Major Richard Streatfeild - Former British Army Officer HARDtalk

declared the city a disaster zone. Now it's time for HARDTalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk Mac with me, Stephen Sackur. The British military

pullout from Afghanistan will soon be completed. They jesting the

painful lessons from a 12 year deployment, that will take a whole

lot longer. My guess today, Richard Streatfeild, was an officer in

Helmand during some of the toughest fighting with the Taliban. He kept

an upbeat audio diary back then of life on the front line. Now, he

takes a more jaundiced view of Britain's Afghan commitment. Is it

time to acknowledge failure? Richard Streatfeild, welcome to

HARDtalk. Thank you. Has an interest free `` infantry officer you had

experience from the Balkans to Northern Ireland. When you got to

Helmand Mac, do you feel you are properly prepared? I felt that on

arrival, we were properly prepared. It was the longest period of

training I had ever undertaken as an army officer. I have had my company

with me for six months. We had done five or six exercises. Compare that

to Bosna in 1998 when we had six weeks and one exercise before we

ended up there. Six months old at the time like a long period. ``

Bosnia. What about the nature of the theatre of operations in Helmand. It

is an difficult place for a Western soldier to get their head around,

isn't it? It is. At the time, I felt that we were not going to

necessarily the most difficult place. The company that had been

there before me had been spared the worst excesses of the IED 's. They

had fought a reasonably conventional type of counter insurgency ``IEDs.

They were on the periphery of Sangin. They had been able to

dictate the pace of their operations. We did things slightly

differently and the situation changed during the summer of 2009.

The IED threat became suddenly far more prevalent than it had

previously been. On a wider horizon, do you feel, looking back,

that you understood what your mission was? NATO forces had gone

into Afghanistan to eradicate the jihadi militant Al Qaeda threat to

Western civilisation. And yet, when you talk about IED is and when you

talk of the nature of the conflict is based, I was a conflict with the

Taliban, not Al Qaeda. I wonder whether, even then, you were puzzled

about what you are doing. I wasn't puzzled, I knew it had changed,

because we were briefed on it before we went that this change from

rooting out I Al Qaeda to nationbuilding in Helmand was a

considerable change to the mission. You saw yourself as a nation builder

? I was trying to win the hearts of the people and extent of the writ of

government over the area we were in, meaning government security. All of

it was aimed at trying to help the government of Afghanistan. You were

in command of a bunch of blokes with guns, infantrymen, from the British

Army, none of whom I dare say spoke Pashtun, the local language, and yet

you thought you were a credible nation force? We had a number of

speakers, we had (CROSSTALK). They weren't your men. Guess, we did. ``

yes, we did. It is a difficult language. We weren't alone in that

difficulty. When you are trying to win the hearts and minds of people,

it is a very basic thing that needs to happen, and that is, you need to

get yourself in between the insurgent of the population. Once

you have inserted yourself into that gap, you need to defend the

population with everything you've got. Quickly, after that, you

realise you are on their site and you are not putting them in between

the enemy and yourselves. That is the crucial difference `` side. That

is how to do counterinsurgency. The governor of Helmand province and the

Americans all said that the British forces in Helmand failed to win over

the people, get them on their side. I'm not in a position to know in

every area how that turned out. In hindsight, I can see there were

considerable difficulties. The reason why I have written the book

is because we were approached at the end of the tour by the Taliban and

their exact words were, you have been honourable warriors and we wish

to talk. They realised that we had succeeded in our area in getting

between them and the population and they wanted to negotiate, because

they had their kinsfolk were part of the population and they had forced

them to fight and they now realised that there was only the possibility

of a negotiated settlement. You mention this book. You have written

a frank, reflective walk on what you went through and what your men went

through in a couple of years in Afghanistan. What makes us think

that you could maintain Helmand with a few thousand troops was, hubris.

It was. The lessons of history were there for everyone to see. In 1880,

a force of 15 hundred was wiped out near where we were based. A British

force. The local Afghans, through their honour code, believed we were

there for one reason only, to take revenge for our dead in 1880. We

went in there believing we would be on their side, when all they could

see was an invading army coming to take back for the defeat Andre Dias

before. The beauty of what you have done is try to give an assessment of

what it is like on the front line in a place like Afghanistan in this

case, from the UK. `` the defeat 100 years before. You were convinced

that they were the bad guys. We know that he mentality developed, which

was all about nailing the bad guys, you have talked about revenge, and

on both sides it became a war of attrition. Then you told me that the

job was nationbuilding and you had to reach out to the people. That

simply wasn't happening. When we first got to Helmand and we began to

try to understand the situation that we had arrived in, and the first

three weeks of patrols saw as many IED is against us as our

predecessors had had in six months, we realised we were in a very

different and much more dangerous kind of fight than the Taliban had

constricted around the British camps, laying a minefield. Is on the

import of that, because the Taliban don't wear were uniforms and because

they'd melt in and out of communities, that you and your men

come to see the entire community within which you operate as a

potential threat, a potential killer, a bad guy. That I am very

lucky that my company were absolutely clinical `` I am very

lucky. One of the things we tried to do was to make sure we were more

than 100 is uncertain not only that the person we were looking out

through the sights of our weapons was an insurgent, but also that he

was an insurgent who, the only way could stop him doing that particular

thing, carrying out that particular threat to life, was to kill him in

turn. By being that clinical in their contact, we were able to

clearly demonstrate to the locals that we were only going to kill

people who were in the process of trying to kill either of them us.

You can say, hand on heart, that is every true in every case of all the

men your command? We know it is not the case in other theatres of

operation for British forces. I can say that while there were a couple

of accidental deaths where, unfortunately, towards the end of

the two, a young girl was killed by a stray grenade, that the soldier in

question was aiming at the time at a known insurgent who was trying to

kill him ``tour. And that was only rectified, the only way to rectify,

by paying your due immediately. The family came to us, asked for

compensation, we paid immediately and nine, the important point,

honour was satisfied. Do you feel it was an honourable war? One British

soldier is currently serving a prison sentence in a British

military jail after being convicted of murdering an Afghan Taliban

fighter who was grievously wounded.. We don't know that. We

don't know what? We don't know he was a Taliban fighter. He was

wounded on the title field and captured. He was in the middle of a

contact situation. `` the battlefield. You no matter what

other instances of engagement we have learned about there is the

suggestion that the way the war work in Afghanistan, honour was lost. At

least, on occasion. The first casualty of all is that. You can get

yourself in a situation where you come to believe that everyone is the

enemy. They are clearly not. The failure of the sergeant Blackman

Case in my eyes is a personal failure on his part, on undoubtedly.

It is also a failure of leadership. It happened in my company and

elsewhere. People reach a point where they are fragile because of

what they have gone through. It is clear that Blackman was in that

situation as well. It is not my judgement whether he was guilty, I

haven't seen the evidence, but that he definitely did wrong, has

committed murder and needs to pay his due for that. We need to know

the circumstances that led to it. Let's talk of another element of

leadership. You commanded a good number of men in a difficult

situation. It seems now, again, with hindsight and on reflection, that

you were gravely worried about the lack of the right equipment and the

right training, given to your men. What did you, as a leader, a

commander, do about that at the time? I did a number of things. When

you are part of the chain of command and you get into a situation and

realise the threat is as it was, as I have mentioned already with a

number of IED devices, what you need to defeat that his armoured

vehicles, good communications and good intelligence. We had neither,

or none of those on arrival in Afghanistan. All of my reports to my

commanding officer and up the chain of command requested more radios,

more armoured vehicles and we were working on the intelligence picture

ourselves in the local area so we could defeat that threat. May stop

you for a second. This is important. You had been in the theatre, in

command, for several months when Michael Prichard was shot dead by a

fellow British soldier, friendly fire incident on December 20, 2009

in the course of investigations it seemed beyond doubt there were

problems with the lack of radios, lack of training of the sniper who,

unfortunately, was responsible for the killing and had never worked

with the nightvision equipment before ``May I stop you. You felt a

sense of responsibility for that. Yes, certainly. I was company

commander. I had ordered the standing patrol that Michael was

part of into that area. I had to set the inter` platoon boundary and I

was in charge. It seems that the death happened because of

shortcomings which you tolerated. I had previously identified and tried

my utmost to rectify and has had others I know in the chain of

command. It was only when we reached a situation that appeared in

tolerable, that those things actually came to us. The fact is a

soldier died. Michael Prichard died before anyone decided it was

intolerable. That is of course too late for him and his family. On

record, I said his family deserved an apology from the MoD. They

certainly got one from me at the time of the inquest and

subsequently. You have spoken to the family? Yes. Have you expressed what

you wrote about in the book, a sense of shame at the way it was handled

by senior officials at the Ministry of Defence? In particularly your

unhappiness with the official assurance that all of the

shortcomings identified had been righted? That was not true?

Absolutely not true. The situation at the inquest was that the money

that had been identified, to be able to identify every individual on the

battlefield, had been put into... We won't allow to spend it because it

was about to be decided six weeks later and it was decided that the

money was not going to be spent on that particular set of equipment.

Michael Prichard's mother has spoken to us in preparation of this

interview and wants to know two things. Firstly, do you believe the

military officials lied at the inquest into her son's death? She

also wants to know whether you believe that what happened to her

son could happen again. Because the problems haven't been addressed. The

officials did not lie. They told... It was a very carefully worded

statement, that the army had identified the lessons to be

learnt. And righted shortcomings? And plans were in place to write

shortcomings. Those plans still exist. `` right. As plans. It could

happen again? One of the reasons why I am happy to call for the apology

and to campaign with Michael's mother for an apology is because I

absolutely believe that this is an intolerable situation for soldiers

going into the next set of operations. I have used the word

Frank many times and what you have said is frank but what is not frank

perhaps is what you chose to say as a public military spokesman,

broadcasting on BBC radio some months after the killing of Michael

Prichard, when you chose to say, quote, as an infantry man I have

never been better equipped in the army. We will not fail here in

Afghanistan for lack of personal equipment. Given what you've just

told me about your grave misgivings, you're calling up the problems up

the chain of command, how could you say that month later after one of

your men had been killed because, as you saw it, he didn't have the right

equipment and training? It's a very paradoxical view. People equate

taking casualties in whatever circumstance as the mission failing.

Michael Prichard's death was the worst moment of the tour by a long

way. But the lack of radios and the lack of equipment did not mean we

failed in our mission. What I said at that point... I've never been

better if clicked, you said. Why did you choose to be a tool, if I may

say so, for army propaganda and positive spin when you felt anything

but positive about this equipment issue yourself? `` better equipped.

At that stage that was true. The biggest threat was the operational

security of the company and the cohesion of the company. Those two

things need explaining. Operational security... If you are in a

desperate fight, you do not tell the enemy where your critical weaknesses

are. I don't say I have about me or I can't... But you don't necessarily

tell the British public or give them the impression that everything is

just fine, we are the best equipped we have ever been, we will not fail

for lack of equipment. You chose to use those words and signalled to the

public that there wasn't a problem. ? needs to be put into context

because I also go on to say in that quote that we do need more and

better equipment as we go on. `` that quote needs to. Also, the

critical point is that if as a commander on the ground and having a

public voice you say... You tell the whole truth and nothing but the

truth at that stage, then that would have had a critical impact on the

cohesion of the company. Maybe that might have been a good thing because

it might have saved a life. It would not have, it would have cost more

lives, undoubtedly. The last point, moving on to more general matters,

the last point on this is maybe a moral issue. You have slammed senior

British army officers who conducted themselves through operations like

Afghanistan and, your words, upon retirement on comfortable pensions,

they burst into print. They should stand up you say for the right thing

when it matters, not bleat about it afterwards. Isn't that precisely

what you ended up doing? No, it's not. I was a major. A company

commander. I am seven ranks of the most senior position in the armed

forces. But the moral code still applies to you? I resigned in order

to be able to speak my mind. What I would say, and I wrote the chain of

command upon my resignation saying this is what I would do. What I

don't see amongst the senior leadership of the army is anyone who

is prepared to resign on this matter of principle and then speak their

mind, when they know exactly what I know, that one of the things that

has come out of all of this is that when the story... When the facts

were put to the MOD, there was no rebuttal and the journalist said for

the first time he had broken the story that was true. That's a

damning indictment to all of those people who are more senior than I am

because I at least have told the truth. A final question hangs over

the British commitment in Afghanistan, as almost 450 service

men and women lost their lives there. That is the question of what

is it worth it? Use a that question is the crucial question that I would

`` I was never prepared to answer. I find that extraordinary given you

were in command of people putting their lives on the line. Why would

you prepared to answer it? I have answered it in the book. At the time

I had a mission and I was putting my best effort into securing a

particular area and trying to exert the rule of law onto a fairly

lawless area. You felt disinclined to be honest with yourself at the

time, what about now? What is your answer now? At the time I didn't

know if it was going to be worth it. I didn't know. You were telling your

men to lay down their lives or at least risk laying down their lives

when you didn't know... It wasn't a particularly dangerous mission.

Wasn't it difficult to live yourself `` live with yourself? You are

asking people to put their lives on the line and you didn't know if it

was worth it? I wasn't asking them to do anything that I wasn't

prepared to do myself. Therefore I was able to ask it. That was a very

clear line to cross for me. And now? Now it will only be worth it if we

truly learned the lessons. In the book, I have said that Afghanistan

in many ways has the elements of the tragedy, both on a personal level

and... Some very good friends lost lives, lost limbs. For the army, it

has lost 20,000 people. Not for the reason of Afghanistan but it is

difficult to say we have been successful there, then we wouldn't

have lost 20,000 in the cuts. We need to learn those lessons. That's

important at the level of learning lessons for Michael Prichard all the

way through to learning lessons in the institutions and other country.

Major Richard Streatfeild, we have to end there. Thank you.

This week is looking decent weatherwise. Plenty of sunshine

around because of the high pressure, establishing itself across the UK.

It will be dry for most. Warm sunshine by day. But, at night, it

will feel chilly under the clear skies. Patchy frost likely in

places. Sunday was disappointing across Scotland. It was windy and

cold, with outbreaks of