{"id":237369,"date":"2016-04-12T00:24:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T00:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/libya-britains-next-afghan-disaster-uk-colonel-warns-of-mission-creep\/"},"modified":"2016-04-12T00:24:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T00:24:45","slug":"libya-britains-next-afghan-disaster-uk-colonel-warns-of-mission-creep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/libya-britains-next-afghan-disaster-uk-colonel-warns-of-mission-creep\/","title":{"rendered":"Libya\u2026 Britain\u2019s next Afghan disaster? UK colonel warns of \u2018mission creep\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.04\/thumbnail\/570b6be4c46188404a8b45e8.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        British plans to send troops to Libya could result in another Afghanistan-style disaster, according to a former army colonel who led a \u201ccalamitous\u201d mission in the war-ravaged North African state in 2012.<\/p>\n<div readability=\"99.346308310164\">\n<p>Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Wieloch told the Telegraph on Monday that British involvement carried \u201c<em>a great danger of mission creep.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mission creep \u2013 the military term for a war which, due to political factors or inept leadership, wanders off the original strategic track \u2013 is an accusation regularly levelled at the British politicians and military leaders who oversaw the war in Afghanistan\u2019s Helmand province after 2006.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LltoSFTLqGI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It comes as US President Barack Obama admitted he views the Libyan war as his \u201c<em>worst mistake<\/em>\u201d while in office. In March it was reported that Obama privately refers to the conflict\u2019s shortcomings as UK PM David Cameron\u2019s \u201c<em>sh*t-show.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The British government is locked in a row over the risks associated with the deployment of 1,000 British troops as part of an Italian-led brigade if and when a unity government is established.<\/p>\n<p>Wieloch said that if anything could bring about the dangerous unification of warring militias it would be \u201c<em>a large intervention of Western forces with boots on the ground.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The plan to have Italy as the lead nation would have a similar effect, he said, due to the country\u2019s brutal colonial past in Libya.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wm1og2b1ovA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Italian forces carried out a string of atrocities in the country, one of the most widely known being the 1911 Tripoli massacre, in which around 4,000 civilians were killed by a vengeful Italian army following a vicious battle with Ottoman forces.<\/p>\n<p>Wieloch did not oppose intervention by Muslim-led forces, but said the use of Italian troops is out of the question because \u201c<em>Libyans remember the fascist regime.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>It would be very tempting to get involved in other things other than just training, for example crisis response, or defeating ISIL [Islamic State\/IS, formerly ISIS] itself,<\/em>\u201d the colonel warned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>We have seen this before in a number of operations,<\/em>\u201d he said, referring to the Afghan war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>It\u2019s then very easy for the local population to not understand what the international community is trying to do,<\/em>\u201d Wieloch said. It is \u201c<em>absolutely the case<\/em>\u201d that troops could be dragged into the violent local disputes between militias.<\/p>\n<p>Wieloch was UK commander of a small military mission briefly responsible for reconstruction after the 2011 air war which precipitated Libya\u2019s descent into anarchy.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the Express newspaper in March he said the unit had no budget, received no mail or medals, had to buy its own equipment and wasn\u2019t even visited by a senior officer. However, he called their withdrawal in 2012 a \u201ccalamitous error.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\" readability=\"5.98\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\" readability=\"5.52\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">UK troops under Italian command in a collapsing state where both are hated. Libya would be like Somalia + Afghanistan + Rorke&#8217;s Drift.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Glenton (@joejglenton) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joejglenton\/status\/719475501627260928\">April 11, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Wieloch served for over 20 years in the Queen\u2019s Royal Lancers, a venerable cavalry regiment whose bugler sounded the Charge of the Light Brigade in Crimea in 1854.<\/p>\n<p>Though the UK military has produced other contenders in the interim, the rash charge by poorly-led cavalry against entrenched Russian guns was widely seen as Britain\u2019s most bungling tactical disaster.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/339191-libya-war-afghanistan-wieloch\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British plans to send troops to Libya could result in another Afghanistan-style disaster, according to a former army colonel who led a \u201ccalamitous\u201d mission in the war-ravaged North African state in 2012. Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Wieloch told the Telegraph on Monday that British involvement carried \u201ca great danger of mission creep.\u201d Mission creep \u2013 the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-237369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}