UNDERSTANDABLY, Britain’s anti-war movement and broader left have been focused on Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza and the British government’s involvement in the slaughter.

However, it would be a mistake to overlook the recent revelations about war crimes committed by the British military in Afghanistan.

As Morning Star readers may know, BBC Panorama documentaries in 2019 and 2022 led to the government setting up a public inquiry “to investigate serious allegations against UK Special Forces relating to detention operations in Afghanistan during the period mid-2010 to mid-2013.”

In particular, asking “whether there is credible information that extra judicial killings were carried out by UK Special Forces” and if “any such extra judicial killings were covered up at any stage.”

The 2022 BBC Panorama programme alleged that one Special Air Service squadron had killed at least 54 people, including detainees and children, in suspicious circumstances in just one six-month tour of Afghanistan.

Last month, BBC Panorama, led by journalist Richard Bilton, presented new evidence from more than 30 sources who served in or alongside UK Special Forces. 

It’s shocking, hugely important television, but it seems to have become one of those news stories that is reported by the mainstream media but then quickly forgotten, rarely influencing future reporting or discussion on the topic. Therefore, it feels important to remember and contextualise BBC Panorama’s findings. 

The accusations mainly concern night raids carried out by the SAS and Special Boat Service in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, where British occupying forces faced a violent insurgency. 

“On some ops [operations] the troop would go into guest house-type buildings and kill everyone there,” one SAS veteran explains. “They would go in and shoot everyone sleeping there.” 

Another SAS veteran provides similar testimony: “If a target had popped up on the list two or three times before, then we’d go in with the intention of killing them, there was no attempt to capture them.”

“Sometimes we’d check we’d identified the target, confirm their ID, then shoot them,” they said. “Often the squadron would just go and kill all the men they found there.”

The execution of detainees “became routine,” says one SAS veteran, recalling one operation: “They handcuffed a young boy and shot him. He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.” Shockingly, the veteran says, “This didn’t just happen once.”

To avoid questions, members of British Special Forces would plant so-called “drop weapons” on their victims, to make it look as though they had been armed in the photographs the Special Forces would take at the scene. 

“It’s not scout camp,” notes one SAS veteran. “Everyone knew what was happening. People were murdered — there was implicit approval for what was happening.”

BBC Panorama provides some useful context, noting that the unlawful killings started in Iraq, with one former SAS soldier noting, “senior commanders were aware of that.”

Moreover, while the public inquiry is investigating a three-year period, BBC Panorama notes that the testimony they have collected shows alleged war crimes occurring over more than a decade. The programme makers also note that none of the eyewitnesses they interviewed have spoken to the public inquiry. 

A relevant side note: in 2020, an official inquiry by Australia’s armed forces found credible evidence that 39 civilians were murdered by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan. 

It’s not framed as such by BBC Panorama or the wider media reporting, but the eyewitness accounts from members of Britain’s Special Forces and Afghan families suggest that de facto British death squads operated in Afghanistan for many years. 

Knowledge of the alleged war crimes was not confined to small teams or individual squadrons, according to the interviewees. Within Britain’s Special Forces command structure, “everyone knew” what was going on, one veteran says.

BBC Panorama goes further, noting “evidence from military sources and documents shows very senior officers were warned about potential war crimes,” including General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the former head of the British Army, Lt. General Jonathan Page, the former head of British Special Forces, and General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the former second in command of the British military. Remarkably, a few days after the BBC Panorama episode was aired, the Guardian reported Jenkins had been appointed as the new head of the Royal Navy. 

It doesn’t stop there. The failure to fully investigate went higher still, according to BBC Panorama. The then British prime minister David Cameron was repeatedly warned by Afghan president Hamid Karzai that civilians were being killed in night raids, according to multiple people who attended the meetings between the two leaders (the programme includes a carefully worded response from now Lord Cameron).

Terrible as these crimes are, it’s important to understand they were only possible because of the larger crime of Britain-US-Nato invasion and occupation — undertaken by Labour and Tory governments in Britain, and Democrat and Republican administrations in the US. 

Like Iraq in 2003, the initial 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was not authorised by the UN security council and was therefore illegal under international law. And like in Iraq, US-British forces unleashed huge amounts of violence on the local population.

“We were killing a lot of ordinary Afghans, we were levelling a lot of [the Helmand towns] Naw Zad and Musa Qala and elsewhere,” Ed Butler, commander of Task Force Helmand, told the journalist Sandy Gall about UK operations undertaken in 2006.

The many supporters of the British military intervention in Afghanistan need to understand that the crimes of British Special Forces are a close to inevitable consequence of the war itself, with resentment and retaliatory, escalatory violence a common characteristic of an invasion and occupation of another country. In short, supporting the war also meant effectively supporting the creation of the conditions that engendered the heinous war crimes carried out by British forces.

Frustratingly, the public inquiry hasn’t disclosed when it will publish its final report. “While it may confirm the seriousness of the allegations and offer some measure of redress for victims’ families, it is unlikely to result in significant structural change within the Ministry of Defence or the Special Forces,” Iain Overton, the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, which has published a number of reports on the issue of Special Forces killings, tells me. 

“At best, it might lead to some internal policy updates, greater emphasis on rules of engagement, and compensation for victims’ families. At worst, it may be a carefully managed process that stops short of real accountability for senior military or political decision-makers.”

He continues: “We believe there is a strong case for challenging the policy of blanket secrecy around Special Forces operations,” noting Britain’s official stonewalling stands in sharp contrast to the oversight seen in many other countries, including the US. 

“There is a clear need for Parliament to have real oversight of these operations, to ensure that democratic values are not compromised in the name of national security. Without proper scrutiny, we risk repeating these grave injustices in future conflicts.”

With more horrifying details likely to emerge when the inquiry publishes its final report, parliamentary oversight of British Special Forces feels like a significant change that the anti-war movement, conscientious MPs and concerned citizens could actually win. If — and it’s a very big if — enough pressure is applied on Parliament and the government.

BBC Panorama’s Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes is available on BBC iPlayer. Ian Sinclair posts on X @IanJSinclair.