''Australia’s involvement in the 'War on Terrorism'''
on Wednesday, December 26 @ 10:05:34 EST

By Peter Knox
YellowTimes.ORG Columnist (Australia)

(YellowTimes.ORG) – When Australian Prime Minister John Dubya Howard publicly committed Australian troops to the US “War on Terrorism,” he found himself up to his elbows in flack from the Australian Armed Forces who were deeply upset when Howard revealed Australia’s crack Special Air Services (SAS) were being sent in to assist the Americans.

The SAS rely on their invisibility and anonymity to get their job done. The Prime Minister’s public announcement of their involvement could have compromised their safety.

SAS commandos are usually dropped behind enemy lines to carry out covert reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and sabotage. They could be described as a combination between a US CIA agent and a US commando.

Their survival skills and ability to avoid detection, as well as inflict damage on an enemy from within, are legendary, but the element of surprise is an important part of their armory.

This is not the first time John Dubya Howard has blown the SAS’s cover.

He was in similar depth of excreta in 1998 when there was a possibility of a rekindled Gulf War and Howard announced the SAS’s deployment after they were already in Iraq.

The Australian Government was also in trouble for illegally deploying undercover plain-clothed SAS troops during the Sydney Olympics in 2000 to assist police with crowd control and surveillance.

In 2001, the media hasn’t mentioned deployment of Australian troops in Afghanistan since John Dubya’s first announcement, hinting at a heavy rapping of the Prime Minister’s knuckles behind the scenes. The media silence about Australia’s role in Afghanistan has been so complete, in fact, that our troops have not been included in the list of allies throughout the conflict at all, except in the last week or so when it was rumored that there may have been some Australian casualties.

The rumors were not confirmed and Australian troops have once again sunk without a trace in the media coverage of the conflict.

The SAS is probably being utilized in the search for bin Laden, and it’s more than likely they have played an important role in sniffing him out. It’s also possible, however, that many of the bombs that accidentally blasted civilians in Afghanistan did so using intelligence information supplied by Australia’s SAS. Supplying such information is certainly part of their job description.

A brief history of the SAS

Australia’s SAS troops were first deployed during the 1965 confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia, though the unit had been set up 8 years earlier to build on the unconventional warfare skills adopted by elite Australian commandos during World War Two.

In Borneo the SAS developed and refined techniques for rappelling from helicopters, now one of the most utilized methods of inserting troops into combat areas. They employed their techniques during the Vietnam war between 1966 and 1971 undertaking around 2000 jungle patrols.

After the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing during the 1978 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the SAS embarked upon intensive anti-terrorist training so that it is now Australia’s main counter-terrorism unit, training our police forces in anti-terrorist techniques.

During World War Two, the SAS’s predecessors, Australia’s Special Forces, were engaged in numerous special operations behind enemy lines. There is a semi-mythical story about Special Forces troops having to bury themselves underground during a German Army offensive somewhere in Europe. The German command tent, so the story goes, was erected directly over the buried Special Forces commandos and the Germans walked around above them for a number of days before pulling camp and moving on. The Special Forces were not discovered in their hiding place and, in fact, were able to gather much intelligence from within the German command tent.

So, with survival skills like this, Australia’s SAS are a handy weapon for the US to employ in its continued hunt for Bin Laden even if they are not officially doing so.

Peter Knox encourages your comments:  pknox@YellowTimes.ORG

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