Mark Nichol for The Mail on Sunday has interviewed a former SAS soldier who claims that illegal killings were an unwritten rule of the job. The source claims that, in direct contravention of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), unarmed Afghans were routinely killed but only after high-level intelligence confirmed their identity as Taliban commanders rather than civilians. ‘We went in hard and I admit the tactics do sound gruesome, but these were bad men. We hunted them down only after their guilt had been established by a network of local informants as well as our various high-tech assets.’
Meanwhile in the Sunday Times, Dr Mike Martin a former British army officer has revealed how he expressed severe misgivings about “flawed” intelligence used to justify the raids during top secret “board meetings” in which SAS targets were identified. ‘The special forces night raids set our campaign back massively because they killed so many of the wrong people. They acted on very poor intelligence even when they knew it was poor.’
So which account is correct? To my mind it hardly matters. Both clearly indicate that basic principles governing the use of force were deliberately ignored.
The Mail on Sunday’s informant clearly believes that these actions were justified and that ultimately they saved British lives, but I take a different view. If British soldiers were targeted in their homes and killed, unarmed in front of their families we would all, rightly, be outraged at such wicked and cowardly tactics. The murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby springs to mind. Even in war soldiers are not above the law.
It’s been an extraordinary few days. When I agreed to be interviewed by the Sunday Times and the BBC over allegations the SAS killed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan I knew I would be getting into hot water.
I’ve lost count of the number of people who have expressed admiration at my bravery or incredulity at my stupidity.
Of course, it’s not the first time I’ve been accused of being a Taliban loving apologist and, despite the glorious summer sunshine, it has not been an especially carefree few days.
I believe we forgot some important lessons from history in Afghanistan. Field Marshal Slim, one of Britain’s most successful and respected wartime military leaders, described Special Forces ops in Burma as ‘deeply embarrassing to the commanders on the ground’ because they were ‘controlled from some distant headquarters…with a complete lack of coordination among themselves and in dangerous ignorance of local tactical developments.’
It’s my view that Slim’s statement, written in 1945, could equally have been applied to Afghanistan in 2012.
David Stirling, the revered founder of the SAS, expressed concern over the legitimacy of some SAS missions in the latter stages of WW2, which he considered to be nothing less than ‘executions in cold blood’. Contemporary accounts by former SAS soldiers of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have also alleged so-called mercy killings by special forces operatives in direct contravention of the law of armed conflict and similar to that which saw Sergeant Alexander Blackman convicted of manslaughter.
I cannot say whether or not the current allegations are true but I do believe that the lack of oversight and accountability that the SAS enjoys makes it possible. I maintain that I saw enough in Afghanistan to suggest that an investigation is warranted but I also agree with Lord Dannatt, the former Head of the Army, that there should be ‘no witch hunts but no cover-ups’ . The Ministry of Defence should not be allowed to make this go away.
On the morning of 10th March 2012, British Special Forces burst into the offices of Haji Gul, a respected businessmen in Gereshk, the District Capital of Nahr-E-Saraj and violently abducted him on suspicion that he was a Taliban financier. Bound and blindfolded he was taken to a detention centre in Camp Bastion where he was held for 30 days without charge or access to legal representation before being released without explanation or apology.
At the time I counselled against this course of action but was over-ruled on the basis that if Haji was innocent he would not object to being kidnapped and held against his will. If special forces operatives have nothing to hide it seems to me that they should not now object to an investigation into their conduct, all the while enjoying their liberty and access to justice. Even in war, soldiers are not above the law.
Shortly after I returned to the UK at the end of the 2016/17 ski season I was contacted by George Arbuthnott, an award winning investigative journalist with The Sunday Times Insight Team.
George told me that The Sunday Times were investigating allegations of SAS assassinations in Helmand Province. He’d read my book and was interested in my account of a night raid in Rahim which resulted in the deaths of three farmers the SAS alleged were Taliban insurgents. Although I couldn’t say very much more than I had already published in SPIN ZHIRA, we spoke for about an hour.
Several weeks later George called me again to say that they had tracked down the mother of the three men, Bebe Hazrata, and that she had corroborated my own account of the incident. I was impressed. Rahim now lies deep inside Taliban controlled territory. The Sunday Times investigator had taken a huge personal risk going into an insurgent stronghold to meet with Bebe. I realised that George and the Insight Team were taking this investigation very seriously.
I can’t say whether or not the SAS committed war crimes but I do believe they operated outside of the normal rules of engagement and that many of their operations were counterproductive to the strategic aims of the campaign to “restore the economy and democracy”.
Based on my own experiences and the findings of the Sunday Times Insight Team an investigation seems warranted and it is disappointing to learn that this has been made to go away by the Ministry of Defence.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
One of their reporters, George Arbuthnott has informed me that an incident I wrote about in SPIN ZHIRA corroborates some of their own findings with regards to one such alleged assassination in 2012. This took place in Rahim Kalay, a small, poppy dependent rural community east of Gereshk where the British had established a patrol base.
At the time the village was on the front line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) counter-insurgency, making it a very dangerous and violent place to live. Abandoned by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan shortly after the British withdrawal from Helmand in 2014, it now falls under Taliban shadow governance. Ironically, this makes it a much safer and less violent place to live.
The Sunday Times investigation has revealed that the Ministry of Defence are using the closure of the bogus Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) as an opportunity to shut down a completely separate Royal Military Police (RMP) investigation into the conduct of SAS kill/capture missions.
The IHAT enquiry squandered taxpayers’ money and amounted to a betrayal of British servicemen and women by the ministry responsible for safeguarding them. Based on my own experiences in Rahim, I believe the RMP investigation is warranted and should be allowed to proceed. Former Army Captain and MP for Plymouth Moor View, Johnny Mercer, agrees “We must be very clear that unlawful behaviour is not acceptable. I hope that my efforts to protect our servicemen and women from spurious claims have not been used as cover to legitimise unprofessional behaviour on operations.”
Even in war, soldiers are not above the law and it seemed to me that, all too often in Afghanistan, Special Forces were not subject to the oversight of the military chain of command or the law of armed conflict.
My account of the incident is reproduced below:
“It was an extraordinary tale but not an improbable one. Night raids were commonplace in Afghanistan and Haji was not the first person, nor would he be the last, to receive a visitation from Special Operations Forces in the middle of the night. As with everything in the secretive world of SOF it was difficult to know precise details. But a US military source told researchers for the Open Society Foundation in April 2011 that as many as 40 raids were being carried out every night. Jon Nagel, a former member of Petreus’ staff described them as “an industrial strength counter-terrorism killing machine”.
This sounded most impressive but Mr Nagel appeared to be fighting the wrong war. We were supposed to be conducting a counter-insurgency, not a counter-terrorism campaign. Perhaps I was splitting hairs but Mr Nagel really should have known the difference because his own boss had re-written the counter-insurgency manual to great acclaim and fanfare.
In it Petreus had mandated: “Legitimacy is the Main Objective.” Impressed, no doubt, by British military doctrine writers’ ability to use a dozen words where half that number would have sufficed he went on to state:
“The best counter‑insurgency campaigns integrate and synchronise political, security, economic, and informational components that reinforce governmental legitimacy and effectiveness while reducing insurgent influence over the population. COIN strategies should be designed to simultaneously protect the population from insurgent violence; strengthen the legitimacy and capacity of government institutions to govern responsibly and marginalise insurgents politically, socially, and economically.”
There was no mention of an industrial strength killing machine in any of the manual’s 242 pages.
Unsurprisingly night raids singularly failed to reduce insurgent influence over the population or to demonstrate the legitimacy of our cause. In fact there was plenty to suggest that they were having the directly opposite effect.
Towards the end of our tour a night raid in Rahim, conducted by a joint TF196 and Afghan Special Forces team, resulted in three brothers being gunned down in their compound in front of their wives and children.
Again I found myself in conflict with British Tier One Special Forces. TF196 insisted the men were insurgents, but this claim seemed highly improbable to me. The brothers’ compound was just a short distance from one of our patrol bases and any suspicious activity would almost certainly have come to our attention. Our own J2 Shop had nothing on the men. The general consensus from our analysts was that the SAS, while ruthlessly efficient as always, had directed their special talents against the wrong targets.
When I challenged a TF196 spokesman on their version of events he played their top secret joker once more. Speaking to me by phone from an undisclosed location he said the information was classified. As a known Taliban‑loving apologist and mere part‑time soldier I could not be trusted and had no authority to contradict elite tier one special forces. A short while later I received another telephone call from the charming colonel in Task Force Helmand ordering me to drop my line of enquiry. Although he remained amiable I detected a hardening in his tone.
The TFH top brass had silenced me, but the Rahim spin zhiras remained determinedly voluble on the subject. They steadfastly maintained the brothers’ innocence and were outraged at the brutal executions in front of the victims’ families. Emissaries were despatched to the patrol base threatening retaliation and demanding an apology and blood money for the relatives. The PB Commander was bitterly angry that the raid had gone ahead without his knowledge, destroying the work his own men had done over the previous six months to marginalise the Taliban and protect the population from insurgent violence.
Shortly after we completed our tour the Rahim patrol base was abandoned and Afghan National Security Forces ceded control of the area to the Taliban. Perhaps these events were not linked to the slaying of the supposed insurgents but, given the long memories of our Afghan hosts, this seemed unlikely to me. Our actions had done nothing to strengthen the legitimacy of the GIRoA government as the Petreus COIN Field Manual had directed.’
Shy boy, Rahim Kalay 2012
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
The bomb was detonated at the gate of the New Kabul Bank branch in Lashkar Gah as people queued to receive their salaries.
Lashkar Gah was once the headquarters of Task Force Helmand but is now a city under siege. What has happened to all the “cautious optimism for the future” expressed by the international community back in 2014?
The Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team’s grandiose pronouncement that it “achieved its aim of building a strong platform for future governance and development in Helmand” sounded ridiculously overblown at the time.
Three years later it sounds inexcusably incompetent.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘Absolutely fantastic. Vivid. Tragic. True. This is the book to read on service in Afghanistan.’ Dr Mike Martin, bestselling author of An Intimate War
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
“Absolutely fantastic. Vivid. Tragic. True. This is the book to read on service in Afghanistan.”
So says Dr Mike Martin of SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand. A true story of love, service and incompetence.
His own book, An Intimate War, described as ‘the first serious effort to make sense of the war in Helmand’ by Tom Coghlan of The Times caused a media furore when the Ministry of Defence tried to block its publication because it criticised the British military. It has subsequently received widespread national and international recognition as ‘the book on Helmand’.
Mike has travelled and lived all over the world in order to try and understand conflict. He is a War Studies Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. His other books include Crossing the Congo: Over Land and Water in a Hard Place and Why We Fight.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
Sending a few more troops may win favour in Washington, the original source of the request, but will it make a difference on the ground?
Not without a change of strategy and mindset. Current political and military thinking is based on minimums. The minimum number of troops committed for the minimum amount of time. This is less about winning and more about not losing. Isn’t it time we stopped doing the same thing over and over again expecting something different to happen?
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
Harry, Alfie and I came across this interesting road sign on the way to Le Praz. Once you have spotted the alteration it becomes necessary to check all road signs to see if they have been similarly doctored.
All the evidence suggests that phallic observance of this nature is widespread in the French Alps, just as it was in Afghanistan:
‘DURING THE FEW days I’d been away, I discovered that in my absence someone had ‘cocked’ the notepad I’d been foolish enough to leave in plain sight on my desk.
Cocking was an obsession in the headquarters, a symptom of the sexual repression under which we all laboured. Both British and Danish commands imposed a strict no sex rule which, for the most part, was observed.
This was not the result of a commendable adherence to military discipline. Had an opportunity to engage in sexual congress presented itself I’m pretty certain that most of my colleagues, like me, would have set aside all considerations of military discipline and good order – but opportunity did not present.
For men at their sexual peak – and even for those of us who had already passed that particular milestone – this enforced abstinence inevitably had its frustrations which were expressed in a number of ways. Cocking was one of them.
As far as I am aware this is an exclusively male obsession and involves the covert drawing of phallic imagery. This is nothing new of course. Such representations have been found dating back to the Ice Age around 28,000 years ago, and appear in many ancient cultures and religions. But the art reached new heights in MOB Price. Penis imagery would mysteriously appear on notebooks, notice boards, signage, PowerPoint presentations and operational staff work. An unusual geographical feature to the north‑east of PB Clifton was even referred to on our maps as ‘cock and balls’.
On one occasion I attended a packed briefing session in which a senior officer scribbled a note intended for Colonel James, who was sitting across the room, and handed it to the man next to him to pass down the table. By the time it reached its destination it had passed through the hands of a dozen or so officers and warrant officers, many of whom had surreptitiously cocked it. Although it was impossible to overlook the images with which it was now adorned, Colonel James accepted the note without so much as a raised eyebrow.
Back in civvy street, probably even back in barracks in the UK, Victorian prudishness and political correctness would not have tolerated phallic observance of this nature. HR departments would be called in, enquiries held, perpetrators reprimanded or even sacked. But in MOB Price phallophoric celebration of the Lingam, and to a lesser extent the Yoni, went unchecked.’
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie MC, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
Christina Lamb reports on the case of Royal Marine Sergeant Blackman, now cleared of murdering a Taliban fighter in 2011.
How did one High Court Judge find Sgt Blackman guilty of murder while another dismissed the charge? It seems that crucial evidence was deliberately with-held at his original trial. Sergeant Blackman was therefore ‘sentenced by an authority blind to facts that offered serious mitigation on his behalf.’ This resulted in ‘a failure of moral courage by the chain of command, the burden of which was carried by the man under command.’
We know that Sgt Blackman was deliberately abandoned to this fate because the one officer willing to speak up for him was silenced and eventually resigned his commission in order to present his evidence at the second trial.
It is another sad example of how the military top brass continue to fail the men and women under their command, eroding the values and standards on which the British military is founded.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
Her Majesty the Queen has unveiled a memorial at Victoria Embankment Gardens in London to commemorate ‘the duty and service of British citizens who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way, protected our nation’s interests far from the security of the UK, helped those in danger and worked to improve the lives of those in the Gulf region, Iraq and Afghanistan.’
In an official brochure to mark the occasion, Prime Minister Theresa May stated: ‘The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan called on hundreds of thousands of our military and civilian personnel to put their lives on the line in an heroic effort to help secure greater peace and stability in some of the most hostile environments that we have ever known.’
It’s a remarkable volte face since only last month she described the Iraq and Afghanistan missions as ‘failed interventions’ and warned that there can be ‘no return to the failed policies of the past – the days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over’.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of a memorial to those that served but I prefered the Prime Minister’s earlier honesty about our achievements in the region.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand. A true story of love, service and incompetence. Guaranteed to make you laugh and cry or your money back (but check the small print first), Spin Zhira is a tale of one man’s personal battle against the trials of middle age set on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’ Patrick Hennessey,bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’ Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’ Richard Dorney,bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’ Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’ SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’ William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
SPIN ZHIRA 