A BBC investigation reveals that a commando from the Special Air Service (SAS), the British special forces, allegedly killed at least 54 people in suspicious circumstances, facts concealed by their hierarchy. Interview with Frank Ledwidge, former soldier and professor at the University of Portsmouth.
According the British channel investigation broadcast on Tuesday, unarmed Afghans were killed “in cold blood” by the SAS during night raids between November 2010 and May 2011 and weapons were then placed on their corpses to justify these crimes.
Senior officials, including General Mark Carleton-Smith, who headed Britain’s special forces at the time, were aware of concerns about these operations within the SAS, but did not inform the military police, reports further. the BBC. It is a criminal offense under UK law governing the armed forces for a commander to fail to inform the military police if he has knowledge of potential war crimes.
RFI : What is the extent of the revelations of this investigation?
Frank Ledwidge: These revelations are extremely damaging and damning to the reputation of our armed forces in general, although perhaps unfairly in this case, because it is the special forces who are at the center of the matter. Many of us have known for many years that there was something extremely suspicious about the way the special forces conducted their operations, especially between around 2009 and 2012, and possibly beyond. This brilliantly documented investigation sheds light on those very strong suspicions many of us had about behavior that more closely resembles Latin American death squads than professional Western armies.
What can be the consequences of such revelations?
As Colonel Oliver Lee mentions on the BBC show, we should consider opening a public inquiry into these murders or alleged murders. The military police being, of course, a branch of the Ministry of Defense, they tried to investigate this matter. They are unlikely to go beyond an independent institution.
The only way forward, in practice, in the United Kingdom, is the opening of a public inquiry. But failing that, I think there are very strong arguments for going to the International Criminal Court, since the UK MoD is unwilling to investigate and prosecute this case. I am not talking about the individuals who shot people, but about the senior officers who covered up the facts or who ordered the continuation of these operations. If the UK is not ready to lead the investigation, then perhaps the ICC will be.
► To read also: The British army has committed war crimes in Afghanistan, according to the BBC
In particular, you’re referring to internal emails that reveal high-ranking officers knew about it or had serious concerns, but did nothing?
Everyone up and down the chain of command knew, and most people involved in operations in Helmand since 2008 knew it too. The special forces acted under their own chain of command, in direct contradiction to the operations of the rest of the highly professional armed forces, 99% of which do not commit war crimes, and often directly undermine the activities of the regular army through their operations. sometimes deadly.
So it was no secret, it was known by many, probably thousands of people now. Now, whether those thousands of people believe or approve that action should have been taken is another matter. But I think a lot of people knew about it and it’s not disputed.
On the other hand, the point that must be made, which is extremely serious, is that it is the duty of all officers, especially police officers, to report serious crimes when they see them. If they haven’t, it’s a criminal offence. It is a dereliction of duty, and at the very least I think it can be prosecuted in the UK courts by court martial.
The information that these people were acting on was most likely very suspicious, if not completely false.
–Frank Ledwidge
What is damning in this report is the extent of the revelations?
Yes, it is a considerable scale. Panorama (BBC broadcast, editor’s note) has established that it seems likely that at least 54 people were unlawfully killed by the Special Air Service (SAS), one of the United Kingdom’s special forces units, in over a period of six months.
But if it happens again over multiple tours of duty, and it seems likely to me, it’s because those units were pretty much competing with each other for how many kills they could “get”. So we have a figure, probably over three or four years, of several hundred people killed illegally.
Many people may say ” they are all taliban ” and ” they had to be eliminated, otherwise they would have been released which serves as their justification for these murders. But the thing is, unfortunately, I can tell you from my own experience in similar theaters that the intelligence that these people were acting on was most likely highly suspect, if not completely false.
Special forces have been used by local actors in Afghanistan as useful pawns to serve local interests. You have to put things in their context: these are soldiers who don’t speak the language, who have very little local context, and who can be used to resolve conflicts that are not theirs.
The intelligence the special forces acted on was generally useless, and therefore the people they were pursuing were, very regularly, not dangerous. And even though they were dangerous, they shouldn’t have been murdered in their own home. Most of them were probably not bad people. And even if they were, they shouldn’t have been murdered like that. This is not the way to do professional forces.
Does this show a breakdown in the hierarchy of information as well?
Absolutely, but there are two hierarchies: the special forces report to London and the rest of the army, that is 95 to 97% of the troops, report to a different chain of command and these two chains of command do not not meet on the battlefield. They meet in London.
They therefore do not operate together. What you have are patrols that during the day are desperately trying to get the message across that they are there to protect the population and trying to build relationships and build credibility. And at night you have gunmen coming down from helicopters and murdering people in their homes, destroying all the work done during the day. So these two chains of command to the hierarchies acted in direct opposition to each other.
The actions of these soldiers ruin the work, insofar as that work was in any way productive, of the rest of the army.
–Frank Ledwidge
What other concerns might such an investigation raise?
There is a failure at the strategic level and this failure is reflected at the political level where you have multiple objectives and indistinct goals. For politicians and soldiers in the field, it is the same syndrome that occurs when two chains of command operating against each other ruin the work done beforehand. The actions of these soldiers ruin the work, insofar as that work was in any way productive, of the rest of the army.
This is not a case where many soldiers will say “ Oh you know they’re our boys and we should let them do their job “. I remember when we went to a village (in Afghanistan) and tried to build relationships, we found out that someone had killed four people in a house. The whole village was in mourning and they blamed us: it was the end of all possible relations.
So if you put that on a scale of hundreds of such cases you can imagine why it went so wrong and why special forces are the most unpopular and counterproductive in terms of dealing with international forces , because of these night raids. It got to the point where Presidents Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai repeatedly complained directly to international command and on one occasion simply ordered them shut down because they were too counterproductive to the rest of the mission.
We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of people here. Not just 54.
This is one turn, one unit, one location, and there have been dozens of such incidents. Americans, Aussies, probably French, Danes, obviously Brits, but I think Americans, Brits and Australians are probably the worst.