SAS troops were prevented from joining an American assault on the Iraqi town of Falluja because British commanders strongly disapproved of US military tactics, it has been revealed.
Falluja, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency, was the target of a fierce attack by US forces in the spring of 2004. Despite the fact that the bombing led to huge civilian casualties and gave the insurgency a propaganda gift, US commanders planned a fresh onslaught on the city in November of the same year.
British defence chiefs were worried about the impact of US tactics on both the Sunni insurgency, backed by al-Qaeda, and increasing Shia militancy in southern Iraq, where most British soldiers were based. They believed the US tactics were counterproductive. So concerned were they that they vetoed plans for the SAS to take part in the November assault, the journalist Mark Urban reveals in his book Task Force Black, which is published tomorrow.
“Orders came down from the chain of command that they [the SAS] were not to do so. Britain had played another red card in a national caveat,” he writes.
It is known that Tony Blair had already expressed the concerns of British military commanders about US tactics in the first assault on Falluja at a meeting with US president George Bush in April 2004.
Urban also says MI6 was so concerned about conditions at a secret US detention centre at Balad, north of Baghdad, that SAS soldiers were told to hand over prisoners to American forces only if the US undertook not to send them there.
John Hutton, then UK defence secretary, admitted to MPs last year that in 2004 UK forces handed over individuals to US counterparts who subsequently flew them to a secret prison in Afghanistan. He referred to allegations by Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, that Iraqi and Afghan prisoners handed over by British special forces had ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. The ministry of defence obtained a gagging order to prevent Griffin from saying anything further. – (Guardian service)