> Army takes valuable lessons to Iraq and Afghanistan

Richard Norton-Taylor and Owen Boycott
Wednesday August 1, 2007
The Guardian

Operation Banner began in August 1969. Over the following 38 years, the army, and their political masters, learnt lessons, often painful ones, which military commanders say are highly relevant to current counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One reason, they say, why the US military machine has fared so badly there is because it did not share the experience of Northern Ireland. American generals, including David Petraeus, now the top US military commander in Baghdad, say they learned a lot from their British counterparts when they drew up their new Counterinsurgency Field Manual published last month.

In its internal review of Operation Banner, recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, the army says it learned from its own mistakes, though it skirts over Bloody Sunday, January 30 1972 when paratroopers opened fire on civil rights marchers, killing 13 unarmed, mainly young men (another man died later from his injuries). After that, the IRA had no problems attracting recruits. British soldiers now say they are concerned that killing Afghan civilians merely drives people into the hands of the Taliban.

In its review, the army brings out other lessons that resonate in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan.

There can be no military solution to counterinsurgency campaigns, and no talk of a military "victory", it says. Political, economic, and social progress, not military occupation, is the answer, it adds. "Unless the causes of unrest are addressed, insurgency or serious unrest will continue," the army concludes.

It drives home the point that army commanders were always against internment without trial. It refers explicitly to the Blair government's failure to extend the limit on arrest without charge to 90 days. It adds: "Release of those interned would have been inevitable at some stage and the ... opportunities afforded to sympathisers, and libertarians in a democracy, would have been huge (as the US authorities are finding over the Guantánamo detainees)."

In what the government calls the "normalisation" of Northern Ireland, 5,000 British troops will be stationed in a peacetime garrison based in 10 locations and training for operations abroad like the rest of the army. The new garrison will consist of units of 19 Light Brigade, RAF personnel, and a new territorial unit - 38 (Irish) Brigade. In September, MI5 will take on overall responsibility for security from the police special branch.