The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, has claimed he killed 25 people while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
In his autobiography Spare, Harry stated that he did not regard them as “humans,” but rather as “chess pieces” that had been removed from the board.
Harry said that flying six missions during his second tour of duty on the front lines resulted in “the taking of human lives,” of which he was neither proud nor ashamed.
He described Taliban fighters as “baddies” who were being removed before they could kill “goodies” in his description of watching a video of each “kill” when he returned to base.
Meanwhile, the Taliban administration has condemned Harry for admitting to killing 25 people while serving in the military in Afghanistan.
“We checked and found that the days on which Prince Harry is mentioning the killing of 25 mujaheddin, we did not have any casualties in Helmand,” Taliban leader Anas Haqqani told Al Jazeera on Friday. “It is clear that civilians and ordinary people were targeted.”
“This story is a part of the many war crimes of the 20 years of Western military presence in Afghanistan,” he said. “It is not the whole picture of the crimes committed by them.”
The Taliban leader earlier accused the British royal of committing “war crimes”.
“Mr Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans,” Haqqani tweeted, referring to Prince Harry’s description that eliminating people who he said were “enemy combatants” was like removing “chess pieces” from a board.
Some British security and military leaders have also criticised Harry over the statement.
Former UK national security adviser Kim Darroch, who served as the country’s ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, told Sky News that he would have counselled Harry to hold back on his comments.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, told the same network that Harry’s statements “tarnished” his reputation and “unjustly” portrayed the British Army negatively.
“His suggestion that he killed 25 people will have re-incited those people who wish him harm,” Kemp said.
“The other problem I found with his comments was that he characterized the British Army basically as having trained him and other soldiers to see his enemy as less than human, just as chess pieces on a board to be swiped off, which is not the case. It’s the opposite of the case,” he added.
Prince Harry spent ten years in the British Army. He served in Afghanistan twice, once from 2007 to 2008 and again from 2012 to 2013. In 2011, he was promoted to captain and qualified as an Apache Aircraft commander. Captain Harry Wales, as he was known in the military, retired in 2015.
Via: Muslim Mirror
