 Welcome back to the People's Tribunal on Crimes of Aggression, Afghanistan sessions. Today is the third and final day of the Tribunal. In past sessions we looked at the legislative context behind this case, Britain's historic engagement with Afghanistan, and witnessed testimony on life under the Taliban. We also heard anonymous testimony from a British ambassador to Afghanistan regarding the political reasoning behind this invasion. We heard testimony from Arzun Al-Bahar and Sahar on the treatment of women by the Taliban and by the coalition forces. Asim Qureshi spoke of the domestic counter-terrorist legislation put in place in the United Kingdom, and the detrimental effect it has had on the Muslim communities. We also heard testimony from Mozambique, an anonymous witness, an ignore of lived experiences of torture with British complicity. In the last session we explored how the arms trade has fueled the war, with testimony from Habib Akhmadi, retired U.S. State Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and Andrew Feinstein. Trial session 7 now begins. It is now time to hear the defence. The court has assigned a friend of the court to represent the defence in this case. The defence has based their arguments on the reasonings the government has made public and the rebuttals have been provided by the prosecution team. Please approach the witness stand and state your full name. I do solemnly sincerely and truly declare and swear that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Please take a seat. How would the defence like to proceed? The defence would like to request to play a video excerpt under the right of states to self-defense as enshrined in article 51 UN Charter. The United States and the United Kingdom have both on many occasions tried to convince the global community that international law recognizes a state's right to self-defense against non-state actors, but the legal reality is completely different. The defence will highly likely refer this tribunal to the fact that article 51 of the UN Charter does not specify that a state must have been attacked by another state actor for them to be able to rely on self-defense. The defence could this argue that the operation of the right to self-defense as against non-state actors seems to at least not be excluded by article 51. Article 51 which allows the use of force by states in cases of self-defense is a mere exception to the preemptive norm of international law enshrined in article 24 UN Charter. This preemptive norm is namely the general international law of prohibition on any use of force in the international community. The fact that article 51 is an exception to the prohibition on the use of force in article 24 means that article 51 must be read in light of article 24 and be interpreted in a way that does not undermine this general prohibition but rather even enforces it. Given that article 24 does refer to states, a joint reading of article 24 and article 51 leads to the understanding that self-defense can actually only be invoked in response to an attack that is directly committed by or attributable to a state. That article 51 only extends to attacks committed by or attributable to state actors is an interpretation that is also supported by the historic context in which the UN Charter and its use of force framework were conceived. The fact that the use of force framework was a direct response to the atrocities of World War II leads us to find that the rules on the use of force including of course article 51 were indeed established with an eye on interstate conflict specifically. The defense is now likely to argue that the law on self-defense has developed since its codification in 1945 with article 51 now being invocable against non-state actors as well. While international law can evidently always change according to the practices and interpretations of international law by the international community, it is submitted that no significant reinterpretation of article 51 has taken place to this date. Given that the general prohibition on the use of force is considered to be of a preemptory status, the conditions for recognizing a new interpretation of article 51 are very strict. Excuse me to interject. Would you be able to move the mic a little closer? Thank you so much. The incoherent ambiguity of state practice and attitude in relation to the scope of article 51 clearly fails to meet the very high threshold for the recognition of reinterpretation of article 51. The International Court of Justice also referred to as the ICJ also recognized that a right of self-defense cannot exist against irregular groups in its advisory opinion in the case of Israeli waltz and its judgment in the case of armed activities in the territory of the Congo. While the ICJ never directly adjudicated upon the question whether states have a right to self-defense against non-state actors, the ICJ held that a state can never interfere in the territory of another state just because an irregular group operates from that territory. For self-defense to be invocable and irregular groups attacks have to be actually attributable to the other state. In light of these decisions we submit that the ICJ has effectively denied any possible right to self-defense against non-state actors. Accordingly, the ICJ has clearly interpreted modern international law as not providing states with a right to self-defense against non-state actors as any attacks in response to the acts of irregular groups can only be legitimate if these acts are attributable to the state hosting them. A right to self-defense does not therefore exist against non-state actors in and of themselves. Given the ICJ's status in the international legal order, this restrictive interpretation of modern international law on self-defense clearly supports the submission that the attacks perpetuated by the USA and the UK in the framework of the so-called war on terror were unlawful. We anticipate the defense to counter the ICJ's judgments by referring this tribunal to the unwilling or unable doctrine. According to this doctrine, an injured state should be able to attack irregular groups and thus interfere in foreign territory even where the injurious attacks cannot be attributed to the state housing the irregular groups, provided that the whole state is unwilling or unable to prevent its territory from being used by irregular groups to carry out attacks against another state. This unwilling or unable argument is a crucial element in the USA's and the UK's repeated public attempts to justify the attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq in the war on terror. Accordingly, it was only recently, in 2016 and 2017, respectively, that the US Department of State Legal Advisor Brian Egan and the Attorney General of the UK found the legal basis of their attacks after 9-11 to lie in the unable or unwilling doctrine. The validity of this doctrine, however, is highly doubted in international law. The reason for this becomes blatantly clear when looking at the consequences that would flow from the recognition of the unwilling or unable doctrine in international law. If this doctrine was to be generally accepted in international law, it would create the possibility for states to be unilaterally able to assess whether a given state is aiding in a batting in an irregular group operating from their territory and then legitimately attack that state based on that assessment through the invocation of the right to self-defense. Such uncontrolled freedom on the part of an injured state to decide themselves whether another state is aiding or abetting terrorist groups would evidently enable states to further their own economic, political, or other interests by using force against another state behind the veil of self-defense. Given that such a situation would fully undermine the purpose and spirit of Article 24, which aims at the prevention and limitation of violence in international relations, the right to self-defense, as an exception to this preemptive rule, cannot be as broad as the recognition of the unwilling or unable doctrine would make it. The unwilling and unable doctrine cannot therefore offer convincing and legitimate legal basis and justification for the USA's and the UK's attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in the war on terror. Thank you, Ms. Tepchi. You may go back to your seat. How would the prosecution like to proceed? We would like to look at the reality of the invasion and we would like to call our first witness, Dr. Nivi Manchanda, who will talk to us about the colonial imaginary behind the invasion. And as Dr. Manchanda cannot be here today, the video has been... The interview has been pre-recorded. Would you like to swear or affirm? I'd like to affirm, please. You may read the affirmation. The affirmation. I do solemnly, sincerely and truly affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Please state your full name and title for the court. Yeah, I'm Dr. Nivi Manchanda. And could you tell us about your experience in international politics? Yeah, I'm a senior lecturer in international politics at Queen Mary University of London. I did an MPhil in international relations from the University of Cambridge, performed moving on to do a PhD in international politics. I also did an undergraduate degree in economics and politics, so I've been studying international relations in one form or another for the last 15 or so years. And can you tell us about your dissertation, what the subject was? Yeah, my dissertation was called Afghanistan, the History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge Production. And I looked at how Afghanistan had been imagined, intervened in and invaded both in the 21st century, but also tracing back the lineage of these interventions in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing in particular on British and US intervention in Afghanistan. And is it fair to say that you have an extensive experience in researching British colonial violence in Afghanistan? Yes, this has been one of my main polka, if you like, and I've studied both the archives and more contemporary military, policy and academic discourses on Afghanistan and British intervention. And do you believe that there are parallels between British colonial practices during the 19th century in Afghanistan and British military practices in Afghanistan during the 20-year invasion? So there have been loads of commonalities. Afghanistan has been intervened in in a number of different ways. It was never formally colonized, but the Brits sent in troops and sent in anthropologists to study Afghanistan in the 18th and specifically in the 19th centuries. And a lot of the knowledge that was generated about Afghanistan in those times have been repackaged and repurposed for intervention in the 21st century, so after 9-11. So the commonalities range from the ways in which people are engaged with, the ways in which the UK studies tribes, the ways in which the UK studies political life ways and ways of being in Afghanistan both today and when they first encountered Afghanistan. Both these things I submit in my work are based on rather hazy, nebulous or superficial engagements with Afghanistan. There hasn't really been a dedicated operational apparatus to study Afghanistan the way in which we studied other colonial enterprises, for instance in India when it came to the British or Algeria when it came to the French. So Afghanistan has been acted upon, but hasn't really been engaged with in any serious manner over the past couple of centuries. And would you say that that is true also for the invasion in 2001? Absolutely, so the edifice of knowledge that the 2001 invasion rested on was based on old accounts. One of them was the 1807 account by Mount Stuart Elphinstone in his Kingdom of Kabul which was a three volume massive book on his encounters with Afghan people. But a lot of that was hearsay, was anecdote, you know, it wasn't sort of embedded ethnography we'd considered today. And so at the time it was of course interesting and important but even today this account is considered the final word on Afghanistan which is frankly quite bizarre given that that was over 200 years ago and that we still study that as gospel when it comes to Afghanistan, comes to Afghan tribes which Elphinstone at the time likened to Scottish clans. We don't study Scotland as a country of clans anymore so it makes no sense to study Afghanistan simply as this country of backward tribes either. So yes, those things have parallels and they have parallels because that knowledge has been sedimented and hasn't actually kept up. Could you give us examples of western military practices in Afghanistan since 2001? So western military acts in Afghanistan in since 2001 have been pretty horrific. They have been what people will call human rights abuses left, right and centre and there's been a lot of stuff on the US marines pissing on dead Afghan bodies. There's also been loads of accounts of British troops covering up the killing and torture of both civilians and children and in 2019 the BBC reported that the British government and military were accused of covering up these killings and there's been loads of calls to investigate possible war crimes in Afghanistan but not much has been made of it. And do you think that the UK will ever be held to account for these war crimes? The events of the last few weeks and the sort of criticism that the UK government is facing not always for the right things. So for instance I have been opposed to invasion many people who were in favour of invasion still have nonetheless recognised that the last 20 years have been a failure those metrics are different for different people but there has been some sort of reckoning with the fact that what the Brits did and of course the Americans and the NATO intervention in general was not something that benefited Afghans and actually that Afghans perhaps even worse off after 20 years than they were in the 1990s. Now I don't want to make a claim about what's better or what's worse but that collective idea of failure means that there's some hope for a chronicling of British war crimes and failures in Afghanistan so I don't have much faith that that will happen but I think we should push for it and I think there is some appetite for it at the moment. Could you please explain what the term means and how it differs from colonial? If you look at the etymology of neocolonial the neo stands for new and the colonial is the colonial right so neocolonialism is perhaps best understood as a new form of colonialism although I would stress that it is not so much a new form as a sort of continuation by other means so colonialism and empire in the height of European empire would be considered enterprises where a country invades another country, take over the government of that country it could be settler colonialism where they actually settled like in Australia or it could simply be colonialism of the sort that we witnessed in India. Neocolonialism perhaps captures the relationships that those western ex-colonial powers and the US is one of them continue to have with their erstwhile colonies so this could be through a dependency so countries are now poor countries, countries in the so called third world are still in positions of dependency in terms of the economic relations it could be things like soft power which sounds really fluffy and nice but actually has pretty insidious elements to it and so these countries are ostensibly sovereign but continue to be colonized culturally, socially, economically by the west or the US or the UK and perhaps more and more by China so you could see new conditions of neocolonialism emerge in the relationship China has with Africa today. And looking at this neocolonial lens would you say that the 2001 invasion was such an act or a continuation of Britain's legacy? Yes I think that the war on terror was an explicit statement of neocolonialism and that encapsulates both Afghanistan and Iraq and also many other wars either hidden wars like the war in Syria or the interventions in Libya and those are those sort of neocolonial relations are innate to the ways in which we have engaged with these countries but there has been certain sort of tenors or tone that is very different as well and one of these is the specific form of racism that we've seen in the rise of Islamophobia so I don't think Islamophobia was necessarily a colonial thing or front and centre colonial thing it was more dark skinned people were inferior while that still may be the case there's now like a pretty intense hierarchy of races and Islamophobia which of course means is not exactly does not quite capture the multifaceted nature of it I think is a specific example of how the 21st century neocolonial operations are being conducted and could you please talk to us as well about British neocolonial violences that happened during the 20 year occupation of Afghanistan I think that was also in the intervention at large so it's not perhaps just the British but the Americans as well there was also new forms of warfare that emerged and one of these was the drone warfare and drone warfare didn't have the sort of legal machinery behind it it was a new form of warfare so a lot of things could be done under the name of this new form of warfare that couldn't have been done earlier and one of the kind of instances of this was seen in between 2005 and 2010 or so when the British and American decided that Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than being considered two separate sovereign entities there's a 1,200 mile border between them called the Durand Line which was colonial deep trotted that area the sort of northwest frontier bit should be merged into one unified theater of war and it should be called AFPAK so not Afghanistan not Pakistan but there was some sort of amalgamation of the two which did not have sovereign rights and therefore could be drawn and bombed at will because it wasn't a country there weren't any like war crimes sort of precedents for that and this was a specifically new and quite scary way of dealing with the terrorist enemy of the terrorist threat and is this why in deaths in Pakistan are also accounted for because of this blurring of the line yeah so exactly so this blurring of the line also because there isn't the border between the two countries is quite porous and the Taliban there's actually a Pakistan Taliban and as well as an Afghan Taliban and fighters Taliban pasteurists often move between that boundary and of course that idea that just one space not a politically sovereign space but one space means that people who die in it civilians children, Pakistanis, Afghans can all be counted in the death toll or counted as collateral damage and according to your research why do you think that the United States and the United Kingdom in its supporting role invaded Afghanistan in 2001 I think that the primary motive for invasion was well so there was the immediate motive which was something needed to be done after the attacks on 9-11 and the low-hanging fruit there was al-Qaeda and the Taliban had given them some refuge on the other hand the Taliban had said to the US that they'd be willing to talk and perhaps even surrender al-Qaeda that was ignored so I think the main thrust of intervention was definitely some sort of western supremacy moral complex that so you know we had to go show them A who was boss B we wouldn't want to be attacked and see this sort of rhetoric around changes to the Afghan nation because of backward people because of women needing saving so it was quite a moral crusade and it was justified in different ways to different people but there was this overtone of our own superiority and that I think really did feed into the way in which the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan happened and also perhaps even more starkly the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a previous trial session we interviewed a retired US Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who spoke of Bush needing a win needing a war, needing something to propel him and Afghanistan was a like you said a low-hanging fruit do you think that there is also an economic motive behind choosing Afghanistan I think there is some economic motive although I wouldn't place that front and center I think perhaps oil in Iraq would be a very explicit economic motive in Afghanistan Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium so there is that economic motive but I think there is also a geostrategic motive Afghanistan occupies quite an important place in terms of its relation to Russia to China, to India and obviously to Pakistan so there is a geostrategic motive that might not be boiled down to 101 economics but there was definitely some considerations again I think the moral argument was perhaps more important than the economic one based on your research what else has been vital in propelling the 2001 invasion the thing that my research keeps coming back to is the fact that there is some sort of white saviour complex that propels intervention and in Afghanistan that really does meet its apotheosis if you like so there is all this stuff about war like tribes there is stuff about backward Islamic men in the form of the Mujahideen initially who were of course bolstered by the United States against the Soviet Union but then became these monstrous figures and then of course this narrative of women needing savings so Afghanistan in the sort of imperial imaginary is this land this mysterious land of latent with or rife for intervention and changing these subjects moulding them in our own image and that has basically thrusted Afghanistan into the imperial sort of into the imperial foreground at multiple points and in 2001 I think women in blue burqas men who couldn't listen to music children who were suffering from war destitution, poverty all this stuff was really the sort of setting for a white civilising mission and I think we can't undermine how important those ideological things or ideological tropes were for intervention Thank you very much Nivi, no further questions Would you like to swear or affirm? I'd like to affirm How would the prosecution like to proceed? Would you like to present a timeline of the British involvement in the invasion of Afghanistan? The 9-11 attacks in 2001 killed almost 3,000 people in the US We would like to present a relevant timeline of the invasion of Afghanistan and the outcome of the UK's involvement Sunday the 7th of October 2001 American and British warplanes begin bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan Targets include Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad On November 12th 2001 Herat is captured by the Northern Alliance Forces as well as special forces of the United States and the United Kingdom On November 13th 2001 Kabul is captured by the Northern Alliance By November 14th 2001 the Royal Marines help secure the airfield at Bagram Bagram and subsequently Kabul are invaded The Taliban government flees Kabul and Afghan capital We would like to note at this time that under article 3C of Resolution 3314 is an act of aggression In this case specifically targeting an airfield is aggression There is a pattern of the British military targeting this type of facility Civilian loss of life is 2375 In December of the same year the United Nations establishes the International Security Assistance Force ISAF ISAF is responsible for coordinating international military operations in Afghanistan In January 2002 the first contingent of ISAF peacekeepers arrive in the country The United Kingdom takes on the first 6 month rotation commanding the ISAF force By April 2002 there are 1,700 British troops in Afghanistan August 2003 NATO takes the lead on military operations Afghanistan becomes a priority for all NATO member and partner nations 130,000 troops from 50 NATO and partner nations are deployed in the country In January 2004 the UK sees its first combat casualty when a British soldier is killed in a suspected suicide attack November of the same year sees Hamid Karzai elected as the first president of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban Karzai will often be likened to Shah Jujar the Brits first Afghan puppet ruler civilian loss of life is 3,455 The second largest town in Helmand province is Maywand where during the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1880 the Afghans defeated a full British brigade While Britain has chosen to forget about this history many Afghans still remember this and the area is the heartland of pride and patriotism Therefore Britain's decision to capture this area could be linked to its colonial past and viewed as them getting revenge The codename under which all British operations in the war in Afghanistan were conducted from 2002 and 2014 is Operation Herrick Under Operation Herrick British forces start to move into Helmand province where the British army base Camp Bastian is built in 2006 In trial session three of this people's tribunal an anonymous British ambassador said went down to Helmand in 2006 to look at the situation there and they said they were in their view would take at least 10 years to stabilise Helmand and put in place the systems they wanted but the reality was that some Tony Blair wanted it done in three years it had to be done in three years more or less regardless of the facts on the ground These facts have also been revealed by a declassified copy of the Helmand plan Britain's plan to reconstruct Helmand which was not appropriate to the needs of the local population so cannot be argued that it was humanitarian intervention it was a direct occupation on Afghanistan for primarily British benefit These shortcomings led to more armed confrontations between British armed forces and Taliban fighters and to a larger number of civilian and personnel deaths The prosecution will now call Matthew Wernum to the stand who will be playing the unnamed veteran in one of the service people who was deployed to and lost their life in Helmand and who can tell us more about why the Helmand plan failed Let it be noted that the following testimony is fictionalised It was written by playwright Chris Thorpe and based on real events I do solemnly, sincerely and truly affirm that the evidence I shall give as the unnamed veteran shall be truthful to the text Chris Thorpe has written Please take a seat What would you like to share with the court? This is what you want to hear You want to hear some breathless first person account of how I died First maybe you want to hear testimony about growing up in some shit old town by the sea and always wanting to get out into the world do something big You want me to tell you I fucked up my exams or that there weren't any jobs at the chemical plant after it closed You want to hear me tell you all that in a regional accent Well I had a good childhood I did alright at school and I joined the army because I wanted to and that's all I'm going to tell you about that You don't get to make me into some symbol of what you think needs fixing in this country You don't get to make assumptions about me based on my hometown or my education You don't get to feel like you and me aren't the same because we are except you're alive listening to this and I'm dead I arrived in Afghanistan about 5 years into whatever you want to call it the invasion or the occupation or the operation I was there for just under 6 months I was 28 when I got there and I was the same age when I died there The unit I was part of was sent to Helmand province and we were based about halfway between Lashkar Gah and Mewand Mewand is a small place where the British army and some Indian troops had their asses kicked in the 1880s which we were told before we got there I'm not sure if they were telling us that to prepare us for it being difficult or to rile us up or just as a bit of historical context really it wasn't something I've been taught about and it wasn't something any of us particularly cared about I doubt it was psychological manipulation and if it was it didn't work there's not really a lot of value in thinking about whether the current mission is related to one 130 years ago when you're actually on the mission so we didn't do that leave that to the historians or the journalists trying to trying to make some point about history repeating itself I can honestly say none of us gave it a moment's thought as anything other than a piece of information probably the Afghans thought about it more than we did but you know it was their country you remember battles in your own country for longer I guess we were there to retake the local area from the Taliban to hold it to provide security for the local population and to build infrastructure it's rural and poor and there are flat valleys between Rocky Mountain ranges and people farm there you'll have heard that some people farm opium and that's true but most of them farm other things and we were there to build things and if we had to kill the people who are currently making their lives difficult in order to make their lives easier we arrived in May and it was warm and then it got hot and it stayed hot pretty much until early September which was when I died and stopped caring about the weather so much there wasn't as many of us as there should have been to do any of those things I'm not saying that we were hung out to dry or badly equipped necessarily just that it was a big job huge area and if you're going to fight and also build you need a lot of people to do it and we didn't quite have enough but we were British taking over from the Americans in some places and I guess among some of our more studious decision makers there was this feeling that we'd been there historically and we were back and we were going to prove that even if we were short handed we had good weapons and good maps and a plan that looked like it would work if we followed it and had enough people to follow it the plan was as much about reconstruction and economics as it was about fighting and the intelligence behind it was that when we fought we'd be fighting a single identifiable enemy with a single goal there were a lot more logistics considering we were there to transform local infrastructure and economy much more than fight a relatively small number of enemy it seemed fair enough but it wasn't fair enough of course and the plan was great on paper but went to utter shit on first contact with actual reality we were doing a lot more fighting than we'd been led to expect against a lot more people in a complex environment in which those people weren't nearly as identifiable as we've been told they would be but that's kind of always the way isn't it what I'm basically saying is that on some level we were making it up as we went along but I'm not saying that that was a surprise that was probably the least surprising thing about it so we landed there and we went out into the territory and people started shooting at us and because there were more of them than we expected and fewer of us than there should have been and because building local democracy and roads and health centers needs people to stop shooting at you first we got a bit slowed down we couldn't start helping the people we were there to help as fast as they wanted us to help them or most of them wanted us to help them to be fair instead of getting out there and forging ahead with building or however they said it at the time building capacity for self-sustaining local economy we ended up in these little fortified compounds that were made from random ruins and courtyards dotted all over the place quite often these were in towns or villages where the people who were trying to kill us would come and cause havoc and the ordinary people who lived there would also get shot in the course of us trying to kill them back that would understandably piss them or their surviving friends and relatives off when it happened and when we left the compounds to go and have a look around or to speak to a local farmer or leader or whatever to try and have a conversation about what we'd been told we were actually there to do we'd spend more time fighting or trying not to get blown up than actually talking and the combat personnel had to go out there first anyway to patrol or follow up reports or get the lie of the land which involved more fighting even before the fighting that we actually had to do to try and have the conversations we needed to have and we couldn't have those conversations anyway because people were trying to kill us every time we went out to try and have them it wasn't so much a vicious circle as a series of circles collapsing inward from reconstruction to defence offence to just one group of people going out from their bases to try and kill another group of people and until that stopped which it didn't appear it was going to none of the other stuff in the plan which was sketchy as shit anyway was going to get done it took about a fortnight to get to that point and then we were just stuck there don't get me wrong we were ready to do the fighting and we did it it was just we'd expected it to go alongside something else but there was so much fighting to do that nothing else could really happen and in the absence of anything else anything actually constructive happening the fighting inevitably changes it changes from the being the thing that you might have to do to support the reason you're actually there to the reason you're actually there that's not to say there weren't people who were glad we were there not everyone's an opium farmer or trying to put a bullet through you for barging into the country they want to control there were people who were desperate for the things we were supposed to be there to provide a few miles of decent road even but it's hard to have conversations with them when you're inside walls most of the time and only coming out to try and kill people and it gets harder when you call down airstrikes on what you think of the people trying to kill you and it turns out you were wrong and anyway the reason I'm not talking much about the people who were glad we were there is I've barely got to meet them so what happens after the frustration of the first month or two becomes just a state of being and the readiness to fight becomes normality as you start we all did I reckon you start to forget what you've been told you were there for and you start to fall back on what you were told about being the honour of a fighting soldier in the first place I'm not saying any of this is conscious there wasn't a point where I sat down and had a good think about what to replace the sense of mission with when it became clear the mission wasn't going to happen but it's in the air when everything's going to shit it's in the air you might have been sent there to transform the outcomes for a population or whatever but when that goes to shit and you're just being sent out to try and find and kill people who are killing you you fall back on the things you've been told the big glorious things about being part of the greatest fighting force in the history of the human race and the small everyday things about being there for your fellow soldiers and the most important duty being to have their backs to be honest they rely on this when it all goes to shit as it always does and they never seem to suspect it will the people who make the decisions to send you there who make the plans and think they can see the whole picture when they absolutely can't they rely on this thinking because they know that when it does go to shit that's the thing you're going to fall back on you're doing something honourable and somewhere in your mind you've been taught you'll be rewarded for that and ultimately as the last line of defence you won't let your mates down again I'm not saying on the day that I died that this was consciously in my thinking I'm not saying that when we were sent out to have a look at an area at the edge of a village that someone had been using as cover to shoot at us the previous day I was thinking that if it all went to its top at least I might get a medal it'd be ridiculous to want it but it'd be ridiculous to deny that it wasn't in some way deep down under your actions and in the same way nobody cared that the British army had had the absolute shit battered out of them in the same valleys over a century before but we all still knew it anyway anyway same way they made sure we knew every time one of us had been conspicuously gallant enough to be recognised with an award so it was there it was there because it was all we had to fall back on because every other reason we had to be there had been so completely abandoned so when you drive out in that armoured vehicle to have a look at yesterday's ambush point that thinking is somewhere there in your head when you leave the vehicle to find some cover to try and identify where yesterday's fire was coming from it's in your head when you see the line of stones barely a wall really that you thought the shots came from it's in your head when you start to carefully move across the open ground barely a field really between you and those stones it's in your head when it turns out they were waiting for you to come back maybe the same day as yesterday maybe different ones it's in your head and it's in your head when one of your mates take your time when one of your mates about 10 metres in front and to the side of you gets the bottom part of his leg blown off below the knee when you realise they knew you were coming and they managed to bury something you couldn't find and under all the chaos when they open up from behind cover it's still there too when you realise your mate's out there in the open and he's still alive I guess you're hearing all the ghosts then in the valley and you're wanting to avenge them or thinking of all the brave ones and wanting to join them you don't really know that it's in your head even though you don't think it when you run towards the gun so that the mates behind you can get to the wounded guy before they manage to hit him it's in your head as you're 20 metres away from where they're hiding and 10 and 5 it's in your head when they finally hit you and maybe you see it then I don't know if I saw it clearly then or not pulled that trick so well on us I was thinking about it without even knowing I was thinking about it and I got what I'd never have admitted that I wanted but I've been taught to want it anyway I think that last bit was the bit you were after the bit where I died but all of it's true thank you very much you're free to go you have the floor in July 2006 the mission in Afghanistan changes from a peacekeeping operation to a combat mission before the end of the year 21 British soldiers are killed on operations in Helmand another 14 die when RAF Nimrod plane crashes in Kandahar province the biggest single loss of life for a British force since the Falklands war in 1982 in May 2007 Operation Silver successfully expels Taliban fighters from the town of Sanjin controlling the town gives total control over major roads in Helmand Sanjin was also one of the world centres of the opium trade Britain volunteers to be in charge of running counter-narcotic efforts in June 2009 the British launch Operation Panthers Claw a major operation to provide the security for the 2009 presidential election Britain leads the operation which secures canal and river crossings in Helmand around Lushkargar 2009 marks the UK's deadliest year in the country with 108 service personnel killed civilian loss of life is 10,909 UK forces reach their peak in 2010 with more than 10,000 troops deployed in the country and the largest joint offensive between US and UK troops in July 2010 the UN and the Afghan government agree to transition that sees Afghanistan lead on security with the changing command beginning in January 2011 on the 26th of October 2014 British troops end their combat role in Afghanistan a ceremony in December 2014 marks ISAF's formal completion of its mission in the country concluding the three year transition process civilian loss of life is 26,271 in January 2015 the NATO led Resolute Support Mission RSM is launched to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces a mission British troops continue to assist with in January 2018 NATO commits to sustaining Operation Resolute Support Mission until conditions indicator change was appropriate financial support is also extended to Afghan security forces until 2024 civilian casualties surpass 100,000 in February 2020 the US and the Taliban sign a peace deal that includes a condition based agreement for the international troops to leave Afghanistan by May 2021 by August 2021 after British forces have retreated completely 241,000 lives have been lost in the Afghanistan Pakistan war zone in Helmand the British military relied on air and artillery support which resulted in a higher civilian civilian casualties it led to high intensity battles and the destruction and depopulation of town centres there have been many instances of Afghan civilian lives lost at the hand of the British army who lived up to the historic image of aggressive and destructive invaders we would now like to take a moment to remind the panel of article 8 BIS the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and the violence used undeniably fits the character, gravity and scale of an act of aggression we have also provided strong evidence of the following acts we will now hear from one of the civilians killed by British forces the following testimony is fictionalised and written by Sharla Nix and based on true events in which a British ISAF service people shot at a civilian vehicle resulting in the deaths of two children I believe the prosecution would now like to call Samaran TC who will be playing witness Aisha Wazeel to the stand please I do solemnly and truly affirm that the evidence Aisha will give as Aisha Wazeel shall be truthful to the text Sharla Nix has written please take a seat thank you Aisha you'll be asked some questions by the prosecution but it's important to remember to speak directly into the microphone and towards the panel so that everyone can hear you, is that okay? thank you could you tell us your name Aisha Wazeel thank you Miss Wazeel could you tell us how old you were on Sunday the 16th of December 2007 I was 7 and a half and do you remember where you were on Sunday the 16th of December 2007 yes that's a good memory that you have Aisha could you tell us where you were please confirm for the court where you were on Sunday the 16th of December 2007 Miss Wazeel I was at home and where is home for you Musakala Musakala is a town in southern Afghanistan in the Helmand district is that right yeah could you please tell us what you remember about that day I was playing football with my brother and sister and then Baba came to tell us to stop because we had to go to the Bazaar could you please tell us what a Bazaar is please Aisha it's the market to go buy some fruits thank you, please continue we like to take Baba's taxi Suleiman he always gets to go in the front but Baba said I could go this time then we drive like two minutes and then it was really loud and scary bang bang bang bang bang bang bang the windows on the car they smashed and then my dad he fell on to me and there was a lot of blood there was a lot of blood and loud gun sounds Suleiman and Hamidah they were screaming I could hear mom telling them to get down and then I couldn't hear anymore the loudest was Iman he was shouting outside the car he sound like the Englishman from the TV let it be noted that Aisha Wazila's first language is Pashto and in English this means what are you doing you killed a family you killed a family please continue he just kept shouting this and he was scared thank you Aisha we won't keep you much longer before we can let you go can you confirm this is everything that you remember about that day remember to say it out loud so everyone can hear you me and my family we all died in my dad's taxi after the gun sounds the Englishman was the last memory I had thank you Aisha you've been so very brave there'll be no further questions thank you Aisha you're free to go we request we request permission to present evidence from a journalist from Afghanistan who wishes to remain anonymous for their safety this will be in the form of a report which will be read by an actor permission granted I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and swear that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you take a seat on September 16th 2012 in Lakhman province a group of women and children left their homes to firewood to throw fuel a US led NATO aircraft bombed the Nur-Alam valley killing nine and wounding seven others local authorities confirmed that nine women and seven others injured a member of Lakhman provincial council said the airstrike was carried out by British forces in Afghanistan Lakhman's health officials also confirmed that nine women and young girls have been killed and seven others injured provincial health director Latif Choyumi said some of the girls were aged 10 the truth is that the claims of women's rights made by foreign forces in Afghanistan are nothing but false slogans the action also showed that foreign forces were not committed to what they had told Afghans about their mission the occurrence of soviet-style crimes mean that NATO does not know who it is fighting with if it knows why it is killing Afghans civilians women children and men on mass again there are many examples of foreign forces making a series of pledges after each civilian death that they will save civilians and prevent a recurrence of the same attack but for the past 11 years Afghans have seen this western forces fail to live up to their promises their action is actually comparable with verses of the Quran which repeatedly warns how disbelieving forces break their promises to Muslims during a conflict this is another reason why many Afghans do not trust foreign forces and the regime they have set up because in their actions they show the same signs mentioned Islamic texts and teachings on June 5 and 6 2012 US planes bombed a wedding party in the village of Sajawand killing at least 18 people most of them women and children General John Allen NATO's outgoing command at Afghanistan met with the family members of the victims all the survivors in an unknown area surrounded by US troops armed with sophisticated weapons or a local US military base there the general demonstrated military policy and apologized to the locals for killing 18 of their relatives in an airstrike and promised that such an incident would not happen again no judicial commitment was made nor did the Kabul regime announce any judicial follow up the question rises here is there anything about this in the constitutions for Afghans to defend themselves what is the penalty for murder in an afghanic constitution that is made with US money later we soon saw the recurrence of several other incidents of civilian casualties some of the hands of foreign forces and some of the hands of foreign backed local police when the criminals of the day are present in the state and their crime is justified no one removes them from office for instance, take the case of Gondol's province the Arbakiq militia known as the local police backed by NATO forces stormed a village and knocked the doors of various homes in response to each door whoever came out to answer the knock had been shot and killed on the spot even the Kabul regime confirmed that the Gondol's crime was against civilians and that the local police had been supported by NATO forces earlier a similar incident took place in Ghaz-Aurazgan province where 16 civilians were killed by an afghan local police ALP commander Nisha Jai no one asked him why what happened in both provinces was a horrific form of crime that required fair investigation and justice but the victims didn't get justice it means that no one is safe and these crimes are part of military policy if not, why are these criminals still carrying out their government jobs and enjoying their activities how can an ordinary Afghan be always convinced that anti-government fighters about this regime thank you very much you're free to go we would like to remind the court that killing civilians amounts to war crimes we would like to continue with the consequences of the invasion the legacy of the British campaign in Afghanistan is hard to determine as British strategy was never clear there were improvements for women in Kabul and African social and economic development since 2001 operations to clear the town of Helmand of insurgents were mixed with efforts of the provincial reconstruction teams to develop Helmand's economic infrastructure schools, hospitals, roads reservoirs and power generators aimed to help the Afghans become economically invested in stability were built but the fighting continued so the British began to invest heavily in the training and mentoring of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police so that they would take more responsibility for the security situation in Helmand and the country as a whole the infrastructure that was set up was minimal due to the fact that the regiments were stationed for only six months on rotation as we have heard from the anonymous British ambassador each brigade would implement a different operation even if not needed some critiques argue that the medals are only one with kinetic operations which drove armed forces conflict to intensify following the heavy bombing of Sanjian in 2007 which is one of the world's centers of the opium trade Britain volunteered to lead counter-narcotic efforts in Afghanistan these efforts have ultimately failed as the level of cultivation of opium poppies has in fact risen and a report by the select committee identified that while under the Taliban 24% of the world's opium originated in Afghanistan now after 20 years of western occupation the percentage is at 90% what does the consequence of war mean in terms of numbers the Afghan military and police who have fought alongside the US and UK coalition are estimated to have lost 69,000 soldiers NATO allies brought home 3586 coffins and at least 6 times as many wounded veterans according to a tally kept by iCasualties.org a number of rebels including Taliban fighters killed is estimated to be 84,191 the ministry of defense paid 1.3 million compensation to the Afghans for death, injury and damage this was on average less than half of what they asked for the lowest payment for a death was £542 after a girl was killed in a fire started by a rocket the highest was 5,000 for each victim paid to families of a number of Afghans killed by strikes involving health fire missiles in trial session 2 on the first day of this tribunal eyewitness Gulwali Parasalai told us pretty much every type of bomb except nuclear bombs rained down on my country confirming that the coalition employed excessive use of force international law has long recognised the illegality of occupation that results from unlawful use of force by the occupying state an Oxfam report titled the cost of war examined Afghan experiences of conflict 8 NGOs operating in Afghanistan conducted research in 14 provinces across the country and found approximately 2 in 5 individuals reported having property destroyed and 1 in 3 were robbed during the conflict the causes and perceived motivations behind these violations were often tied to larger plans of violence deliberately targeting civilians making many individuals feel unsafe and negatively affecting their ability to earn an income or feed their family more than 1 in 10 individuals reported being imprisoned and 1 in 5 individuals reported being tortured on education a 2009 report by UNICEF found that 3.7 million children were out of school with 60% of them girls we urged the court to consider whether the above numbers as well as the 241,000 civilian lives lost the families broken the millions displaced injured or tortured led to an improvement in Afghanistan after 20 years of British presence nothing further thank you very much this concludes trial session 7 we return at 1pm for trial session 8 which will look at the testimony of refugees in the United Kingdom we will hear testimony from Gowali Pasolai and Monish Bhatia thank you very much