The SAS in Afghanistan
Upholding the rules of war in messy conflicts
The public inquiry into alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan hears fresh evidence this week. Lawyers representing Afghan families argue that up to 80 civilians may have been victims of ‘summary killings’ by UK special forces between 2010 and 2013 in night raids in search of Taliban fighters.
The inquiry has led to some debate about how possible it is to uphold the rules of war in a messy, overseas conflict. These quandaries are nothing new. When the men of Lance Corporal George MacDonald Fraser’s section of the Border Regiment were fighting through central Burma in April 1945 Fraser admitted that when they had got into the swing of fighting, killing Japanese was fun. ‘It was exciting; no other word for it, and no explanation needed, for honest folk,’ he wrote in 1992. ‘We all have kindly impulses’ he observed, ‘fostered by two thousand years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbour, but we have a killer instinct too…’[1] As a young soldier he recognised this killer impulse in himself, and saw it too in his fellows. A thoughtful man, he knew that crossing the Rubicon of legalised violence was a dangerous business, because it allowed access to base instincts that ‘gentle Jesus’ had, over centuries, moved carefully into moral territory. The rules of war, formally organised in the Nineteenth Century, were designed to protect ‘gentle Jesus’ while channelling fighting instincts for legal, state-ordained purposes.
It is critical that the highest standards of behaviour with respect to the use of force are upheld. In May 1983 I was shot at by terrorists in an ambush in Northern Ireland. They missed. It was dusk. In the aftermath of the sudden onrush of bullets I couldn’t see the firers, nor identify anything more than the location of their firing point. By the rules of the Yellow Card (a summary of the soldiers’ legal use of force) I was not allowed to fire back. I could only do so if I was sure that in a subsequent court of law (if it came to it) I could prove to the satisfaction of a jury that I had spotted and engaged my attackers, with the evidence (a recovered weapon, or expended bullet cases, for example) to prove it. But equally, as a trained soldier, I had no desire simply to fire in the direction of where the shots came from. We were trained to shoot only when we knew we had a high chance of hitting the enemy. I knew there was always a chance of innocent civilians being hit in a return of fire, and I also knew that this would not have assisted the cause for which I served. This was drummed into us not merely in training, but by the hard experience of operations. At the time no one I knew griped about the Yellow Card. It was there to protect us, to protect the innocent and the people who were forced to live with this violence day by day, and protect the cause with which British troops were serving in Northern Ireland. Of course on occasion the law was egregiously broken, to the great detriment of the path to peace.
British soldiers are authorised by His Majesty’s Government to use violence to achieve purposes of national policy. A careful framework of law shapes the commissioning and delivery of that violence. It makes no sense – legally, logically or morally – for soldiers deliberately to break the very law they are sworn to uphold. Here, I make no distinction between the soldiers serving their country’s interest in the Blanketshire Fusiliers or the SAS. All soldiers in all units responsible for the disciplined management of legal violence come under the same rules and regulations. They must also behave to an agreed level of behaviour, both in combat and out of combat. In this context members of the SAS are simply soldiers who have received the benefit of selection and training to undertake more onerous and specialised tasks than those of their comrades in, for instance, an infantry battalion. It should be expected that soldiers who have received levels of training above and beyond that of an ordinary soldier should also have higher levels of accountability.
I have not yet met a thinking soldier who does not believe that the Armed Forces of a civilised nation purporting to uphold the rule of law must abide by the rules of war to their greatest possible extent. An army that breaks this sacred bond – the ‘gentle Jesus’ dimension that Fraser described – opens the door to moral mayhem and legal chaos. We saw this with the Wehrmacht in the Second World War. History is full of unpleasant examples of just how thin is this ‘gentle Jesus’ thread running through our civilisation. We’ve seen it recently, and horrifically, in Ukraine. Anyone who has experienced the adrenaline rush of combat understands, and should fear, this truth.
Killing in the heat of battle is what soldiers are tasked to do, though those who glory in it are few and are to be pitied. Once the moment of fighting is over in battle the killing must, should and always stop. In my time as soldier I can’t think I came across anyone who did not hold to the maxim that killing outside of combat was murder, pure and simple. Experienced soldiers also know that killing outside of combat is morally repugnant not merely because it takes a life outside of the rules, but because the act of killing diminishes the humanity of the killer. The rules exist to protect the soldier from moral harm. In the British Army this is a belief based on centuries of Christian indoctrination. It’s ‘gentle Jesus’ again. Human life is precious, and it is protected by both moral and civil law. Killing in combat is the judicial exception to this rule, but even then it is recognised – by the presence of military chaplains for example – that the very act of killing another human – even in battle – should be something for regret. How much more, therefore, when this occurs deliberately, out of combat. There is quite obviously a problem when a soldier wants to kill in this way.
It is for these reasons that the British Army, including the SAS, should welcome any calling to account for its actions in the legal execution of its duties.
An edited version of this is in the online Spectator.
[1] George MacDonald Fraser Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma (Harper Collins, 1992), p. 118.
Hi Peter, I also had the pleasure of being shot at and blown up in N Ireland and with no return fire from us. I do despair when I see the title of articles like this as I think it should read Special Forces and not just SAS, after all, the SBS and SRR were also operating over there along with the security services. And to the average Afghan unless they speak English then all parties sound the same? Also the SAS are not there to specifically kill, but gain information primarily, and disrupt any future enemy operations where possible. I find it hard to believe summary executions were carried out and the rebels were far far more vicious with anybody they caught, but you never see that in the press or being investigated so you?
The truth will out eventually, but we should all be wary of what we hear in the press. as they only write and publish what they want us to see, whether for sensationalism or fact.
And finally with Afghanistan behind us we would all do well to remember the Orwellian quote to the effect of “People sleep safely in their beds at night only because rough men are willing to do violence on their behalf”
Delete violence, insert prevention or similar and that is what is happening now 24/7, except we know nothing of it. And rightly so.