Talk:Stay-behind

Merge?
I don't see the point of mergeing this article into Gladio. It's better to erase Gladio stuff in it and just keep the referenslink to it. Stay-Behind as definition has nothing todo with Gladio. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Roberth edberg (talk • contribs).

I agree : Gladio is too big and controversal and should be kept separate. Regular military units were also intended for stay behind operations ( eg the SAS ) and this should be mentioned. Also does saty behind refer to your territory only? I would argue it implies to any unit left behind during a retreat. David J.James —The preceding unsigned comment was added by David.j.james (talk • contribs).
 * No...but only to your question that it only refers to a country's a territory. "Stay behind" can refer to any military unit whose military duty entails performing this task if ever necessary. For example, the US military has a significant presence in Europe. If, during the Cold War, the Soviets invaded and forced a NATO retreat, chances were practically guaranteed special forces unit would be left behind to assist or manage the other stay-behinds (among the US Army Special Forces' missions is, after all, contacting and working with resistance groups in foreign countries). Shadowrun 07:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

IHT article:: One afternoon, in the midst of a monsoon, I sought out one of the founders of the pro-jihadi strategy, the retired general Mirza Aslam Beg. He lived in Rawalpindi, the military capital half an hour from Islamabad, in a brick and tile-roofed mansion with a basketball hoop, flowing greenery and Judy, his one-eyed cocker spaniel. The house was immaculate, with marble floors, rugs, fine china and porcelain on display behind glass and an amusing portrait of Aslam Beg as a young, Ray-Banned, pommaded officer. His mansion sits across the street from Musharraf's. Aslam Beg played a leading role in the military's creation of "asymmetrical assets," jargon for the jihadis who have long been used by the military as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was chief of the army staff from 1988 to 1991, while the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was selling the country's nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Beg held talks with the Iranians about exchanging Iranian oil for Pakistani nuclear skill. Aslam Beg likes to remind visitors that he was one of a group of army officers trained by the C.I.A. in the 1950's as a "stay-behind organization" that would melt into the population if ever the Soviet Union overran Pakistan. Those brigadiers and lieutenant colonels then trained and directed the Afghan jihadis. In the 1980's, "the C.I.A. set up the largest support and administrative bases in Mohmand agency, Waziristan and Baluchistan," Aslam Beg told me. "These were the logistics bases for eight long years, and you can imagine the relations that developed. And then Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Saudis developed family relations with the local people." The Taliban, he said, fell back after 2001 to these baselines. "In 2003, when the U.S. attacked Iraq, a whole new dimension was added to the conflict. The foreign mujahedeen who'd fought in Afghanistan started moving back to Afghanistan and Iraq." And the old Afghan jihadi leaders stopped by the mansion of their mentor, Aslam Beg, to tell him they were planning to wage war against the American occupiers.

In the Land of the Taliban International Herald Tribune website http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/22/asia/web.1022taliban.php accessed on 2006-10-26 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.73.35.102 (talk • contribs).

Iraq?
Wasn't Hussein supposed to have a stay behind army? Feyadeen or something? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 136.142.141.195 (talk • contribs).

merge
There is nothing in this article that cannot be discussed in the "Operation Gladio" article. Intangible 10:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Operation Gladio is just one of many stay-behind operations in history. Why should this article be merged into it?  It'd be like merging narcotics into morphine - just plain silly. I strongly oppose the proposed merge. — ceejayoz talk  04:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Ceejayoz. Tazmaniacs 14:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Forgive the reference, but it's like merging the entire subject of "sexually-transmitted diseases" under the entry AIDS. Shadowrun 07:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

tag
This article is lacking proper sources, and includes the same exceptional claims that are also scattered around in other Wikipedia articles. Ganser is a conspiracy nut, who also founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Intangible2.0 18:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Please don't mix up stuff Intangible, and don't jump up saying "Ganser founded Scholars for whatever" when a short time ago you claimed "Ganser is a member of Scholars whatever" and that anyhow, all of the Ganser stuff in this article is not related to 9/11. We are not talking about 9/11 here, and we're quite tired about it! &mdash; or are you in fact trying to attract attention to 9/11 conspiracy theories? Don't tell me, nothing like arguing about how heavy the towers were! Tazmaniacs 00:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Then see the quote I provided from Philip Davies re Ganser on Talk:Operation Gladio. But when Ganser starts writing book chapters for Olive Branch Press, redacted by David Ray Griffin, then whom am I to second guess Ganser's work. Intangible2.0 02:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This is guilt from association. Ganser's work on Gladio is to be judged on piece, and if you did read the book, you can see from where the references come. If you ever find a more comprehensive book on Gladio, I'll be glad to hear about it! Tazmaniacs 14:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

10th Special Forces Group (Bad Tölz, Germany) Mission
The first deployed United States Army Special Forces group was assigned to Germany, was intended both to have stay-behind operations, as well as having sub-units fall back with retreating NATO forces and then penetrate. They also had a capability to run missions into the Warsaw Pact countries.

While they certainly worked with CIA, they were a regular military formation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hcberkowitz (talk • contribs) 04:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Sweden and IB
The note that stay-behind operations in Sweden were organized by the covert Informationsbyrån agency is highly disputable. There may have been several attempts by different groups to prepare for stay-behind resistance in the event of (Soviet) occupation, but at any rate this was not IB's main mission. This needs sourcing and realigning with the main article on Informationsbyrån. Strausszek 30 January 2009, 02.32 (CET)

Gibraltar
Perhaps some mention of the famous stay-behind cave in Gibraltar? Perhaps the ultimate stay-behind operation. --jmb (talk) 01:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The line is blurred
Whilst you are ostensibly correct (stay-behind and Operation Gladio are not the same thing), the term seems to have been originally created by Americans after WW2 to describe (largely) secretive organizations with the express purpose of counter-Communist insurgency in the event of either Soviet occupation OR the rise to power of a local Communist political group (seen by many American politicians as the same thing). To talk about one without the other would be to willfully ignore the partisan nature of these stay-behind groups in the first place. They were not there to counter the far-right or neo-fascists (indeed many of them were formed from fascist organizations; Prince Valerio Borghese's 10th flotilla being a prime example), thus Gladio can be seen as the ultimate expression of stay-behind ideology, and should therefore form an intrinsic element of the wider definition. Moseley101 (talk) 04:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is not mentioned Soviet Union in WWII?
In fact, Soviet Union was perhaps the first country that decided to set up a military structure of this type against nazi invaders.--Deguef (talk) 13:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Who has any sources for that? 188.108.49.139 (talk) 11:27, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Turkey
The Turkish references are confusing. Here Ergenekon is mentioned. In Operation Gladio an organisation called Ozel Harp Dairesi is mentioned. In Ergenekon it says: "Mütercimler and others, however, draw a distinction between the Ergenekon of today and the original one, which they equate with the Counter-Guerrilla; Operation Gladio's Turkish branch. Today's Ergenekon is said to be a "splinter" off the old one." Martin Packard gives no name for the Turkish "Stay-Behind" network but says it "came under the SWD - Special War Department" (p. 364). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nychtopouli (talk • contribs) 13:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

There is also the Counter-Guerrilla page. This sounds like the network Packard is referring to.--Nychtopouli (talk) 13:10, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I think I have solved the puzzle. Someone correct me if I am wrong. Ozel Harp Dairesi means Special War Department. This is or was the NATO "Stay-Behind" network in Turkey. Kontrgerilla [Counter-Guerrilla] was another name for it. Ergenekon is a later splinter group.--Nychtopouli (talk) 13:31, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

danemark
Absalom in danemark — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.159.60.44 (talk) 00:48, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

"Gruppe Ralf Forster" of GDR (Communist East Germany until 1989)
The DDR "GDR" (German Democratic Republic) had a stay behind organisation from 1969 until 1989 that was trained for sabotage, bomb attacks or liberation of prisoners in case of "times of crisis" or a NATO attack. It was supported by the GDR with money, weapons and explosives. 200 people received paramilitary training by the East German Army. The Group was founded by the GDR's head of state. Existence of the group was first published in 1989 and was supported by old files that were found in German archives in 2004.

There is a bunch of sources in the German Wikipedia about this stay-behind organisation. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppe_Ralf_Forster

It would be very interesting to find out if more member states of the Warsaw pact had stay behind organisations. Maybe even the soviet union. Stay behinds already seem to have existed in the soviet union during the second world war. 188.108.49.139 (talk) 11:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

The Stasi had a paramilitary unit for these tasks. https://www.bstu.de/archiv/fachbeitraege/geschichte-der-spezialkampffuehrung-abteilung-iv-des-mfs/ Para medic TaSi (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Wartime role only
These stay behind organisations were purely military. They were not to be activated "if a communist party came to power in a democratic election", nor were they political or extreme right wing. Far too much nonsense has been written about these military units. As a minimum the unsubstantiated claim that they were to be activated if a communist party came to power in a democratic election should be deleted.Royalcourtier (talk) 05:23, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

List of military stay-behind (trained) units
Following the discussion about "stay-behind" and "Gladio" and the argument (with which I agree) that stay-behind was a war-fighting role and tactic employed by military units and (at potentially a later stage after the attack i.e. under occupation) clandestine networks, I suggest creating a list of such units - possibly by command (in the case of NATO). Thoughts? Para medic TaSi (talk) 15:47, 3 March 2021 (UTC)