Protest and condemnation follow revelations that the British royal killed 25 Afghans while on tour with the military.
Prince Harry in the U.S. for Apache helicopter pilot training in 2011. (Defence Imagery, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The revelation that a British royal killed 25 Afghans while on his second tour with the British military has spurred widespread international criticism, as well as protests within Afghanistan.
Prince Harry, now the Duke of Sussex, has admitted in his forthcoming memoir Spare that while serving as an Apache helicopter co-pilot and gunner in Afghanistan he killed 25 Afghans, and that while it “wasn’t a number that gave [him] any satisfaction,” neither “was it a number that made [him] feel ashamed.”
The prince recounted thinking of those he had killed as “chess pieces removed from the board” or “Bads taken away before they could kill Goods.”
Thousands of Afghans were brutally killed in the decades of violence that followed the invasion by the U.S. and NATO in 2001. As per one estimate, close to 47,000 civilians were killed between 2001 and 2021.
In 2021, UNICEF claimed that at least 28,500 children had been killed in Afghanistan since 2005, which, as accounted for “27 percent of all verified child casualties globally.”
A report by U.K.-based human rights group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) in November 2022 revealed that the British forces alone were responsible for — and had admitted their culpability in — the killings of somewhere between 64 and 135 Afghan children in the nine years between 2006 and 2014. This period also covers the time that prince Harry was deployed to Afghanistan.
On Jan. 8, a number of university students and staff led a protest in Helmand — the province to which Harry was deployed, and which saw a great deal of U.S. and British troop activity — against both Prince Harry and the imperial violence of the war in Afghanistan.
The leadership and professors of Helmand University yesterday (Sunday) in a protest meeting asked the international community to bring the Prince Harry to the trial table.
British Prince Harry wrote in his notes that he killed 25 people during his military mission in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/Q9Yg4mpJ2Z— Afghan Press Club (@afghanpressclub) January 9, 2023
While carrying posters denouncing him, the protesters said the prince’s actions in Afghanistan were “against all norms of humanity,” reported The Mirror. The protesters claimed that the cruelties perpetrated by Prince Harry and other troops in Helmand and elsewhere across Afghanistan were not “only cruel” but also “unacceptable” to all segments of Afghan society, and that he should be “put on trial.” The Mirror reported that a teacher at the university, Sayed Ahmad Sayed, said that the “cruelties” committed by Harry and others in Afghanistan would be “remembered by history.”
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
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I have no use for monarchies anywhere. But I do feel for Harry. Just as his mother ‘brought fresh air’ into the palace, so Harry has the courage to ‘lift the rug’ under which so much is hidden.
I’m sure he thinks that at the end of the day, what difference does a couple of dozen dead wogs make, anyway. Make no mistake folks, racism is baked into the genes of the younger royals just as much as it was in their late grandmother.
And he learned nothing, he did not grow up in any way. Not a word of introspection.
Anybody with any kind of class or scruples or discernment would have at least kept those murders committed by himself to himself. But no, the little prince brags about it.
Did you read the book rather than a juicy snippet served up to you on a silver platter by the mass media?
In fact does quite the opposite. They pulled a few lines out of context and it makes all the difference to people who choose to not be manipulated by media.
Also he was a soldier and whilst I did not and so not support war it was his job at the time. What do you think war IS? Smh
War is hell.
That means Harry is a devil.
I wonder how Harry knew that all those he slaughtered were Taliban.
Oh dear, lets clutch our pearls! What did people think Prince Harry was doing in Afghanistan, in uniform. He was trained military airman, a co-pilot/gunner in an Apache helicopter. My guess that at the time many Brits reveled in patriotism at the sight of a “royal” actively partaking in this vile war.
To say nothing of the horrors committed by the United Kingdom’s thirst to colonize helpless countries. There is so much blood on the hands of UK and US, this story just seems picky. Time to read some history.
But of course, he said it was taken out of context. So what context do you think those 25 people you killed might wish to be attributed to.? You know, perhaps they don’t mind being dead, but they want their killings in the right context.
Dirty Harry the bloody self admitted mass murder.
I could not befriend a person who could kill another living being.