Nepalese Solution

[Bullika]

Now i know Greek Cypriots dont like the presence of Turkish troops and Turkish Cypriots want security gurantees but how about if we for the sake of making everybody happy bring in Nepalese Gurkhas! These guys are neither Christian nor Muslim and bust ass if anyone messes with them.


To learn who are the Gurkhas follow this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2786991.stm

[Crash Test Dummy]

Your heading in the wrong direction. De-Militarise. not swap them around.

[cannedmoose]

Although I've got massive respect for the Gurkhas since I grew up in a town where Guerkha's in the British army were garrisoned and thus saw them about town regularly, I don't think that a mercenary force is the answer.

The relationship between the Guerkhas and the British army has been one forged for almost two centuries and continues today. In Cyprus, the situation is different to that in the UK. For any solution to work, you've got to have Cypriots working together for their own security, not feeling that they have guarantors or external forces imposing order, even if they are paid from the Cypriot budget to do so. Can you imagine the uproar if a guerkha soldier mistakenly (I know they don't make many mistakes, but they're still human) was to shoot someone. Suddenly it would become a racial issue, exposing the deep seated xenophobia that I still see lying at the base of the Cypriot mentality.

I would love to see the guerkha's stationed in Cyprus as part of a transition force, Cypriot soldiers would stand to gain so much from exposure to these guys as in my opinion they're the finest natural soldiers in the world, but retain a strong sense of discipline that means they don't cause trouble in the civilian world. When the guerkhas were garrisoned in my home town, there was never an incident involving a guerka soldier and they mixed freely with the civilians who universally respected them.

For those of you who don't know how good the guerkha are, let me recount two stories. The first is from the India/Burma border during WWII, when the Japanese forces were poised to invade India. In the trench lines on the border, the guerkha used to cross the no-man's land at night, enter the Japanese trenches and tie everyone's shoelaces together, before returning to their own lines. They would do this with absolute stealth simply to show the Japanese what they were up against. As a result, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers leaving the lines out of fear of what they were facing... almost unknown anywhere in the Pacific theatre.

The second is a more recent conflict. In the Falklands conflict, a rumour swept a number of Argentine positions that they were about to be confronted by guerkha troops. Knowing their reputation, these positions surrendered en masse to the British forces opposing them.

These give you some idea of just how tough these guys are, but tough combined with an enormous self-discipline that means they never cause problems outside of war. They are a lesson to every soldier.

[Crash Test Dummy]

If you know that a person is fair and there to protect you, not shoot you, rape you or beat people up then you will have the most respect for them. Cypriot military could learn alot as you said Moose

[cannedmoose]

[Crash Test Dummy]

Ye i saw that on the news today