A WARRIOR IS ABOUT TO BE SACRIFICED

‘The soldier has been removed from duty and flown home. There is no sense of glory here, more a sense of shame. He should not have done what he did.’

A source

A PRIVATE FROM THE 1^st battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles has been brought home from Afghanistan by the MoD, and may face a court martial. His ‘crime’ appears to be that he cut the head off of a dead Taliban with his kukri knife; apparently, his action was contrary to a part of the Geneva Convention which says that soldiers are banned from demeaning their enemies.

I do not know who the MoD are trying to impress with their treatment of this young private. What he did was done in the tradition of the Gurkha. The MoD openly boasts that, quite rightly, the Gurkha is brave and a much feared warrior, and we should be grateful that he is an integral part of our army.

At the centre of the Gurkha’s reputation is the infamous kukri, the curved knife that belies their fearsome reputation. They used it in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War in the same way it was used by this young private in Afghanistan today; and they used it then without any kind of rebuke from General Slim let alone the possibility of a full blown court martial - on the contrary, Slim praised its use against such an enemy as the Japanese, and he would have been just as stoical regarding its use against the Taliban.

I know my father, who fought in Burma, would have taken this young Gurkha’s side if he were alive today. I can remember him telling me as a child, of a full frontal charge he witnessed carried by the Gurkha against a Japanese position. They attacked the enemy with great loss and ferocity, but once upon the enemy they threw to one side their rifles and unsheathed their kukris.

In Burma it was not only the front-on battle with the enemy that was the pattern in Europe during the last war. In Burma it was cat and mouse. The jungle afforded protection for all combatants, and so we sent out small parties of men to make contact with the enemy and disrupt their supply lines through thickets of jungle. The Gurkha’s often returned with the heads of Japanese soldiers they had killed to prove their success, and every British soldier was glad of it.

THE TALIBAN SENDS AGAINST US suicide bombers - where in the Geneva Convention is this specifically stated to be not cricket? And if it is, why are Taliban ignoring it and what are the lawyers who concocted the convention going to do about it?

According to the Daily Mail , what this young Gurkha did amounted to a ‘gross insult to the Muslims of Afghanistan, who bury the entire body of their dead even if parts have to be retrieved’. And we no doubt go out of our way to retrieve these parts, which is why this young Gurkha is being made the sacrificial lamb, and why his action is being treated like a crime.

I watched a short video recently where a British sniper told of an incident that occurred in Helmand where he viewed through his rifle scope a trap being laid for his comrades by three Taliban, but before he was allowed to target and kill the enemy he had to ask a senior officer for permission to fire. Such are the preposterous rules of engagement our young men are being asked to follow.

The fact is, is that I wish there were more men like this young Gurkha. If he were allowed the freedom to fight using the same methods as his ancestors (methods which the MoD are all too willing to propagandise in order to bolster the Gurkha reputation) then this war in Afghanistan may end sooner than we hope.

But I also believe that if our politicians allowed our soldiers to use the same methods as their ancestors, the quote at the top of this piece would never have been signed by ‘a source’.

When confronting such a belligerent enemy as we find ourselves doing in Afghanistan, then we must find their weakest point and exploit it to our benefit. In the case of the Taliban it seems that it is important that once dead, according to Muslim tradition, the whole body must be returned, and apparently every effort has to be made by the British to return all body parts. This is why the young Gurkha private’s actions so upset the ministry.

It is not this young private who should face trial but the MoD as well as their political masters. For we have found a weakness to be exploited; but the fierceness we so much admire in the Gurkha has been tempered in our own armed forces by the modern politician. It is the hope of every general to find a weakness in his enemy’s defences and exploit that weakness in order to overcome the enemy. What seems to be happening in Afghanistan, is that our men are being asked to fight a civilised war - when no such war has ever been fought in history: if it had been the case, then the side that deployed the philosophy would be the loser.

THE TALIBAN HAVE GOT OUR measure. They know our men are being made to fight with one hand tied behind their back; they also know that we will be leaving Afghanistan in 2014. All they have to do is wait, and if in the meantime they manage to kill another 100 or so British soldiers then all well and good. But what such deaths will accomplish as far the West is concerned is beyond my comprehension.

In the meantime a brave young soldier faces a court martial and possible prison…and why? Because he played the Taliban at their own game? He showed the kind of ruthlessness that is required to defeat a ruthless enemy.

This young Gurkha, whatever the outcome, can feel proud that he behaved no differently to his ancestors and kept alive the Gurkha reputation.