No soldier should have been above the law in Afghanistan

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 Lance Corporal George MacDonald Fraser’s Border Regiment were fighting through central Burma in April 1945, Fraser admitted that when they got into the swing of fighting, killing the 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 2,000 years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbour, but we have a killer instinct too…’

Experienced soldiers know that killing outside of combat is morally repugnant not merely because it is outside of the rules, but because the act of killing diminishes the humanity of the killer

As a young soldier he recognised this killer impulse in himself, and saw it in others.