The British committed horrific crimes in Afghanistan. According to eyewitnesses, special forces soldiers killed unarmed civilians, sleeping people and children. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford of the British Army writes about this in the Daily Express.
The BBC Panorama program will soon reveal horrifying details of how some units of the British Special Forces (SF) engaged in illegal activities during operations in Afghanistan. Many disturbing allegations have already surfaced during the ongoing public investigation into alleged war crimes by British special forces. However, for the first time, former members of the SAS Special Airborne Service and the SBS amphibious Assault Ship service broke their long-standing silence and provided eyewitness accounts to the BBC.
What they say is simply shocking. Veterans claim to have seen SAS members kill unarmed people in their sleep, execute handcuffed prisoners, including children, and more. The new testimony covers allegations from many years ago. This is much longer than the three-year period that is currently being studied as part of a judge-led investigation in the UK.
It goes without saying that this is not the best image for elite British units. Of course, they are doing a good job, and we are all grateful to them for that, but I am convinced that if we stop adhering to moral principles, we will become no better than terrorists and enemies who seek to harm us. And then we will lose.
The scandal affected most of the current hierarchy of the British army: a succession of chiefs of the General Staff (CGS), as well as various ministers of state from different parties, had a certain relationship to the SF. In addition, there are rumors that former British Prime Minister David Cameron was aware that British special forces were killing civilians in Afghanistan. He has been repeatedly informed about this, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
If such charges are proven, they clearly go beyond the law and completely contradict the generally accepted practice of armed conflicts, and the perpetrators, in fact, are war criminals who must be brought to justice. Then the question arises: how could this happen? How could a disciplined military unit "get out of control" and become an "exception" in the British Army? There may be several reasons for this.
The main one may be that, being officially recognized as "elite" units, senior officers were afraid of interference in their working methods and became more and more impregnable — perhaps even too impregnable. If it is established that these murders took place, I and many of my former comrades will have a question: "Where were the officers?" I know that SF, as a rule, operate in small groups and that a junior officer could not always be present there. But it is unlikely that this happened every time.
These alleged circumstances are exactly the case when an officer should have intervened and firmly said that in the British Army (in SF or not) They don't do that. If they were present and did nothing, then they are no less guilty of this than ordinary soldiers who participated in offenses and failed to cope with the role of commanders. Another opinion shared by many of my former colleagues is that a culture that encourages aggressive sexist and racist behavior among police officers sometimes turns a blind eye to unscrupulous actions.
This culture was partly the cause, as well as the consequence, of the lax attitude towards discipline and ranks that permeates the SAS and may have already ceased to be a positive phenomenon, if it ever was one. It can also explain to some extent why junior officers are relegated to the background or ignored. I hope all this will be studied during the ongoing investigation. As the old military saying goes, "There are no bad soldiers, there are bad commanders."
If at least part of what has been said is true, then ethics and culture either come from top management or condone it.
So what will happen to the British SF now? Do not jump to conclusions until the results of the investigation are known, and this may take some time. I also don't think we should expect the dissolution of the SAS or SBS, as happened with the 1st Parachute Regiment of the French Foreign Legion in 1961 after an unsuccessful coup attempt against the French government. But some things still have to be changed.
The only question is: will the British government and the Ministry of Defense have the courage to take drastic measures?