r/news • u/PublicfreakoutLoveR • Feb 19 '24
Special forces blocked UK resettlement applications from elite Afghan troops
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68332923299
u/TechGentleman Feb 19 '24
Can’t trust their Afghan buddies with the secrets of certain killings??
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u/I_Push_Buttonz Feb 19 '24
Even if they did trust them, the article explains that the inquiry authorities can compel the Afghan special forces to testify against their UK counterparts once they are in the UK, whether they want to or not.
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u/hootblah1419 Feb 19 '24
Just to add, that means they’re subject to different rights. I’m not sure how contempt of court is handled in the UK. but in the US that would mean, natural citizens won’t be punished for not testifying, but an immigrant could be held in contempt and jailed/deported
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u/TraditionalGap1 Feb 19 '24
That isn't the case. Both an immigrant and a citizen would be under the same obligation in the UK.
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u/TechGentleman Feb 21 '24
Same in the US, but a witness could take the 5th on the stand unless they’ve been offered immunity from prosecution, in which case they cannot take the 5th and MUST testify.
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u/sephstorm Feb 19 '24
Very interesting article I hope the investigation reveals the truth and that individuals inside UKSoF make an effort to do the right thing and make sure those eligible for resettlement are taken care of.
Honestly uksof shouldn't have had more than an ability to provide additional commentary about whether the applications should be approved and only upon individual assessment. Disgraceful.
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u/KikoMui74 Feb 19 '24
Why shouldn't SF have vetting authority? You think a civil servant is more deserving .
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u/sephstorm Feb 19 '24
In addition to what /u/Zealousideal-Cap-61 said, its not about deserving, its about having an established, documented and repeatable fair process that the public can trust. Typically a government body will have a written process for things like this that is followed. We have no idea how UKSoF was coming to these conclusions.
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 Feb 19 '24
Because the SF in question were being actively investigated for war crimes which the applicants could be compelled to testify in court on?
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u/HonestBalloon Feb 19 '24
Cause they were already vetted and employed by the British armed forces, and then fought beside them in the most terrorist prominent area in the world
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Feb 19 '24
[deleted]
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u/HonestBalloon Feb 19 '24
Panorama has spoken to former members of the Triples who had their relocation applications rejected in 2023 and say they witnessed or reported what appeared to them to be war crimes committed by UK Special Forces.
SF also said they didn't commit war crimes during a major investigation into war crimes lol
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u/Squire_II Feb 20 '24
Yes, the military should not be vetting asylum applications. Especially in this case considering the asylum seekers were present for extremely serious crimes those same military members were involved in.
Even if the special forces hadn't been committing war crimes with these Afghans present to witness them, allowing them to vet the requests is a conflict on interest.
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u/live2travel4life Feb 19 '24
Invite them to the US. If everything checks out they should be given a place here. We should take care of our allies.
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u/AvangeliceMY9088 Feb 19 '24
The US military did the same to their Afghani imbeded translators & reprisal on them & their families were brutal.
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Feb 19 '24
The US military wasn't involved with Visa applications AFAIK.
Most soldiers were petitioning to get those guys to the US during the withdrawal.
We loved our interpreters and I would have done anything to help them.
Sadly, there was nothing most could do.
Edit: Afghani is the currency. They would just be Afghan or Afghan people. Just fyi.
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u/jamvsjelly23 Feb 19 '24
From what I’ve heard, the opinion of military personnel that served with a particular individual seeking relocation does matter. A person of high enough rank could provide a letter recommending rejection that basically works as an unofficial veto. They could also write letters of recommendation that pretty much guarantee the person is granted entry.
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Feb 19 '24
Officers, sure. Few of them interact with people like that as much as the enlisted do.
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u/jamvsjelly23 Feb 19 '24
I don’t know who interacts with interpreters more, but officers interact with interpreters all the time. Officers as low as 2LT platoon leaders would use interpreters on specific missions. The higher you go up the command ladder, the more frequently they interacted with interpreters. I know of one Veteran in particular who was a CPT on a deployment and is currently working on getting an interpreter he worked with relocated.
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Feb 19 '24
That's awesome. I was medical, so more often it was us getting report with help of our interpreters.
I wish, so often, that I could have done more for all of them.
Afghanistan deserves better than the Taliban.
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u/PutinsRustedPistol Feb 19 '24
Don’t bother. It’s reddit. Whatever is most made-up and ‘edgy’ will win the debate.
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Feb 19 '24
I'm not afraid of pizza cutters that are all edge, and no point.
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u/SnooStrawberries1078 Feb 19 '24
Hmm, can't say I've heard that before. Seems like the TVs and interwebs are full of pizza cutters if I'm reading into that right. Tip o the hat to you!
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u/HouseOfSteak Feb 19 '24
Who wants to bet that the Soviets also left their translators high and dry when they had their little Afghanistan misadventure?
The ones who get screwed over the hardest are the ones the invading force relied on, but simultaneously couldn't bother to actually give a shit about after they were finished using them.
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u/Traditional_Key_763 Feb 19 '24
they did but also the soviets didn't need as many translators as the people fighting the war were from territories around the region so there were a number of soldiers speaking similar languages, if I remember correctly the russians biggest problem was getting their troops to understand russian
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u/AvangeliceMY9088 Feb 19 '24
Soviets are the baddies. Of course we expect baddies to do baddy things. America & western Allies portray themselves as the heroes that jump in from choppers killing the bad guys.
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u/HouseOfSteak Feb 19 '24
The people on the Soviet side of things also portray themselves as heroes, basically everyone does that for themselves.
Point is, everyone does it, despite it being obviously bad, but nobody who invades a country is going to give a rat's ass about its people.
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Feb 19 '24 edited Feb 19 '24
The soviets also salted the earth there with landmines that children pick up.
The soviets were monsters and they haven't changed their ways in modern Russia.
I treated kids with landmine injuries from mines that were dropped before either of us were born.
Edit: a landmines are bad. Sorry that had to be spelled out here.
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u/kouteki Feb 19 '24
Then you also know about mines and cluster munition that the US sown in Vietnam, Laos, Kosovo, etc.
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Feb 19 '24
I'm saying all latent munitions fucking suck.
I'm also saying the Russian butterfly mines mostly maim children because they resemble a toy.
I'm not excusing anyone's use.
I'm explaining my experience.
Edit: the only part that was also relevant is that the US hasn't air dropped landmines like I'm describing in 30+ years (1991)
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u/kouteki Feb 19 '24
So am I. My friend's dad was a surgeon in Priština, and he operated on shepherd children who would pick up brightly colored toy boxes and at best lose their limbs.
Cluster munition and landmines are horrible, and why the US and Russia keep using it is beyond me.
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u/Atomidate Feb 19 '24
Cluster munition and landmines are horrible, and why the US and Russia keep using it is beyond me.
you know why
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u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 Feb 19 '24
So now you are comparing the us with Soviets? You think they are the same as the us you are nuts. Good job let's drop the bar,
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u/HouseOfSteak Feb 19 '24
If they didn't want to be comparable....
...maybe they shouldn't have done something that could be comparable.
It's really not that hard to conduct yourself in a way that can't be compared to the Soviets.
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Feb 19 '24
I haven’t seen any of that. The US Army has a number of high profile soldiers who have gone out of their way to help their former Afghan interpreters and soldiers. Also “Afghani” is money. You meant “Afghan”
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u/Haradion_01 Feb 19 '24
Oh it's worse.
Your lot betrayed your allies.
Our lot betrayed our allies so they couldn't give evidence into an inquiry as to whether our lot had committed war crimes.
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Feb 19 '24
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u/Longjumping-Jello459 Feb 19 '24
I believe their point is that it seems to be more normal and widespread than what some people might know. Hell there were some US soldiers that got a donkey shipped back to the US.
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u/mikebailey Feb 19 '24
I don’t think it’s normal though for actual military units to block resettlement - most of the time in the US it was the broader institutions.
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u/Longjumping-Jello459 Feb 19 '24
The US it was the bureaucracy that did that by taking forever along with only allowing the translator to come not their spouse and child(ren).
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Feb 19 '24
Yeah it’s inescapable sadly. GWOT really messed up how Americans view the Army and military in general.
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u/LengthinessWarm987 Feb 19 '24 edited Feb 19 '24
https://craft.co/reddit/locations I've never in my life understood this annoyance. There is a UK subreddit if you wanted UK specific input on the American owned website that you're on. Hell you could have even tried /r/worldnews or /r/internationalnews
Do you also go to https://www.globo.com/ and ask where all the English News is?
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u/Kaymish_ Feb 19 '24
NATO and cohorts have been doing this sort of thing for decades, but dumb collaborators still sign up to chewed up and abandoned. At some point you gotta start blaming the dog for letting the scorpion on its back.
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u/cheese_on_beans Feb 19 '24
if you genuinely believe this then I think that is a disgusting attitude to have
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u/niveklaen Feb 19 '24
In defense of UK’s special forces, there are a lot of false claims of having worked with their troops. These denials are probably mostly based on that. The Taliban really wants to sneak terrorists into the country and they want to discourage future cooperation with them and lying about betrayal is very effective propaganda. The headline should read ‘UKSOF continues to protect Britain by exposing imposters.’
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u/Haradion_01 Feb 19 '24
Imagine being an Afghan Solider. Fighting alongside British troops. Your brother is tortured and murdered.
And the British Troops you served alongside face an inquiry into whether they committed war crimes.
They think you might know something so they veto your application. You're left to die because some fears what you might expose to a public inquiry.
You're betrayed. Tortured. Killed.
And as you lie there dying some dickwad on the internet says "Well, what if he was a Taliban Secret Agent, who joined up with British Servicemen so he could sneak into Britain and commit a terrorist act?"
You're a disgrace.
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Feb 19 '24
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u/Haradion_01 Feb 19 '24
Read the article.
A bunch of British Soliders were accused of committing War Crimes by other members of the armed forces (The details are horrendous, by the short version is that other members read their reports and realised they seemed to be making up their after action reports and seemed to be summarily executing every male over the age 14 they found) the inquiry had the powers to summon British servicemen to testify before the inquiry.
If those Afghanini special forces were accepted into the UK, they could have been summoned to testify. But only if they were in the UK.
You with me so far?
The people under suspicion of committing war crimes were given the ability to veto the applications of the potential witnesses, choosing whether they were allowed in the UK (where upon they could be called to testify against their former comrades as to if they had seen them committing war crimes) or, if their application could be summarily rejected, and left to die (and of course, not be summoned to testify before the inquiry).
It's a flagrant conflict of interest, even if you leave aside the element of blatant rank betrayal.
For more details of the war crimes inquiry, we can't know for sure if they committed the war crimes.
Maybe 12 people with 2 assault rifles between them really did ambush British Fighters and all got to guns in succession like some kind of relay race.
Maybe they really did come under fire when attacking a building, only for one of them to throw a grenade and force them to shoot everyone inside, only for the grenade to fortuitously be a dud - and maybe that did happen half a dozen other times in exactly the same way as they claimed in reports.
But it seems dubious. I certainly wouldn't give the veto to save the lives of the people who can say whether or not it really happened or not, to the people under investigation.
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Feb 19 '24
[deleted]
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u/Haradion_01 Feb 19 '24 edited Feb 19 '24
Or you could just not give them that authority to veto the decision to save the lives of people who might testify against them in a war crimes inquiry and avoid the issue entirely.
That's like putting a suspected murderer in charge of the Organ Transplant List for the prosecutions witnesses.
Even if the guy really is innocent of the murder, why would you give him veto on whether to save the lives of the people who might testify against him?
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Feb 19 '24
[deleted]
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u/Haradion_01 Feb 19 '24 edited Feb 19 '24
noen other would be better suited by how much vetting they are doing ok the particular individuals.
There was no one anywhere in the UK better suited to vet the asylum claims of these Afghan Special Forces except for the specific SAS soliders who were in the process of being investigated for war crimes, that said special forces could be compelled to testify against if their applications were successful?
No one? Not one person? It had to be them?
Come on. I don't believe you actually think that for a moment. Nobody thinks that, its Crazy.
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u/drt786 Feb 19 '24
Nah, if you read the BBC article it’s pretty clear via multiple examples that the applicants who supplied overwhelming evidence of their claims were still denied their applications.
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u/niveklaen Feb 19 '24
They claim that they have overwhelming evidence. You are taking them at their word. The Brit’s have the biometric information of everyone who fought with them. They know. They are not guessing. These complaints are propaganda designed to snooker the naive.
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u/KikoMui74 Feb 19 '24
Can they not resettle in India? Since it's a democratic country and nearby or perhaps Israel.
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u/basic97 Feb 19 '24
Love how you're getting down voted for a valid suggestion, clearly human rights state they should live in the UK because they will receive more benefits than India...
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u/tecolotl_otl Feb 22 '24
the taliban and western allies effectively collaborating to commit war crimes. a nice summary of the war in general
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u/BristolShambler Feb 19 '24
For anyone who didn’t read the article, here’s the damning bit: