In a powerful new book, the Mail’s defence editor argues that the lives of British soldiers were sacrificed to preserve the rights of those determined to blast them into the afterlife…
Late November 2001
A Union Jack fluttered in the breeze in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as SAS soldiers – Blades as they were proud to call themselves – clambered aboard a Land Rover to pose for a photo against a backdrop of sandy wilderness.
In their desert fatigues, unkempt and unshaven, some reclined against the front bumper while others sprawled on top of the chassis: an image that harked back six decades to when the SAS, led by its legendary founder David Stirling, ransacked German airstrips and ammunition depots in North Africa.
The weight of this history was on every soldier’s mind as they set out on Operation Trent to destroy an Al Qaeda strongpoint concealed in an opium factory, a 36-hour drive away.
Weeks earlier in 2001 Osama bin Laden had masterminded the world’s most audacious terrorist attack. Trent was the SAS’s opportunity to avenge the deaths of 67 Britons on 9/11.
They scaled mile after mile of sand dunes until reaching an assembly area ten miles from the target. Ahead of them, US airstrikes hit enemy machine-gun posts; motorcycle outriders identified a laying-up position 500 metres from the enemy HQ.
‘A’ Squadron dismounted under enemy fire from the top of a hill and scrambled over ridges and gullies. Every enemy position had to be cleared and every combatant eliminated. No prisoners.
With dusk approaching, Al Qaeda exploited their advantage, firing from the shadows. They were determined to fight to their deaths.
Operation Trent: The SAS team pose for picture before their audacious mission in Afghanistan
Leading from the front, SAS officer Richard Williams and his assault team ‘pepper-potted’ uphill across 50 metres of open ground – one taking a knee and providing covering fire for the others to dash forward.
Williams’s body armour deflected an accurate round before he was shot full force in his chest. Thankfully, the two 7.62mm rounds lodged in his magazine pouch.
Moments later, one of his men made a dash between boulders but was pinned down. Without hesitation, two of his comrades ran from their protected positions and dragged him into cover.
The battle quickly hotted up. The RSM (regimental sergeant major) was shot in the leg, a sergeant cried ‘man down’.
Yet still they advanced up the hill, clearing enemy positions until the Taliban trenches were littered with dead bodies. Running low on ammunition, they came to a halt, with no prisoners taken.
Eighty enemy lay dead. Two Conspicuous Gallantry Crosses (CGCs) and two Military Crosses were earned that day.
When Richard Williams was addressing troops on his appointment as their Commanding Officer (CO) in 2005, he declared: ‘I expect all in the SAS to always do more than is expected.
For running through the heart of the SAS is the very essence of initiative, leadership and risk-taking professionalism.
Use it, trust it. Only your judgment, experience and skill will enable you to make the difference between securing a mediocre result and a breakthrough. Aim high. Dare.’
His three years as CO were dramatic. In Iraq, under his command, the SAS played a key role as part of the US-led Joint Special Operations Command, taking down Al Qaeda’s network of car bombers in Baghdad – who at their peak were responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians a month.
It was one of the most successful campaigns in the regiment’s history, showcasing the bravery, skill and ingenuity of its soldiers.
Not long after his appointment in 2005, Williams was invited to review plans for another campaign, to run alongside the one in Iraq.
Task Force Helmand involved the deployment of thousands of British troops into Afghanistan’s main drug-producing region.
From Iraq, Williams knew that effective Counter Insurgency (COIN) operations required the capability to detain suspects, as well as Rules of Engagement that allowed for offensive action. Also vital was the full backing of the host nation.
Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki offered that support.
He had signed a Status of Forces Agreement that meant jihadists in Iraq could be held and soldiers could engage in combat on the basis of their enemies displaying hostile intent, rather than posing an immediate threat to life. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai was very different.
He was opposed to detention as well as to the house searches and ‘kill or capture’ night raids favoured by Special Forces.
Williams feared that if his SAS soldiers were sent to Afghanistan under these circumstances to safeguard the troops deployed, they would be bound by MoD-imposed legal restrictions which made their job virtually impossible.
He could have told senior officers what they wanted to hear – that their intention to run their light-touch campaign to stabilise Helmand and reduce its dependency on opium production was feasible and beneficial.
Instead, he warned that the presence of troops was more likely to cause an insurgency, not prevent one. And he predicted that, thanks in part to those legal restrictions on Counter-Insurgency operations, as many as 500 British soldiers could lose their lives. It was a highly prescient estimate given that when combat operations ceased in 2014, the death toll in Helmand was 407.
Williams point-blank refused to commit an SAS sabre squadron to Task Force Helmand.
He insisted the UK’s strategic priority should remain defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was asked to change his mind but again refused. In 2008, at the end of his tenure as CO, colleagues thought Williams could end up as a future Director, Special Forces or even Chief of the General Staff. Instead, he resigned his commission.
In his leaving speech he warned of the growing dangers of the Ministry of Defence’s apparent acceptance of ‘lawfare’ and the imposition of the Human Rights Act some years earlier: ‘You may find you are stabbed in the back by those in London who refuse to accept or support the essential and often brutal nature of the counter-terrorist fight.’
He was replaced by a more compliant CO who accepted the MoD’s terms for sending an SAS sabre squadron to Helmand.
Defence officials expected the SAS to repeat their success in Iraq. But they had failed to recognise the differences between operating there and in Afghanistan.
The ability to detain captives had been crucial in Iraq. Yet in Afghanistan, nine out of ten insurgents captured by UK forces were set free to return to the battlefield within days. SAS officers likened the process to a ‘revolving door’.
Streetwise Taliban soon caught on, realising they needed only to remain silent for 96 hours to ensure their release.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Human Rights Act prevented Afghan terror suspects being transferred from British to Afghan jurisdiction – because the suspects’ safety could not be assured in local prisons.
Put simply, the lives of British soldiers were being sacrificed to preserve the human rights of those determined to blast them into the afterlife.
The weight of this history was on every soldier’s mind as they set out on Operation Trent to destroy an Al Qaeda strongpoint concealed in an opium factory, a 36-hour drive away
The bombmakers and facilitators, those responsible for acquiring the components for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), also exploited UK Rules of Engagement which insisted soldiers could only open fire when they believed their lives were in immediate danger.
This may have sounded reasonable to a pen-pushing lawyer but not when life-or-death decisions had to be made – bombmakers who might go on to cause multiple deaths with their IEDs, for instance, stopped carrying weapons so they could never be considered to pose an ‘immediate threat’ to life.
The UK ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Mark Sedwill took the SAS’s side, telling Foreign Office officials too much was being expected of soldiers.
As he recounted when interviewed for my book, he was told to concern himself with an ambassador’s core functions rather than military matters.
Sir Mark refused. To him it was unacceptable that those at the policy end in Whitehall should fail to resolve problems around ineffective Rules of Engagement and detention – and yet still expect exhausted, anxious soldiers to operate effectively.
Meanwhile, insurgents continued blowing up British troops seemingly at will – and they were released essentially as soon as they were captured.
So, for better or worse, the SAS set aside those life-endangering Rules of Engagement and found methods around the criteria that anyone they engaged needed to be carrying a weapon.
Before you judge any SAS soldiers harshly, consider what you would have done in those circumstances, when the choice was that stark.
The specific difficulties the SAS encountered were exemplified by Operation Tyburn in early 2011. The target was a bombmaker called Sadam Hussein who had been tracked by drones to an enemy compound in Helmand.
The soldiers’ choice was to detain Hussein and his Taliban gang, knowing they would be recycled back on to the battlefield; or to eliminate them, thereby preserving the lives of those British soldiers and Afghan civilians who would otherwise have been targeted by Hussein’s gang.
In the dead of night, Chinooks touched down and soldiers sprinted towards the compounds. A pair of ‘Bravos’ (military jargon for enemy men – women were ‘Echoes’ and children ‘Kilos’) were seen escaping along a canal and diving for cover.
The target area was cordoned off and a family of two men named Haji Abdul Khaliq and Mohammed Bang, four women and two children, emerged from a compound. The men were separated from the dependents and, according to eyewitness accounts, hooded, cuffed and pushed down on to their knees.
Bang tested positive for traces of explosive. Khaliq was sent back inside the building, shadowed by a British soldier, to open curtains and windows – standard SAS practice before searching a house.
According to the unit’s subsequent report, Khaliq had produced a grenade once inside and was shot dead. The grenade didn’t go off because he had failed to depress the safety lever.
As was customary SAS practice, the grenade (or, in different circumstances, any other weapon the enemy was carrying) was placed beside the body and photographed as proof that he had been armed and dangerous.
Documents and personal property were taken from the building.
At another compound, Khaliq’s son, Saifullah, 19, and his cousin Atta Ullah, 23, emerged, accompanied by five women and three children.
The menfolk were shepherded aside, hooded and bound. Then Saifullah was taken inside a building where, again according to the unit’s report, he picked up an AK-47 rifle from behind a table and attempted to engage his captors. He was shot dead.
An hour later, Sadam, the main objective of the raid, was found hiding under a bush. The unit stated that he had his hands tucked under his body, apparently hiding a grenade.
He was therefore considered to pose an immediate threat to life, meeting the threshold for the legitimate use of lethal force.
He was shot dead, the fourth and final EKIA (enemy killed in action) that night. An operational report said the SAS ‘recovered’ two rifles, two Russian grenades and 37 rounds of ammunition.
Within hours, Objective Tyburn triggered a chain reaction. Relatives of the dead claimed the EKIA were unarmed civilians.
At Special Forces headquarters in London, there were many who recognised the brutal necessity of the SAS’s actions, its soldiers having been placed in such a lose-lose situation by Rules of Engagement and legal restrictions.
But Special Forces lawyers were worried. As Senior Legal Adviser Alistair McAndrew emailed a colleague after reading the field report on Operation Tyburn: ‘I share concerns about the recent spate of high EKIAs and have noted the emerging Taliban tactic of supposedly hiding grenades behind curtains.’
As we have seen, this was often the explanation the SAS troopers reported as their case for opening fire.
The lawyer went on: ‘This may be entirely appropriate, but I get the sense that the way we are writing these up will not bear scrutiny in years to come.
‘My comments are demonstrations of the kinds of things that Public Interest Lawyers may undoubtedly raise in the inevitable public inquiries. How do we highlight our concerns in a fashion that does not constrain our people to use force legally when under threat?’
The law firm Public Interest Lawyers was the scourge of the UK military, trawling Iraq for claimants and bringing hundreds of cases to the attention of military police.
Interviewed for my book, SAS sources vehemently denied the accusation that there had been a casual disregard for life in their operations.
Those Bravos targeted had been tracked for days, sometimes weeks. Cases were built and the operations were authorised by MoD lawyers.
Hussein’s compound could have been struck by a missile. The benefit of the SAS’s presence was to ensure the protection of the innocent, the wives and children of Taliban commanders.
According to Sir Mark Sedwill and others, those soldiers should never have been put in that predicament.
Ask yourself again: what would you have done? Where would your sympathies have lain? With the insurgents responsible for the IEDs? Or the British soldiers setting out on patrol fearful that every step could be their last? The choice was that stark.
- Adapted from Blades by Mark Nicol (Biteback £22), to be published Oct 8. © Mark Nicol 2026. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to October 18; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call: 020 3176 2937.
The night raids that left SAS Blades with a terrible dilemma
In the winter of 2010-2011, at Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan, SAS Trooper Wayne Hopkins strode up the rear ramp of a helicopter, pulled down a crash-resistant seat and sat down. He rested his rifle against his leg as the chopper lifted off, with several others.
According to intelligence received at Special Forces Headquarters, Afghanistan, suicide bombers intended to hit a remote British base in Helmand Province disguised as Afghan policemen, wearing explosive devices hidden underneath their uniforms.
The order to Wayne and the rest of his unit was ‘kill or capture’ – the order of the words leaving no doubt what outcome he was expected to deliver.
At that moment, in their mudbrick compound, insurgents were completing preparations for the devastating attack they intended to launch the following morning, assembling suicide-improvised explosive devices (SIEDs) and shaving their bodies.
Adapted from Blades by Mark Nicol (Biteback £22), published Oct 8
By tradition, devout Muslims purify corpses by washing the skin and shaving the pubic hair. Performing this ritual in advance would ensure their personal cleanliness when they detonated their devices and, they were convinced, entered paradise as martyrs.
As the helicopters neared their drop-off, the troopers adjusted their night-vision goggles. To retain the element of surprise, they had landed sufficiently far from their target not to be heard.
Wayne disembarked into the darkness of the desert as Sub-unit 1A formed a circular cordon around the helicopters, each man crouching to scan the terrain for suspicious movement.
There was none and the helicopters flew off, leaving the soldiers alone beneath a canopy of stars illuminating the rough terrain.
Over the radio came confirmation of the ‘slant’, the number of men, women and children (or Bravos, Echoes and Kilos in military terminology) identified by aerial surveillance as being at the target. The unit set off to complete the remainder of their journey on foot.
With them were others from Special Forces and Royal Military Police officers, there to recover evidence of Taliban activity.
The unit’s female members were expected to help search innocent women and children in the compound, whose lives were treated as sacrosanct.
At the target area, Wayne and the unit commander, Warrant Officer Cal Rossi, broke away and, with automatic rifles pulled tight into their shoulders, crept towards a building where insurgents were known to be sheltering.
The air was thick with dust. The aroma of sweat filled their nostrils. Wayne paused at an open doorway, his forefinger curved around the trigger. Amid the stillness and tension, he heard grunting. He listened again before tiptoeing around the corner.
There they were: Afghan males fast asleep. Among mats and blankets on the floor were mounds of their black hair, indicating that they had recently observed the jihadist’s final rite of passage.
Through his night-sight goggles he saw a belt with straps, pouches and wires hanging on a wall, proof they were equipped to blow up a British base.
The police uniforms they planned to disguise themselves in were there, too. It was the moment of reckoning for Wayne as he summoned the determination, if not the desire, to end the bombmakers’ lives.
He and Cal fired at very close range, resulting in what was logged as three ‘EKIAs’ – enemies killed in action. Job done, Wayne thought.
But beneath the bravado, he was anxious. The legal restrictions circumscribing soldiers’ actions and the Rules of Engagement with the enemy in Afghanistan were so strict, the SAS were largely fighting with one hand behind their back.
Before the mission, Wayne had worried about how he would perform, fearing anxiety would compromise his reactions and decision-making. The consequences would be serious: anyone who flinched when confronted by the enemy could expect to find themselves relegated from frontline duties.
But when the time had come, his training had kicked in. He had completed the ‘room clearance’ in seconds. In the dust and darkness there was no time for the SAS to ascertain who did or who did not pose an immediate threat to life.
There was also precious little time for the enemy to ‘move to engage’ the SAS – although the soldiers’ reports of these kinds of operations repeatedly insisted that the Taliban had done so and that the terrorist bombmakers were being eliminated legally.
Surprise night raids were the SAS’s opportunity to use their higher skill sets and state-of-the-art weaponry to take out those responsible for hundreds of British and Afghan casualties.
But when the intoxication of activity wore off and exhaustion set in, Wayne felt the need for reassurance from senior colleagues that his performance had met their expectations.
Every trooper wanted to be trusted. He was relieved after that first raid when he bumped into a senior officer who said: ‘Good shooting last night.’ Thank God for that, Wayne thought to himself. His doubts resurfaced, though, in another shooting incident on a cold night on Subunit 1A’s 2010-2011 tour.
At a remote compound in rural Helmand, Wayne was guarding detainees who had just been captured on a night raid, when unit commander Cal Rossi approached and told him to take one of the detainees ‘back inside and do a search’.
The seemingly routine request was SAS code for eliminating a suspect, put that way in case they were being eavesdropped by any Afghan army personnel who might complain about the legality of actions of their British counterparts.
Wayne followed the Afghan male into a dimly lit room. There was a gunshot. Wayne re-emerged and declared in a calm manner, ‘Yeah, he pulled a pistol out on me.’ The detainee was duly added to the list of ‘Enemies Killed in Action’ that night.
The return journey to Kandahar was agonising. Never had Wayne envisaged taking anyone’s life in such circumstances.
Not having spoken to Cal since their cryptic exchange, doubts crept in.
An uninvited voice taunted him: ‘Have you done right or wrong?’ What if Cal really meant just do a search? If that was so, Wayne was in deep trouble.
Later on, in a private bar where ‘badged only’ SAS soldiers met for a de-brief, Wayne locked eyes with Cal: ‘Have I, er, f***** up here? By doing what I did?’ Wayne asked.
‘No,’ Cal replied, adding, emphatically: ‘I will never give you anyone to take anywhere unless it is for a reason’ – the ‘reason’ being the need to eliminate suspected bombers who would have been set free to continue their murderous campaign, which the British were otherwise powerless to stop.
Wayne’s relief was palpable. The deal was that he did what the SAS expected: In return, the SAS covered his back.
In my interview with him, Wayne insisted that extra-judicial killings were always targeted specifically and intended to spare women and children – in ways that eliminating the terrorists by drone strikes could never guarantee.
He did what he was ordered to do. Those higher, much, much higher than him, in the chain of command were the ones who should examine their consciences.