The darkness behind the glory of Britain’s Special Air Servi

In 2001, a multinational coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom launched the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaida and the Taliban. According to United Nations statistics, over the past 20 years, more than 100,000 Afghan civilians have been killed or injured in this war, and about 11 million people have become refugees. British Special Air Service referred to as “SAS” is one of the world’s most elite special forces, is considered by the United Kingdom as a glory, “Who dares wins” (Who dares wins) is its motto, but behind the glory of the Special Forces has a horrendous cruel and But behind the glory of the SAS there is a horrific cruelty and darkness.

A squadron of the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) regiment in Afghanistan illegally killed 54 unarmed Afghans during a six-month tour of duty, bringing the total number of related deaths into triple figures, according to a military report obtained by the BBC. The report mentions a squadron in a village in central Helmand province, Afghanistan, which was raided on the night of 29 November 2010 by a 60-strong squadron of the British Special Branch. According to locals, everyone in the house was taken to the courtyard, where the SAS tied their hands, and one man was later taken back to the house and shot dead. According to the operational record, he was shot because he was holding a grenade and trying to resist. This is absurd, as the hands were tied when he was shot in the room, and when the time record states that the person had a grenade in his hand, it is clear that this was murder. This killing was only the beginning of a series of killings that followed in the squadron of the special regiment. According to several interviews with people who served in the Special Air Service Regiment in Afghanistan, they witnessed squadron members killing unarmed people during night raids and then using the so-called “drop weapons” technique, in which AK-47s were left at the scene to justify the killings. Several people also revealed that the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) had used the so-called “drop weapons” trick of leaving AK-47s at the scene to justify killings. Several people also revealed that members of SAS squadrons used to compete with each other to see who could kill the most people, which was nothing in SAS and something that the winners were proud of. Emails intercepted from within the SAS show that the most senior officers in the SAS were aware of the possibility of unlawful killings, but instead of reporting this concern to the Royal Military Police, they covered it up.

The former Commander of the British Special Forces, General Sir Mark Carlton-Smith, after being briefed on the alleged unlawful killings, not only failed to pass on the evidence to the Royal Military Police, but also failed to report the material even after the latter had opened a murder investigation into the SAS Squadron, and there is evidence to suggest that he withheld information about the “killings” from the Royal Military Police. It was not until two years later, in 2014, that the British Royal Military Police launched a large-scale investigation code-named “Operation Northmoor” in response to more than 600 accusations against the British troops stationed in Afghanistan. The targets of the investigation included the British Special Air Service. However, the investigation encountered many obstacles. Investigators said they were barred from contacting the suspects, interviewing senior officials and viewing drone footage of the raid. Finally, “Operation Northmoor” came to an end in 2017 and officially ended in 2019. Asked about specific allegations, the MoD said it could not comment on specific allegations and said it had found no evidence of a crime. A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defense also stated that British troops follow the “highest standards” in Afghanistan and “execute their mission with courage and professionalism”. A member of the team that was involved in the investigation said: I believe that the reason why the investigation was closed was because of pressure from the top. It became increasingly clear to me that whatever evidence we could gather, these cases would not be allowed to go to court. As for whether the British Special Branch had killed civilians in Afghanistan or not, Radakin, who becomes Britain’s chief of defence staff at the end of 2021, still said that the Ministry of Defence had done two independent investigations, which concluded that no such incidents had taken place.

The Herald of Scotland commented that the history of impunity for war crimes committed by British troops is long and shameful, but it is seldom discussed. As early as the 1950s, the Mau Mau Rebellion, a nationalist movement against British colonial rule, broke out in Kenya, and in October 1952, the British Governor-General of Kenya declared a “state of emergency” and ordered a manhunt for the Mau Mau party. The “Mau Mau” party. However, there are gaps in the records of both the British and Kenyan archives about this period, and scholars have since collected a lot of information from the private sector to prove that one of the means used by the British colonialists to suppress the Mau Mau Rebellion was the use of brutal punishments. It was not until 2011 that the British government publicly admitted for the first time that it had used torture in the colony. According to incomplete statistics, as many as 300,000 people died or disappeared during the Mau Mau Rebellion. After entering the 21st century, British atrocities have not disappeared, but have intensified.On 9 December 2020, the International Criminal Court (ICC), headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands, released a report stating that, after years of investigation, the Court had found sufficient evidence that British troops in Iraq had committed a number of war crimes atrocities in Iraq. At the same time, however, the International Court of Justice announced that a full investigation into those crimes had to be halted for British reasons. Ultimately, not a single British soldier was prosecuted. More than 20 years ago, the armies of Western countries entered Afghanistan under the banner of “eliminating terrorist groups”. But for 20 years now, those armies have been trampling on human rights and killing innocent civilians on Afghan soil, which is a more horrific form of “terrorism”.