Published in Nacional number 576, 2006-11-27

Autor: Eduard Šoštarić

THE MILITARY’S TOP SECRET

The Parliament unaware that the Croatian Army is fighting side by side with the Americans

CROATIAN SOLDIERS are fighting in the south of Afghanistan in the US combat operation ‘Enduring Freedom’; however Defence Minister Berislav Roncevic has kept this fact quiet and the Croatian Parliament never approved the decision

The OMLT is in fact a team of soldiers training Afghani units, as well as following them into combat activities, not unlike the case in Vietnam.The OMLT is in fact a team of soldiers training Afghani units, as well as following them into combat activities, not unlike the case in Vietnam. The little known bulletin of the US Army, published by the 209th regional command of the US Army in the Aghani city of Mazar-e-Sharif, has revealed a very important fact completely unknown in Croatia: that the Croatian Army has begun to participate in the US military operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan. This is a combat operation lead throughout Afghanistan against the Talibans, with large casualty counts on both sides. The Croatian officers and non-commissioned officers are taking part in combat operations around Kandahar together with the 3rd company of the 1st brigade of the 209th Afghan Army Corps as their mentor and instructors, even though this was never approved by the Croatian Parliament. In fact, no one in the Croatian administration knows, or wants to know, that the mandate of the Croatian soldiers in Afghanistan has been changed.

Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ is an exclusively combat anti-terrorist operation that has been carried out for years by the American forces with seven other allies in the south and east of Afghanistan, together with the Afghani military, against the Talibans and Al-Qaeda. This operation is independent of the ISAF peacekeeping operations intended to assist the Afghani government in reinstating their rule over the whole territory through the activities of the PRT provincial reconstruction teams. What does link the two operations is the coordination of activities in the south and east of the country, where NATO is expected to expand its activities to put the entire state territory under its control.

The bulletin also contains a photograph of Croatian sergeant Drazen Klanjec, a member of the mobile team for learning and training (OMLT), who in the meantime was forced to leave Mazar-e-Sharif and return to Croatia after contracting Leishmaniasis.

The first incident of a wounded Croat, non-commissioned officer Goran Spehar from Nasica, was proof that this is indeed a dangerous mission. A member of the OMLT team, he was wounded while working in an are 35 km southwest of Kandahar, the centre of the Taliban resistance. To date, no one has given a clear answer as to what the Croatian troops were doing so far from Kandahar and their home base if the Defence Ministry and Minister Berislav Roncevic claim that they are only on a training mission there. No one has made any statement to the effect that the Croatian soldiers are participating with the elite American special forces unit from Fort Bragg in clearing villages of the Talibans, as wounded Goran Spehar confessed to. Spehar says that he was shocked upon first arriving at Kandahar.

This is completely contrary to the last decision made by the Croatian Parliament 18 months ago, and also confirms the American claims that the Croats are part of Operation Enduring Freedom. At the time Spehar was wounded, the Croatian troops were the furthest most NATO forces base towards the Taliban rebels at Sperwan Ghar on the Arghandab River. At the end of October, this was the site of heavy fighting in which 70 Talibans and civilians were killed. The Sperwan Ghar base is frequently a target for the Taliban rebels and the intensity of their attacks is such that NATO virtually always has to call in the artillery and air forces. Canadian, American and Afghani forces are based here. Were this truly only a training mission, it would certainly not be taking place in such isolated places in the midst of the Taliban strongholds.

Wounded soldier Goran Spehar commented for the Croatian press, revealing the activities of the Croatian soldiers in Afghanistan, unlike the Croatian politicians who have been very careful to keep things under wraps. Spehar said that he was wounded while out on infantry patrol, part of his daily tasks, when they came across Taliban rebels. The US special forces called in air support, they began to clean the village. However, there they met up with the Talibans, and an exchange of fire and shelling took place.

“I went ahead, with the American special forces troops. When we entered onto a street, the Talibans were waiting for us there, and it happened,” commented Spehar for the Croatian press. After arriving in Kandahar, he was shocked at first, but quickly became acclimated. It should be said that the Croatian soldiers within the OMLT units play the same role as the American “military advisors” in Vietnam, and now in the Philippines.

The OMLT is an American invention, in effect in Afghanistan for the past three years. This year, the Croatian contingent became a part of the program. The US considers the OMLT to be support to Operation Enduring Freedom, as the Afghani units engage in combat operations in the south and east of the country, alongside their mentors from other countries, including Croatia. With the help of their mentors and their leadership, they coordinate activities with the American forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. The Croatian soldiers that are part of OMLT exclusively use the American military field manuals that follow the standard operating procedures of the US Army.

Members of the 3rd Company, 1st Brigade of the 209th Corp of the Afghani National Army from the far north of Afghanistan are together with the Croatian soldiers from the OMLT. They came to Kandahar to fight, as it is a well known fact that this part of the country is lacking in soldiers. They claims by Croatian state officials that the Croatian soldiers within OMLT are not involved in combat operations, but only defend themselves in the case of attack, are very frivolous. This is absurd as defence from attack by Taliban guerrillas is nothing short of combat. More so as the Croatian soldiers and Afghani troops head out into dangerous areas that are not yet under NATO control in an attempt to take control over them.

To date, the Croatian state administration has completely rejected any possibility that the Croatian troops are engaging in any combat. They have even gone so far as to state that the Croatian troops are in a kind of observation mission, and not a peace-making mission. This revelation will certainly further bring to light the sudden warming of relations between Croatia and the US, with the Croatian public and the Parliament completely in the dark.

The newest news from American military circles, that the Croatian soldiers are involved as support for the combat operation Enduring Freedom, can no longer be denied by either President Mesic or Premier Sanader. In the Parliamentary decision of 1 July 2005 to send 150 Croatian troops, there is absolutely no mention of Operation Enduring Freedom nor any mention of an even more important fact: that the Croatian troops entrusted with the training of certain Afghani units have to be at their side no matter where they are and what they are doing, i.e. on the battlefield.

As such, a dozen Croatian officers have been transferred from the north to war-ravaged Kandahar, as the Afghani unit they are training received such an order. The Afghani soldiers are still not sufficiently trained to independently run military operations or to coordinate them with their American allies, and therefore some of the Croatian officers and NCOs have become involved in coordinating operations at the level of command of the Afghani companies. The majority of these officers are distributed into individual companies.

The Croatian Parliament was not informed about this type or manner of training when it made its decision in 2005. Moreover, the decision speaks only of the development and training of Afghani forces within the ISAF mission, which to date certainly implied the classical forms of training soldiers in training bases or closed spaces, and certainly not heading into battle. No where have the Croatian soldiers been treated as in operation Enduring Freedom, at least not to the knowledge of the Croatian public and Parliament.

From the Mike Spann camp in Mazar-e-Sharif, where the Croatian soldiers are based, three American officers and NCOs have already been killed as part of the OMLT in battle in the south of Afghanistan. To date, 60 mentors in the OMLT program have been killed, the majority from the US, Canada and Great Britain, which until mid 2006 were mentors to the Afghani army. Germany’s decision proved how sensitive the OMLT mission is, when it refused to send any of its 2700 soldiers based in Afghanistan to the south of Afghanistan, with Chancellor Angela Merkel against the decision. Instead, the German OMLT members train Afghani troops in the much more stable northern part of the country at Mazar-e-Sharif, where the Croatian troops were originally stationed. However, for the German forces to be transferred to Kandahar, for instance, this would require the previous consent of the German Parliament.

The Croatian Parliament is asked virtually nothing when the national limits of activities of Croatian troops in Afghanistan are at issue. This suits NATO, as this organization asks its Member States to be more flexible with respect to limits set by national parliaments.

It is certainly clear that the significance of the Croatian Parliament has become more and more marginalized in this issue. With the last parliamentary decision, made in July 2005 to send 150 Croatian troops to Afghanistan, only the quantitative requests of the government have been satisfied, while the current mandate and mission of those Croatian troops are contrary to what was defined by that decision. In fact, the government kept the true tasks of the mission secret before the parliament, knowing that such a decision would be much harder to make.

Since 1 July 2005, the only thing to not change regarding the Croatian mission was the name of the operation – ISAF. Proof that the mission has changed was also seen in the fact that Minister Roncevic increased their per diem allowances and introduced a new bonus for the complexity of the new tasks. One of these tasks is classical military reconnaissance in dangerous terrain for the purpose of collecting intelligence. Intelligence activities have always and everywhere been considered combat support to operations, while such activities were not defined within the parliamentary decision. The Croatian officers and NCOs from the 350th Intelligence Company are conducting these reconnaissance missions as part of a mobile liaison and observation team (MLOT) in Chagcharan, and area where Lithuania serves as head of the provincial team. This has brought the Croatian troops directly into political battle, as they are collecting intelligence for the Afghani government on possible local political opponents that usually have little or nothing to do with the Talibans.

Those who proposed the parliamentary decision to send Croatian troops to Afghanistan called only upon the fact that the ISAF mission received approval from Resolution 1386 of the UN Security Council. However, since the most recent parliamentary decision, three new Security Council Resolutions have been passed: 1623, 1659 and 1707. Also, at the session of the highest ranking political bodies of NATO on 8 December 2005, a decision was made to introduce new activities to the ISAF mandate, which includes all those Croatian soldiers which until that time did not have such a mandate as, with the exception of a unit of military police in Kabul, only a handful of Croatian civil experts had been distributed in Feyzabad in the north of the country.

The conclusions of the NATO sessions state that the ISAF is to initiate security operations from its areas of responsibility in cooperation with the Aghani security forces, and to begin mentoring and supporting the Afghani army to strengthen its capabilities and achieve the set goals. When the military planners received the task to expand to the whole of Afghanistan, they set up five regional military command centres and assigned them the task of initiating military operations in the territory of their responsibility to assist the Afghani government to maintain security with the full engagement of the Afghani army. However, these new aspects of the mission were never discussed in the Croatian parliament.

mailto:eduard.sostaric@nacional.hr

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