BBC Panorama is about to reveal damning details of how some elements of British special forces (SF) may have behaved illegally on operations in Afghanistan. Many troubling allegations have already emerged at the ongoing public inquiry into alleged war crimes by the UK SF, but for the first time former members of both the SAS and SBS have broken their years of silence to give the BBC their eyewitness accounts.

What they say is pretty shocking. The veterans have described seeing members of the SAS murder unarmed people in their sleep and execute handcuffed prisoners, including children, and much more besides. This new testimony covers allegations stretching back many years, far longer than the three year window currently under scrutiny by the judge-led inquiry underway in the UK.

It goes without saying that this is not a good look for Britain’s elite soldiers. Of course they do good work and we’re all grateful for them, but I firmly believe that if we lose the moral high ground we become no better than the terrorists and enemies who seek to harm us. And then we have lost.

Embarrassingly, the scandal touches much of the current hierarchy of the British army: a succession of recent Chiefs of the General Staff (CGSs) all have had a SF background of sorts, as have various Government ministers in different parties since. Also potentially embarrassing is the suggestion that Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, may have been warned
repeatedly, including by then Afghan President Hamid Karzai, about allegations of UK SF killing civilians in Afghanistan.

If such allegations are proven, then they are quite clearly outside the law and totally at variance with the accepted practices of armed conflict, and the perpetrators are essentially war criminals who should face justice. The question would then arise as to how this could happen. How could a disciplined military unit “go rogue” and become an outlier in the British military? There may be several reasons for this.

Primus inter pares of these may be that, as officially acknowledged “elite” organisations, senior officers became wary of interfering with their modus operandi and became increasingly hands-off, maybe too much hands-off.

If these killings are found to have taken place, the question that I and many of my former comrades have is “where were the officers?” I know that SF tend to operate in small groups and that there might not always have been a junior officer present, but surely not on every occasion?

These alleged circumstances are exactly when an officer should have stepped in and said quite firmly this is not how we do things in the British army, SF or not. If they were present and did nothing then they are as guilty as any soldiers engaged in wrongdoing and have failed as leaders. Another perception shared by many of my former comrades-in-arms is that a “canteen culture” sometimes turns a blind eye to malpractice.

This culture is partly the cause and also result of a relaxed attitude to discipline and rank which pervades the SAS Regiment and is perhaps not a good thing anymore, if it ever was. It might also go some way to explain why junior officers might be sidelined or disregarded. Hopefully all of this will be explored during the course of current investigations. As the old military adage has it, “there are no bad regiments, just bad commanding officers”. Enough said. If even some of what has been suggested is true, then the ethos and culture either emanates from, or is condoned by, the top.

So, what now for the UK’s SF? Well, we shouldn’t come to any conclusions until the inquiry reports on its findings, and that could take some time yet. Nor do I think we will be looking at the disbandment of the SAS or SBS like the French army did with the 1st Parachute Battalion of the French Foreign Legion back in 1961, after a failed coup attempt against the French government.
But some things are going to have to change. The question then is, does the British government and the MoD have the cojones to take radical action?

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk