A senior member of the Taliban has weighed in on Prince Harry’s new book claims that he gunned down soldiers like ‘chess pieces’ during his time in Afghanistan.
Anas Haqqani, is considered a leader of the Taliban and was also a member of the Taliban’s negotiation team in its political office in Doha, Qatar.
He took to Twitter to voice his views on Prince Harry’s new leaked memoirs ‘Spare’ in which he describes killing 25 soldiers whilst serving in the army.
The Duke in his role as an Apache helicopter pilot, that he flew on six missions that resulted in ‘the taking of human lives’, something of which he is neither proud nor ashamed.
He says that in the heat of combat he did not think of the 25 as ‘people’ but instead as ‘chess pieces’ that had been taken off the board.
It is the first time the Prince, 38, has discussed the number of Taliban fighters he personally killed during his military service.
Haqqani has now condemned the way Harry speaks about killing fighters, and called for the ICC (international Criminal Court) to summon him.
Mr Haqqani is the youngest son of fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani, who fought both the Soviets and the Americans, and a brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, now the Minister of Interior of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
He said: ’Mr. Harry! 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 truth is what you’ve said; Our innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders.
‘Still, you were defeated in that “game” of white & black “square”.
‘I don’t expect that the ICC will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you.
‘But hopefully these atrocities will be remembered in the history of humanity.’
The Prince has long been regarded as a terrorist target not only because of his royal status but also because of his two deployments to Afghanistan, which have made him a target for Islamist terrorist organisations.
Writing about his time in Afghanistan, the Prince describes watching video of each ‘kill’ when he returned to base, as a nose-mounted video camera on his Apache helicopter recorded each mission in full.
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He says that in the ‘din and confusion of combat’ he saw the insurgents he killed as ‘baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies’.
It is not possible to kill someone ‘if you see them as a person’, he says, but the Army had ‘trained me to ‘other’ them and they had trained me well.’
He adds that: ‘I made it my purpose, from day one, to never go to bed with any doubt whether I had done the right thing…whether I had shot at Taliban and only Taliban, without civilians in the vicinity. I wanted to return to Great Britain with all my limbs, but more than that I wanted to get home with my conscience intact.’
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