supports and engages in acts of terrorism in order to further its agenda in occupied territories.

The FRU is the same ultra secret cell of the SAS whose criminal activities in Northern Ireland were under investigation by former Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens for more than a decade, during which time it emerged that the unit was involved in the murder of civilians in Northern Ireland.

So Military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill what mi5 considered to be "legitimate targets", many of the victims of these government backed hit squads were innocent civilians. Many of the major IRA bombings in England and Northern Ireland had the fingerprints of the British government and the FRU all over it.

"the irish troops in afghnaistan are there training ISAF and Afghan Police on bomb disposal and other anti IED techniques"

So the Irish Army appear to be playing an eerily similar role in Afghanistan to the one they played (prossibly in full knowing-collusion with the British?) during the war in the North -

what a surprise!!

tst

by tst

Thu Jun 10, 2010 13:42

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Irish Army in Afghanistan to serve under NATO

Comments (7 of 7)