High-profile British veterans have criticised the Duke of Sussex’s claim he had killed 25 Taliban soldiers while serving with the British army in Afghanistan and warned the high-profile admission could increase the risk to his personal security.
The retired army veteran Col Tim Collins, best known for delivering a rousing speech before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, said the prince’s kill-count talk was crass and “we don’t do notches on the rifle butt”.
Others said Harry had appeared wrongly to dehumanise the insurgents by describing them as “chess pieces removed from the board”, while the Taliban accused the prince of committing war crimes on his tour a decade ago.
Anas Haqqani, an influential member of the Afghan government, said: “The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return. Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes.”
The kill-count claim features in Harry’s autobiography, Spare, and comes from the Times’s translation of the Spanish edition of his book.
The prince recounts in his memoir his time as a gunner in an Apache attack helicopter while on his second tour in Afghanistan in 2012. It was possible to establish a kill count, the prince said, because he was able to watch gun-cam footage of every mission he flew on.
Harry writes that “in the era of Apaches and laptops” it was possible to establish “with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed. And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number. So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me.”
Later the prince acknowledged that he had dehumanised those who he had shot in battle: “When I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat I didn’t think of those 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board. Bad people eliminated before they could kill good people.”
Collins, in an interview with Forces News, took issue with Harry’s comments. “Amongst his assertions is a claim that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. That’s not how you behave in the army; it’s not how we think. He has badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”
The former soldier accused Harry of engaging in “a tragic moneymaking scam to fund the lifestyle he can’t afford” that, in a barely concealed sideswipe at his wife, Meghan, was something “someone else has chosen”.
Other Afghanistan veterans questioned how far Harry could be sure of how many people he had killed. A former para said: “I’ve never heard anyone talk about kill counts, it’s crass and frankly cringeworthy. Taking a life is the most serious thing you can ever do on ops, serious people don’t talk it up as a game to shift a few books.”
While it is not uncommon for soldiers to watch back gun-cam footage to analyse how the mission had unfolded, the Afghan veteran added, “You can’t always tell who has been killed or injured. No one is going into a flattened building to check.”
A former British army commander in Afghanistan, retired Col Richard Kemp, said the comments may put the prince’s security at greater risk. Extremists who support the Taliban may now be “motivated to kill Harry” because of memories that have been “resurrected” by his comments, he told Sky News.
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Harry is suing the UK government over a decision to withdraw taxpayer-funded royal protection for him and his family after he stepped back from royal duties in 2020. At one point in the legal battle, his lawyers said the prince “does not feel safe” when he is visiting the UK, after a string of threats and incidents, including from far-right extremists.
There was unease at the comments from some British Muslims, including from those who have publicly supported Harry and Meghan in the past, but continued their support, at least for her.
Zillur Rahman, a lawyer specialising in defamation, said last year that “false and unhinged” articles written about the couple were “exactly” what the Muslim community have experienced. But of Harry’s comments about killing 25 people, he said: “We have seen a focus on a number of killings in Afghanistan, which in some cases have included innocent civilians. I don’t know who the targets were in Harry’s case but of course I find them distasteful.
“It may well be that when he was in the army that was what his life was like, and I would hope that he has moved on and changed his views, but if this is what the army was instilling in its personnel and how they were being educated to view others then it should be examined. Is this the mindset of the army and does it explain why some atrocities were committed?”
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said the military would not discuss Harry’s kill count claim: “We do not comment on operational details for security reasons.”
British forces were engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014, and training efforts thereafter, before the west finally withdrew in chaotic circumstances in summer 2021. The Taliban took over in August that year, before the final withdrawal had been completed.