An ongoing inquiry into crimes committed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013 has revealed more findings around the killing of Afghan civilians, the subsequent cover-ups and the casual attitude towards extrajudicial killings expressed by special forces soldiers. This comes as the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) face an increasing number of investigations into the conduct of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
The inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, began in October 2023. It was called by former defence secretary Ben Wallace in response to legal challenges made on behalf of the Saifullah and Noorzai families and further pressure as a result of investigations carried out by The Sunday Times and the BBC’s Panorama programme. What has emerged over the last 15 months is evidence of a campaign of terror carried out by the British armed forces in Afghanistan.
On 8 January 2025, the inquiry published further evidence of war crimes, including briefing notes, internal emails and witness testimonies provided by seven members of the SAS at private hearings. The inquiry has largely taken place behind closed doors and the general public, journalists and lawyers representing the bereaved families have not been allowed to attend under the pretext of ‘protecting national security’.
A junior officer testified to the inquiry that he had reported concerns to his superiors in 2011 about operations targeting Taliban fighters after being told that soldiers on night raids would operate a policy of killing‘fighting-age males’ regardless of whether they posed a threat. The officer described howsuch males would be restrained by soldiers before being executed; in one incident, a soldier is alleged to have placed a pillow over someone’s face before shooting them dead with a pistol. Afterwards, soldiers would plant weapons at the scene to make it look as though they had posed a threat before they were killed.
The officer testified that such instances of killing of Afghans – many of them boys as young as 16 years old – would be casually referred to as‘flat packing’in conversations between soldiers, and that the weapons that were be planted by the dead would be described as ‘Mr Wolf’ in an apparent reference to a character from the film Pulp Fiction who is tasked with getting rid of evidence.
A former senior officer for the SAS tasked with reviewing operational reports told the inquiry that the SAS had a ‘golden pass allowing them to get away with murder’. The officer had written to the Director of Special Forces raising concerns that the SAS were executing Afghan civilians and then covering it up. He cited accounts of detainees being allowed to return to compounds before being shot dead by soldiers who then reported them as having reemerged with guns or grenades.
Among the documents disclosed by the inquiry was a briefing note from April 2011 stating that ‘anecdotal evidence suggesting extrajudicial killings’ perpetrated in Afghanistan should be stored in what they described as a‘security compartment’and explicitly stated that if the information were made public, it would severely damage the reputation of the special forces. One of the documents secured in one of these security compartments was a written statement from March 2011 confirming the junior officer’s account that a detainee had a pillow put over their face before being executed by a pistol and that photos were taken of the dead after ‘Mr Wolf’ weapons were placed at the scene to depict them as armed combatants. Complicity in war crimes and efforts to cover them up are endemic at all levels in the special forces.
British special forces are also facing scrutiny over their conduct in Libya and Syria after the Ministry of Defence confirmed in December that nine special forces troops are facing prosecution for alleged war crimes committed in Syria. This was only disclosed after the The Times made a freedom of information request when it emerged that five other SAS soldiers were being investigated for shooting dead a man they claim was a suspected Islamic State militant and planting a suicide vest at the scene. Five members of the SBS are also being investigated over an incident in Libya two years ago in which a suspected militant was shot dead following a car chase.
The British military has a long history of using such tactics against those it perceives as a threat to British control and the interests of British imperialism, including in the north of Ireland. While the British army occupied the Six Counties during the 1970s, they and Royal Ulster Constabulary police would brutalise the nationalist community in an attempt to get them to give up their struggle for freedom. The army used undercover assassination squads and murdered unarmed nationalists, later claiming that they were armed or that they had found petrol bombs near them.
The findings of this inquiry pose a damning indictment of the British armed forces and, in particular, the special forces who have been allowed to go unchecked as they routinely murder unarmed civilians. Extensive efforts to cover up evidence of war crimes and violation of international law have been made to protect them from being held to account or brought to justice for well over a decade.
The previous Conservative government attempted to make it harder to prosecute military personnel for tcrimes committed overseas with the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. This legislation was passed overwhelmingly with 332 MPs voting in favour. Labour called on its MPs to abstain in the vote. 18 Labour MPs who did vote against the bill were disciplined and three then-shadow junior ministers, including Nadia Wittome, were sacked.
What happened in Afghanistan was a terror campaign by the British armed forces. History has shown this is what British imperialism resorts to under threat. That an inquiry is taking place at all, and the truth about the actions of British forces in Afghanistan is beginning to emerge is only because of legal action taken by the families of victims and subsequent investigations carried out by journalists.
Seamus O’ Tuairisc
