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KIWI TROOPS IN BOSNIA -by Ciaron O'Reilly --------------------- Christchurch Catholic Worker Yesterday, 200 New Zealand troops left for specialist training in the U.K. in preparation for deployment to Bosnia. A total of 250 Kiwi troops will be Bosnia-bound by the end of the month as a result of a deal struck between John Major and Jim Bulger. The deal done at Downing Street guaranteed the troops in exchange for the first British warship visit to New Zealand in frequenting New Zealand shores in response to the anti-nuclear weapons ban and legislation in the mid-80's. Bulger is hoping this "cannon fodder for ship visit" swap will be the beginning of the end of New Zealand's isolation in matters of global death-dealing imposed since the nuclear warship ban and subsequent collapse of Anzus. He is hopeful that Clinton will follow suit, begin to send warships and normalise military relationships. The New Zealand peace movement got much more than it asked for when the Lange government embraced the anti-nuke ship ban as a path to power in 1984. The over reaction by the "neither confirm nor deny" Americans ended Anzus and imposed neutrality on New Zealand. The Anti-Nuke position became so entrenched in the electorate that Lange was able to pull its legislation out of the hat to win a second election. The National Party conservatives were forced to embrace the legislation to win back power in 1990. All these governments have made every effort to sidestep its consequences - this has included voting patterns in the U.N., the weekly USAF Starlifter flights through Christchurch to Nurrungar & Pine Gap and sending a token contingent of Kiwis off to support nuclear armed forces in the Gulf Massacre. The New Zealand peace movement has failed to celebrate and support neutrality as a valid way to be in the world. It remains largely uncritical of the United Nations, now more than ever a Post Cold War arm of American foreign policy. Lessons from Vietnam; & World War I (let alone Somalia, Cambodia and The Gulf) seem ignored as everybody from Ministers to Labor Opposition to Barry Humphries sidekick cheers on the training of these young men. The national vibe is as though they are training for a Rugby test on some distant playing field, rather than heading for the minefields of potentially the prelude to World War III. The 240 Kiwis will be under the tutelage of the commander of the British SAS - responsible for their fair share of ethnic cleansing in the Catholic ghettoes of Northern Ireland. They will also be joined by 2500 Turkish troops who have been busy slaying Kurds for the last 20 years. The first Kiwi contingent are being drawn mainly from the Linton- based "Whiskey Company" and will arrive in Bosnia at the beginning of August. They will be replaced after six months by a contingent from the infantry battalion at Burnham Camp, just outside of Christchurch. We have recently begun vigilling against the deployment - at both Burnham and the city's military recruitment centre. It always shocks me how young these guys are and the real possibility that they may step on one of the two million mines laid over there or be shot down by weapons that some guy in a suit & tie has made a profit from. It always amazes how principled the politicians rhetoric sounds - whether they be Croatian, Serb, Muslim, US or Kiwi - when sending young men and women to the slaughter. When one of these Kiwis comes home in a body bag, you can ask the question was it worth a visit from the imperial navy, because stripped of the empty rhetoric - and in the absence of addressing the root causes of this latest war -that is what this deployment is all about.