Hello, I'm Charles Mallett with Auk column interview.
Today I'm joined by Dr. Ian Overton, who is the Executive
Director of Action on Armed Violence, as well as being an
investigative journalist and an author in very warm welcome to
UK column and thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Thank you. No, it's a It's a pleasure.
Good. Now, there is an awful lot to
try to cover today. How much of that will actually
get through remains to be seen. But just say that the audience
have a basis for understanding what it is that you're going to
be talking about and why. Would you just explain a bit
about what it is that action on on violence does do and how your
involvement with it started? So we basically root civilian
harm in conflict zones at the epicentre of of what we're
interested in. And we do that through
investigating harm in conflicts as well as looking at what
what's for a long time I thought was a sort of a rather sort of
tinfoil hatted expression as sort of military industrial
complex. But as the longer I've spent in
this space, the more I think that actually that actually
McCarthy was was writing calling it that.
So we investigate the military industrial complex and we do
throw through field research. So my work has taken me over the
years to around 25 conflict zones around the world of
differing levels of harm, as well as doing things like
Freedom of Information request, deep dive analysis into data.
And we run a global explosive violence data set where we look
on a daily basis at civilians killed or injured by explosive
violence in popular related areas.
And we cross reference that to things like the arms trade and
who is profiting from the sale of such weapons to to various
regimes and and nations. OK.
Thank you very much for that. Now the the pursuit really is to
try to staunch the flow of in particular, if I've understood
correctly, civilian casualties. I mean statistically I think
this, this bears sort of greater scrutiny.
Can you just explain with, with particular regard to say
explosive ordinance why it's, you know, it really is a matter
of concern that we think about civilian populations who get
caught up in these sorts of conflicts?
So my own background is I was ABBC journalist and then a
Channel 4 News journalist. And then I set up something
called the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
But around 12 years ago I joined Action on Violence and at the
same time we set up this global explosive violence Monitor.
And it was quite a revelation because up until that point I've
been to lots of places where there were clearly huge sorts of
impacts of, of conflict on towns and cities.
But we set out to look at all English British language media
reports of civilians recorded injured or killed in these
cities, alongside all injuries and deaths.
And we found out relatively quickly that when explosive
weapons were used in towns and cities, around 90% of people
killed or injured were civilians, compared to something
around 20% in lesser populated areas such as rural terrain.
And I thought in the first instance, this might have been
an anomaly. But year 2 came year three-year
4, Year 5, every year for a decade, the same basic patterns
of harm are very clearly evidenced.
And over that time, we've obviously seen Homs and Aleppo
and Mariupol and Gaza unfolding where, you know, we're back in
the sort of terrain of of Hiroshima and Dresden, you know,
massive deaths of civilians in urban areas, often very
distanced from the general public's mind and concern,
although I think Gaza and Mariupol have brought it more
fiercely into the living room. But certainly, you know, a
decade ago, nobody talked about this phrase explosive weapons in
populated areas. And I wonder if your listeners
are familiar now with that framing.
And I would say that that's come out of the sort of lobbying work
and advocacy work that organizations like mine have
tried to do to to make this a concern.
And we, we actually got over 80 states signing a political
commitment to avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated
areas in Ireland a couple of years ago.
And, and of course, you could say that this is, you know,
since Ireland a few years ago, we've seen the, the devastation
of Gaza and the, the continuing terrors of Ukraine.
But I think at least we're now acknowledging that this is a
real issue of 21st century warfare and civilians,
strangely, in a space where militaries are often distanced
from the fighting because of drone warfare and increasingly
autonomous systems, the civilians are really caught in
the in the terror of the mall in between.
And this is a a very different relationship to war that we saw
potentially, let's say in 1914, where soldiers were the primary
victims and civilians were often relatively protected by being
further away from the front lines.
Yes. Now, obviously the answer to
this question is that it, it doesn't matter either way
because the important thing is that civilians are dying.
Clearly that is, that is not right.
I mean, let's go a step further and say that it's not right that
competence are dying either. I mean, nobody really should be
dying. But from what you've what you've
researched, are you suggesting, and it could be a combination of
these. But he's suggesting that this is
a change in the nature of warfare and therefore that that
battles are being fought more amongst the civilian population
or that civilians are more vulnerable because they don't
have the the tactical expertise or indeed the sort of
protections that combatants would have.
Or is it sort of hybrid of of both of those factors?
I mean, I think it's a hybrid in in a way.
So obviously in someone like Gaza, the civilians can't leave
their areas. And we've seen many an instance
where people are are are hurt in one location, they become
refugees and then they're hurt in the second location and even
the third location. So we've seen multiple assaults
on civilians that are moving within the space, particularly
in Gaza. In other places like Ukraine,
yes, you saw a massive spike in the early days, civilian harm
and then a kind of a slow levelling off as people began to
pour it over the border into Poland, et cetera, realizing how
terrible Russian invasion was. But I think I, I go to the very
heart of the matter and the argument that if you look at the
origin of the rules of war, it really sort of began in Cressy
or Agincourt where, where soldiers and, and there's a
reason why chivalry is called chivalry, because the Cheval,
the, the, the knight on the horseback was the sort of
archetypal arbiter of faith and justice in the battlefield.
And chivalry was in, in a way, not doing the coup de grace on
your enemy, but actually letting them live.
And so over time, I think that you saw soldiers actually
creating rules of war so that they had a fighting chance of
survival if they were ever captured.
It wouldn't all just be executions all round.
And over time, I mean, even up to sort of the middle of the
20th century, the rules of war were very much discussed by
soldiers for soldiers. And then overseas saw the, the,
the Total War of the 20th century emerging into the
civilian space and you saw the Geneva Conventions coming out of
that and a whole raft of UN deployments and, and, and
treaties and various other things.
But I think a mark of the 21st century has been a slow erosion
of some of those sort of profoundly held beliefs about
the protection of civilians. We're talking about the rules
based order being sacrificed on the altar of, of strategic
convenience. But at the same token, you're
also seeing a distancing of a lot of soldiers from the
battlefield so that that, you know, we're seeing people
fighting drugs in warfare for far, far removed.
And I first helped expose a part of the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism, the use of, you know, U.S. drone strikes out of
the Midwest killing civilians in Pakistan.
You know, can you get even further distance from war from
that? And so my concern is, is as
warfare becomes a very different beast fought by soldiers, and
I'm not denying soldiers bravery and all of this or their their
risk to them, but they're, you know, war can be a bloodless
thing for many an aircrew. And you combine that the people
who are really suffering at the very basis of war are often
those civilians caught as as, as people in the middle of this of
this conflict. And I think when we also now
throw in the mix of AI and targeting systems fuelled by
artificial intelligence, I think you're going to see even more
people being targeted as combatants where merely they're
just fighting age male or they're in the wrong place at
the wrong time. Or the AI system feel compelled
to add a name because it doesn't want to say, I think I finished
now for the day. We don't have to kill anyone
else. And I think that all of these
things are occurring at the same time, that the rules of war
themselves are, are not being addressed through a civilian
prism. And I sit down with a lot of
military types and, and, and, and speak to them about their
rules and processes. And understandably, because the
world they live in is a military world, they don't often consider
civilians at the epicenter of what they're doing.
Civilians are a secondary or even tertiary thought.
I don't blame for them for that, but I do think that that then
creates a space for civilians like myself who have seen and
witnessed war in all of its different terrible faces, to
actually also be an advocate for the voice of civilians in the
strategic planning and outcome of conflicts.
Yes. And now look there's a there's a
lot that can follow on from from the points you've made there and
and what you've been through. I mean, I think I would first of
all say that you're very diplomatic, for want of a better
word, in suggesting that you shouldn't blame members of the
armed forces for conducting operations that do have a
civilian death toll attached to them.
I mean, I would say that the laws of armed conflict are very,
very clear on this matter and that that should be avoided at
almost all costs. Now, the question that falls out
of that, therefore, given the statistical background and the
changes in the nature of warfare and exactly what you're
describing, where there is that divorce now from reality, you
know, you can sit in a Porter cabin somewhere and kill people
left and right without even hearing anything go bang.
There's a huge sort of desensitization to the whole
process. So I guess the question that
falls out of it is, is what is happening in particularly
populated urban areas? Is that actually deliberate in
so far as it is a deliberate attempt to kill civilians in,
you know, a sort of a completely unjust method?
So I, I think that it's almost unequivocal that Russia and
Israel have conducted campaigns that through the rules of
engagement rule book, if they even had one in, in the 1st
place out the window. So I think certain militaries
have absolutely no conscience about the the deaths of
civilians. And I think we've even seen
seats in the Knesset's political rhetoric almost, well, I would
say at points of genocidal intent and certainly Russia's
framing of Ukraine is has been devoid of any human rights
concern. But let's talk about NATO
countries. So one thing which I was really
surprised is I asked the British RAF for lists of all the
civilians killed or injured in their op shader, which is their
their air flights over Iraq and Syria.
And they came back and they said that they had killed or injured
4300 Iraqi and Syrian militants, but that they had only killed 1
civilian in the entire space. Now, my, my, my, I would put it
to the RAF that they have therefore either done one of two
things. They've either broken the, the,
the, the, the, the nature of war.
In other words, they've made war entirely bloodless to civilians,
which is the first time this has ever happened in human history.
Or that they have wilfully ignored the fact that civilians
have died, maybe even covered it up or done a system, a
bureaucratic system of casualty recording where the default is
always is to the assumption of guilt as opposed to the
assumption of innocence. And that this willful failure
then then is, is a framing of how they believe themselves to
be good men conducting of a conflict far away.
Now, when I go back, I mentioned I, you know, I don't blame the
military. So I don't necessarily blame a
corporal who's given a job as a drone pilot and that's his his
role to go out and do this. I, I, I don't blame him
exquisitely I, I, I, because I think obviously he can make the
choice to, to resign or to, to, to hang up his Commission or
whatever. But I, what I do blame are the
more senior individuals who maintain this absolute belief in
that they are working for the greater good that they are.
They have no faults and ultimately the war that they are
fighting is essentially a good one.
So they, they, they lean into uncritically and then if they
also within that bureaucratization of their own
violence, enable them to be violent against civilians, but
pass that off as violence against militants, then I, I
would say that they probably deserve a, a long night of the
soul where they have to sort of reconcile that with their own
conscience. And I think we just don't see
that exquisitely. And let's say drone strikes.
We're also seeing that emerging with the accusations by special
forces killings in Afghanistan, where we're seeing people at
senior command level in UK special forces saying that there
was a willful cover up by their seniors to mean that they
wouldn't properly interrogate allegations of civilians being
caught being executed as part of routine at special forces
operations. And I do think that the most
incredible thing is that one of the individuals who's been named
by the BBC is actively hiding evidence.
Somebody called Hugh Jenkins is now First Sea Lord.
He's, you know, he promoted even in the face of the BBC saying
that he hid evidence that civilians were killed in special
forces OPS. So I think that there is real
questions to be asked about the way that the British military
frame themselves as a force of good.
And this means that they cannot ever contemplate that they
haven't been a force of good. And when do you have individuals
like myself come along and I expose this?
One thing I've noticed is that initially they were quite
willing to speak to me. And over time, I've become
persona non grata and I'm not allowed to speak to people at
senior level of the MOD anymore. And so I think that there
becomes this sort of defensive framing that if you're not with
us, you're against us and therefore you have nothing of
merit to say. And there becomes this
incredible hostility as if I am part of the problem rather than
exposing a problem. Yes, that is something we will
come back to because I absolutely want to talk about
the relationship between the military, government,
corporations and the media. But sorry, just clarifies, Gwen
Jenkins actually the the First Sea Lord.
Sorry, you said. You said you but but anyway,
Gwen. Jenkins exactly.
As you say, and and he was director of Special Forces and
we'll come back to that as well. But just before we do, I think
something again, you know, when we're talking about this, this
idea that so much is in effect hidden from public view because
unless you've gone into deep research and you've actually
gone to these places as you have and you've studied it, it, it is
very easy, particularly for people in Western Europe to have
really no sense of what is going on.
And now we set that against the what it is that armed forces are
doing under what they've been given as rules of engagement.
Now, of course, if you look into that, it's certainly for the,
for the British Army rules of engagement are written down in
JSP 398 at joint service publication and they are an
expression of political will. They're an expression of how to
how to use force. Now, the reason I'm setting that
out because I'd be very interested to hear your views
on, first of all, that in itself, because I think a lot of
people in the armed forces are not really aware that in actual
fact, when the rules of engagement change, that can be
for political reasons rather than reasons of a change in
threat or risk on the ground. But also in light of the
comments by the Secretary for War, Pete Hagseth in the United
States, who's basically saying, right, well, rules of engagement
thing of the past, crack on, do what you like.
I mean, absolutely, I, I think that the, you know, the, the,
the class fits in framing war as an extension of politics by the
means is, is, is very true. And I, I think that there's
this, I wouldn't call it naivety, but there's a certain
reluctance by the British military to sort of say, they
always say we're not political. We're not political.
And there's a virtue, of course, in that because a politicized
military, you know, is something that, you know, you, you, you
associate, let's say, with a Central American Republic in, in
the 1980s. You know, you, you've got to be
wary of that sort of thing. But, but I think that, that
there is a kind of a, a, a wider political framing.
So I think that, you know, this old idea of the British military
or the British nation, essentially post empire is a
nation seeking to find a role for itself.
And I think the, the, the military hasn't really caught up
with that agenda and it still to some degree wants to be
Everything Everywhere all at once.
So I came out with a story today that showed that we, our
reservists were sent to 51 countries last year and the year
before, British Army person, you know, went to 171 countries
around the world. And I think that there is this
desire to constantly find an enemy, to have this persistent
framing that we are the last defenders of some bastion of
civilization. And that this means we're always
seeking to sort of find a role to be engaged with.
And when that role is then officially granted by the policy
makers that we are allowed to be in Iraq or Afghanistan and and
fight a war, then then of course the the gloves come off.
And then there's a question, well, what are we going to do?
What's the end goal? What are we actually selling?
Can we sell democracy down the barrel of a gun?
Can we achieve this? And one of the things I really
find striking and and actually quite problematic is that
because the military says we're not, we're not, we are, you
know, we are the fault. Let Caesar be unto Caesar and
then we will do what we have to do.
That that to that degree that they they refuse to sort of
really bring on lessons of the past in any meaningful way.
So if you say, what were the lessons of Afghanistan?
What were the lessons of Iraq? These it's like pulling teeth.
It's a very painful process. I went to Basra a couple of
months ago and I sat down with lots of families who had been at
the very hard end of British military engagements and
families had been lost. Terrible events had occurred.
I'm not saying this was purposeful.
I don't think the British military aimed machine guns at
civilians like the Russians might do.
But nonetheless, I think that there were terrible outcomes.
And when of course, we want to address this from the British
military perspective, I think that some of the rules of that
led to those engagements aren't particularly looked at.
You know, we, we, we shut down the, the Iraq historical
allegations team process. This entire process of
investigating these special forces in Afghanistan has been
a, a very slow and expensive process.
Even Northern Ireland has revealed nothing of any
substance about, you know, 30-40 years on.
And I think that the military's desire to learn from its
failings, which is negligible, means that when it comes to the
next position where it has to use rules of engagement in a
lethal manner, it it doesn't sort of go well, we can't behave
in the way we previously did. And I think that that failure of
institutional memory to learn from its own mistakes means that
to a degree that is a political decision.
And the political decision ultimately comes, I think, from
a fundamental, which is that governments, often government
after government, treats the military with a rare
exceptionalism in British life where they're always brave,
they're always doing exceptional work, and they're always to be
praised. And that's there's no public
space in Britain to be anything but overtly critical.
And of course you don't. You shouldn't be critical for
the sake of criticism. But when there is valid
criticism, and I think the British military definitely has
valid criticism, whether it's racism or sexism in its rank,
whether it's claims of extradition killings in
Afghanistan, whether it's failing to protect civilians in
Iraq, whether it's the death of individuals in Kenya and and
allegations of wrongdoing there. All of these are murky truths
that are are circulating around the British military at the
moment that but there's a reluctance, an institutional
reluctance. And I think that that stems from
a political exceptionalism that the military has granted.
But it's also something rooted in the British military's own
framing of itself as a force of good and an an unassailably
good. Which means that, you know, as
you say, Gwen Jenkins gets promoted rather than castigated,
even in the face of damning evidence.
Yes, I think, I think what you say would be agreed with by a
lot of former servicemen, myself included.
I think that absolutely is the perception of what 1 is doing
and the way that you're told to, to sort of think about going
about doing it. I think just since you've
mentioned it, it, it does give an insight, you know, on this
theme. The, the report that you've,
you've just referred to about, you know, we described just
before we started recording effectively an exercise in what
might be described as military tourism.
And really, you know, what should we take out of that?
Because clearly the, the, the purpose, well, is it, but the
purpose of an armed force could be said to be to deliver lethal
force, you know, in a place where it is required.
I mean, it's highly questionable as to whether it is ever
required. So that's perhaps a bit of a red
herring. But when you set that alongside
what you're talking about, I mean, what is it that you do
think about that? What, what does that say about
the way in which our armed forces are conducting
themselves, or indeed having money thrown at them to do this,
that and the other? So, so this is gonna be quite
controversial, but John Johnny Beale, who's the BB CS defence
chief, said to me once that the, one of the biggest controversies
he's ever reported on was the number of public school boys who
go to Santa's. And, and I'm a former public
school boy who, who got a scholarship to go to Sandhurst.
And I decided after university to join the BBC instead, which
is a different form of corrupt institution anyway.
So, so, so, but one of the interesting things is that if
you get an overseas forum posting as a, as an army
officer, as any soldier, but essentially obvious, there's
always a chance you're going to get, if you have a family,
you'll get a boarding school allowance.
And I was sent to boarding school on my father's boarding
school allowance. So there's a natural imperative
as if you're a major to want to be sent as a defence attache to
a different country. So then you get a boarding
school allowance. And I know somebody who sent who
sent 44 sons to Gordonston based on this premise.
Now I think that that's part of I mean, that's one of the
incentives. But I think there's also and and
many of us, you know, any of your listeners have been to
boarding school or, you know, there is this sort of framing of
of the boarding school came out of this concept of empire this
yearning to be in a far off location, doing daring, do worth
worthy things, often through a military prism.
And so the military mindset is very much always let's seek
what's on the distant horizon. The senior personnel of the
military are often ex special forces who got granted not just
the excitement of getting sent everywhere all the time, but
also in secret in a sort of James Bondish way.
So I think that there's very much rooted at the heart of the
the the British military desire to be in another place.
Salisbury Plain is very boring if you compare it to doing
manoeuvres in Kenya or Brunei or Borneo.
But then underpinning all of that I think is also this
Britain wanting to punch above its weight.
It's a small nation, an island nation.
But you know, we're part of the Security Council.
I think we're, there's this also implicit understanding that we
were last invaded in the early 18th century.
You know, there's not much argument that anyone wants to
invade us with any meaningful force at the moment.
I don't think Putin desperately wants to take Edinburgh and
London with the, you know, a phalanx of Russian soldiers.
So I guess the question is, is what, what is the military for?
And of course it's partly a projection of power.
But then I think we, we're entering a real crunch period
where our, our, our global ambitions don't really work out
to our budgetary constraints. And so I think what you're
seeing is US trying to be everywhere, everything all at
once on a Poundland budget. And that doesn't work.
So either you get the ex military types who go on the
Today program saying we need a lot more money in the face of,
you know, major cuts throughout other parts of the British
governmental supply. Or you have a position where we
say actually we need to retract a bit.
And I did notice today that the MOD said that they're going to
pull back a little bit from some foreign deployments.
But I think there is a fundamental tension as to what
Britain is in the post imperial age.
I think that that does aligns badly with a recruitment
challenge that the military have trying to say, look, join the
military and we'll send you peeing in the Alps or, you know,
climbing the Himalayas or whatever it is, which is
obviously exciting. And who wouldn't want to do
that? And so I think that there's this
tension about what is Britain, what is empire mean, you know,
years on after giving giving way to empire and what does the
British military have to say? But you know, as you know, if
you walk the halls of Santa's, the halls of Santas, the full of
oil paintings of people doing, you know, exciting and heroic
things in, you know, the Hindustan or, you know, the
Hindu Kush or whatever. And this is incredibly exciting
and who, you know, that sort of roots itself in a consciousness
of what we are. But I think that they're, you
know, when you speak to Italians or French, not necessarily the
French, because they have the French Foreign Legion, but the
Germans, the Spanish about their militaries, they look at us
slightly perplexed and they go, you know, why?
Why do you have to be everywhere?
And if you ask that question, you know, the intriguing thing
is that I, I don't think that this is a matter of major public
debate in the British sort of conversation.
We almost think, oh, that's just what the military do and they'll
always do that. But, you know, when I look back
at our previous imperial endeavours and our footprint,
our military footprint and ask the question, were we a force of
true good, a much more complex question mark rises.
And so I think we have to be persistently vigilant as to what
we're doing and which countries and how we're doing it.
Because, you know, did we do good in Iraq?
Did we do good in Afghanistan? And, and also from a, from a
very specific perspective, you know, did our former soldiers
sent to Afghanistan and Iraq, how do they manage, you know,
civilian life now knowing what they were asked and tasked to
do? And I think we need to have
empathy from both perspectives is about, you know, not just the
empathy and perspective of the Iraqi or the Afghan civilians
caught up, you know, in our own military endeavors, but also the
legacy of those wars on soldiers who were sent to places.
And I know at least three soldiers who took to have taken
their lives after tours of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And, you know, that does come with a a moral injury that has
occurred as a consequence of us doing things that we're not
entirely convinced did good. Very much so.
Now to go to the point you're making about the in effect, the
background and the sort of lifestyle of a lot of the people
who do end up becoming big decision makers and, and
relating that to what we are seeing, albeit very slowly
through the Afghan inquiry and the suggestion that there have
been extrajudicial clear killings made by special forces
over a number of years. And again, this is not isolated
to British special forces. Of course.
The, the what has been very interesting to observe is what's
happened in Australia with the case of Ben Robert Smith, the
decorated corporal who was found guilty, or rather sorry he was
pursued A libel case, a civil case therefore, and lost because
on the balance of probability the court decided that he had
committed extrajudicial killings and yet no criminal trial.
And the same in the United Kingdom.
Now, do you think that that what you've described bears relation
to, in effect, the lack of scrutiny really that's gone
into, with the exception of the Afghan inquiry, the lack of
scrutiny and indeed the lack of any sort of suggestion that
there might be consequences for what may have happened?
I mean, I, I, I, I don't think that the inquiry into
Afghanistan will result in a singular conviction.
In fact, explicitly any evidence given to the inquiry does not
then hold standing in a Criminal Court, which I don't think
really has been highlighted anywhere of any significance.
And I think that that is an incredible thing that you set up
an inquiry and by doing so, you actually to a degree, render the
fundamentals of British criminal process obsolete.
You know, we've seen it with Northern Ireland and the Bloody
Sunday killings. We've seen it.
And, and and of course it gets reduced into this framing that
somehow this is lawfare. These are terrible liberal left
wing lawyers striving to sort of gut the heart out of our heroic
soldiers. And of course, you know, we did
see one or two badly behaved lawyers, don't get me wrong.
But simultaneously the, the question I would raise is
surely, if you believe in due process, the rule of law and the
and nature of democracy, that inquiring about the overstep of,
of, of the rights of, of, of individuals, the, the, the, the,
the failure of the rules of war, the, the deaths of civilians.
Surely this is part and parcel of the package we were
promising, which is democracy. So I see myself as a thorn in
the side of the military. But because I believe that if we
don't have people like me interrogating the military the
the military's actions, then the military has carte blanche to do
whatever it will. So I almost see myself as an
ally to the military because without people like me,
everything is lost. But so, so on a wider
perspective, I think that the impunity that has been enjoyed
by the Americans, the British and other forces that we may
have seen begin in home. In Fallujah, for instance, we
saw the deaths of lots of civilians there. the US got away
with it. I've teamed up with Julian
Assange to expose the WikiLeaks military logs of Iraq.
And we saw war crime after war crime being committed and
recorded by the British, by the American military.
Not one of those allegations of war crimes ever ended up in
court. So the Americans laid out in the
early 21st century clear case for the impunity of the American
forces, and the British simultaneously sort of got on
board. And we had an inquiry, the Iraq
Historical Allegations team, but that folded with no evidence of
wrongdoing. I think that then Russia saw
that impunity acting and they thought, well, if you're going
to do it in with Fallujah, we'll do it in Homs and Aleppo.
That led to no, no outcomes. So then you saw it in Mariupol
and then now we're seeing it in Gaza.
So I would say that the impunity enjoyed by Netanyahu is rooted
in the very claims of democracy that we sold to the world
through armed conflict in the early 21st century that we
didn't then support with due legal process of holding our own
to account. So I, I think this is part of a
much bigger play of actually, what do we mean by civilization?
What do we mean by the, the rule of law?
What do we mean by justice? And so I, I, I don't, I mean,
I'm, I'm a tiny actor in all of this, but I do.
That is a philosophy that spurs me on, that I believe myself to
be a defender of facts and a defender of truth in an age when
so much is contested. Yeah, no, there's, you know,
there's a lot of important substance there.
Now you use the phrase holding to account and I think this is
really where we want to go. You I think I'm right with the
BBC from 97 to 2005. And obviously that period is
effectively exactly when the the so-called War on Terror was, was
basically being wound up with the then, well, I suppose Afghan
deployment 2001 and then Iraq 2003.
And this is, I don't mean this to be necessarily Bob, question
about your time at the BBC, but but from the perspective of an
insider, do you believe that during that period the BBC was
doing what it is supposed to do and holding the government to
account? So it's very interesting.
I, I was just talking to somebody at the BBC the other
day about this. I, I was in the BBC newsroom
when we saw the second plane hit the Twin Towers.
And in that moment, we knew our entire lives had changed.
I'm looking back on my role at the BBC.
So I, I went on embeds with the British military.
I was in Iraq during the, the, the descent into chaos in Basra.
I was embedded with the British military there.
And I think I did all of that relatively uncritically.
I, I was, you know, we, we felt that there was a major shift
that occurred. I think a lot of people got on
board with, you know, I'm, I mean, we didn't quite go as far
as US correspondents turning up with a rifle and a gun in our
hands and saying we were on board.
But I think there was a lack of critical review.
And I remember when I was at Channel 4, we, there was a very
good journalist there called John Sparks who began to look,
he was a Canadian and he began to look at extra renditions,
renditional flights. And I remember thinking that
that's an interesting perspective.
Why would you look at that? And he began to find more and
more stuff. And I think it took a Canadian
actually to sort of, you know, breakthrough the patriotism that
we all get can get affected with.
And then a few years later, after I left the BBC, after I
left Channel 4, I set up the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism. And then this incredible, a
reporter called Chris Woods came to me and said, I think we
should begin to look at U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.
And we began to look at this. And to be honest, this was my
first time and this was 2012, that I began to look at the War
on Terror with any profound critical eye.
I'd been looking at a whole bunch of other things.
And it took a while for me to actually have the veil taken off
my eyes. And there was an absolute crunch
point that came was when the we were going to give our story of
over 30 children and civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes in
Pakistan to a major International Paper.
I'm not going to say which one it was, but they they were going
to run that front page. They then called me the day
before and they said the CIA basically said that you're not
trustworthy, we shouldn't work with you.
You work with Julian Assange, don't work with you.
So we're not running the story. And then I, the story ran with
the Guardian the next day. So it came out anyway, a few
months later that major International Paper got an
exclusive from the CIA that they would own.
And I think that there was a deal made.
I can't prove it, but there was something very whiffy.
And I when I raised that with the editor of this paper, he
started screaming at me in a way that was far too emotional when
you gauge it as to the sort of, you know, the, the question
asked did not merit the response given.
Anyway, my point is this is that I think it takes a great deal to
be a journalist who is able not to be sucked in to patriotic
endeavour or even nationalistic endeavour, if you will.
And I think it's taken me a long time to actually realize that
the best patriot is the critical patriot.
Somebody who can actually look at the intersection between the
media, the politics, the military industrial complex in
such a way that actually you say the truth will liberate us and
the truth is the ultimate thing that we should seek out.
And so I wouldn't say that there was a coherent editorial ploy at
the BBC not to hold government to account, but I think that
becomes institutional blindness, that actually there are certain
things that just remain beyond the Ken.
And often it's outsiders in the BBC, people who don't
necessarily come from a certain group who can offer that.
And I would raise my hat to Hannah O'Grady, who's been the
BBC producer behind the expose. They ended up blowing the lid on
the special forces allegations of killings in Afghanistan.
So there are some exceptional people who do hold society to
account. But equally speaking, I have
numerous on numerous occasions gone to the BBC, gone to major
news publications with stories that I truly believe are
revelatory. Let's say so for instance, I
expose there have been over 600 spy plane flights by the British
over Gaza during the Gaza conflict.
The BBC wouldn't touch that. And I think that there is a, a
kind of a, a failure for the BBC to consider themselves sometimes
as being the people who should investigate the military.
And I'm not saying that I'm not criticizing individuals for
that. I think that that come becomes a
culture where they're caught between not wanting seem to seem
as if they're unpatriotic, but at the same time not realizing
that sometimes it's unpatriotic to hold the the the the the
government of the day to account.
OK. I mean, you know, your
perspective on this, albeit sort of almost 20 years ago is, is,
is fascinating. And I think I just want to draw
this out a little further because obviously you're
describing your own position as being one of not using what
you're describing as a critical eye at that period.
But obviously now in retrospect, you see that things differently.
Again, in retrospect, were you, were you sort of alongside
people who you think were using a critical eye?
Or was there a sort of, in a way, a blanket sort of effect on
people at that period? Because it was, you know,
similar to what we've seen over the last five years in in some
ways, that there was such an assault on the public about how
dangerous things were here and that was all related to what was
going on in the Middle East and all the rest of it.
Did you do you think there were people there who genuinely could
see what was going on or or or not?
I think there were occasionally some people and they often, as I
said, they may have come from an Irish background or a Canadian
background, or they were often weren't sort of invested in the
Britishness. So there was that.
There was also, I think something else that was
occurring at the time, which was very unusual, is that we
suddenly found ourselves as as white journalists to be
potentially liable to violence. So when I was in Basra, for
instance, I remember going up to the, I was with the, the British
military on an in bed and I, there was huge violence
occurring in the streets of Basra and the British Army were
under terrible attack. And I was like, I want to leave
the front gates here and go out and report on what the civilians
out there are fighting. What why they're so upset with
us, given we're a liberating army.
And the Colonel of the time said, by all means you're free
to go, but if you get caught in trouble, I'm not risking a man
to come and save you. And it, it gave me a real pause
for thought because I thought, you know, I could easily become
somebody who is hanging off a bridge, burnt alive, because I
am the first white person who's unarmed or diverse, you know,
British person unarmed that they'll find and they can do
harm to. And of course, we saw that with
ISIS. I mean, I wrote a book about
suicide bombers and I met lots of, you know, would be suicide
bombers. And there was always a lurking
fear that one of them might just decide to take me with them on
their journey to paradise and blow themselves up while I was
interviewing them. So, you know, I, I, throughout
the last 20 years, I have had to navigate this space that has
existed where the, the, the, the, the media have become seen
by particularly some Salafist jihadists as part of the
problem. And of course, of course,
certainly there are media institutions that have been part
of the problem. We have some, some people are
are unquestionably uncritical. My wider comment of the British
media in general is that it tries to occupy the space of
patriotism. It, it doesn't like to criticize
the military in anything that unless it's absolutely clear
dry, and it certainly is reluctant to contemplate the
military industrial complex in the sort of more philosophical
way. So I think that it requires in
a, in a strange sense, I mean, I come from a military family.
So I've understand how the military works.
And, you know, I, I was very, very close to joining the
military myself and I spent years in that sort of cadet
space. So I kind of understand the
military reasonably well. And I think that that those two
things that give me a relative understanding of the, the nature
of the military. I also know that there are lots
of people in the military or veterans who are very similar
minded to me. So, you know, I know that they
they are more than capable of having quite critical
perspectives on the military as well.
And I think that there is this sort of lack of understanding to
some degree by the British press as to actually how the military
operates and what they, what they see themselves as in some
ways. And within that space, there's
I, I, I know there are certain names that the British military
veterans who keep on being sighted in the British military,
who are often exceptional voices, not universal voices.
And those names are often right, quite right wing, quite pro
military, often more asking for more defense spending.
And, and I, I, you know, people like, you know, Colonel Kemp,
for instance, keeps on being put out there as a kind of a, a
spokesperson, even though he left over a decade ago for the
military. And I think that the British
press, including the BBC, has a kind of a failure to be truly
critical of of most institutions up until the point that those
institutions become so corrupt that you can't do anything but
expose them. Yeah, OK.
I mean, it is, it is fascinating.
It's very interesting to hear you say that, that the BBC in
effect won't touch stuff, notwithstanding your previous
involvement with the organization.
And that in itself is, is fascinating, especially in light
of what, you know, Tim Davey falling very slowly on his sword
after the January the 6th sort of editing issue and what not
now, just just in terms of sort of what drives what.
You spoke at the Oxford Union some years ago and you you
talked about the, the lack of influence that media has due to
the fact that there's no, I mean, it's just part of the same
cycle. But you know, people aren't
investing in news sources in the way that they once were.
And yes, we do still have this perpetual state of conflict.
And as the saying goes, all wars are bankers wars.
Now. What is your take on that And
and and in effect, what does drive Watt in so far as the
result being conflict is concerned?
Well, so for for instance, we we sent 170 Watt to 100 troops to
171 countries the year before last, and of those countries, 19
of them appeared on the UK government's own list of human
rights concerns. 8 of them experienced since 2020 a
military coup. We've trained up soldiers from
African countries that then have gone back to militaries that
then undertake coups in their own country.
We embed organizations like BA Systems at the very heart of our
notion of what is good for the British economy.
And BA Systems sell to Israel. They also sell to Saudi Arabia,
both of which have been involved in terrible violations against
human rights, particularly the the dropping of bombs in in
towns and cities. And so I think you've got this
military industrial Nexus where to some degree our military, we
have defense attaches all over the world.
And those defense attaches are to some degree tasked with being
cheerleaders for Britains military exports, our defense
exports. We also have an entire
community, as you know well, of ex soldiers who then go into the
security industry and then they end up being deployed in paid
roles in countries all over the world, particularly our special
forces. That's very lucrative for them.
And so I think you've got this very close relationship between
the military, the military industrial complex and then
human rights abuses that invariably come from that.
One thing that really struck me for instance, is I looked at the
share price increases of BA Systems post October the 7th and
their shares went up remarkably high.
And the the chief executive of BA Systems ended up selling
£3,000,000 worth of shares, which would have been a
£1,000,000 less before October the 7th.
I asked the press office about this and they they said that one
of the reasons for this is he wanted to purchase a flat.
And it turned out, I think that he had bought a london-based
flat potentially for his kids, I don't know.
But anyway, this flat was essentially born out of the
profits made from sales to Israel.
And that really strikes me that about the nature of goodness in
society. And CS Lewis once wrote a very
interesting commentary. He said he didn't see hell as
being a concentration camp or a torture chamber.
He saw that as an outcome of hell that was a product of hell.
Rather, he said that hell to him were offices where men with low
voices and clean fingernails in well lit rooms.
Past resolutions agreed minutes and issued memorandums.
And to me the I see hell in the same regard, that the hell is a
place which is far devoid from war, but actually is the profit
center and the profit Nexus of how that is and it.
This could be anything from former special forces chiefs
having a polite dinner in the Athenaeum all the way through to
a quiet closed board meeting of BA Systems agreeing on the next
tranche of weapon sales to Israel.
And these, this is the military industrial complex, large and to
me that this space is occupied often by former public school
boys, it's often occupied by people who, you know, understand
the mechanisms and architectures of power.
And it was also occupied by individuals who absolutely
detest true scrutiny. And these people simultaneously
wine and dine and, and sit in the same media space as other
people who dictate what is to be in the papers and not in the
papers. And I'm not saying there's a
grand conspiracy here, but I think there's an architecture of
silence around certain issues that we don't like to call out
the, that the hell of London and, and the, these, these
creatures that inhabit this sort of world of, of the military
industrial complex, We don't call them out for their actions.
And also within there, there's this profound distance of cause
and effect. So, you know, the, the, the
profiteering in the military industrial complex of Britain
becomes more, becomes easier to consume and to live alongside
because we are not witness to its consequences.
We, we don't feel the bombed outs homes of Yemen or of Gaza.
We, we don't witness them close up.
So to me, one of the profound roles I believe I play, and I
think maybe you play as well, is to try and remind readers and
listeners that there is an outcome to these, you know,
these, these these processes that the architecture of the
military industrial complex has very real consequence to the
lives of others. And I think that's really by
travelling to the places of harm and coming back to record it and
then aligning that harm with the profiteering made within the UK
offers hopefully a kind of a bridge of empathy to say, is it
right that we do this and is there a better way of doing it?
Yes. And I mean, Speaking of
consequences, I think a story that well articulates this,
which you've written about yourself, is the relationship
between Christopher Harborne and Reform UK.
Of course, he's the major shareholder of the defense
company Kinetic, which has made an awful lot of money from the
British government by supplying arms and weapon systems that
have definitely been used in Israel.
And we've now got a situation where he is funding a political
party that may yet assume or form a government within this
country, which will further prop up the business that he is the
major shareholder in. I mean it, it is an
extraordinary circle. And of course, we've now had the
the Strategic Defense Review published this year alongside
the National Security Strategy, both of which are predicated,
despite what you're saying about Putin not having designs on
Edinburgh or London, predicated on the threat of, you know, some
sort of action from Russia. So the, the defense dividend, as
it's called, is, is absolutely there for all to see.
And I mean, you know, it's not just BAE who are doing well out
of it. You look across the board,
they're all, you know, everyone's share price has sort
of shot up in that period. And so it looks like with that
being the case, there is absolutely a necessity for that
war in order to make it work. Now, what's your view on that
with regard to, you know, you've referred to the sort of
recruiting difficulties is, you know, trying to sell people
skiing holidays and, and what is increasingly difficult in an
army that may not be strapped for cash, but certainly doesn't
have the money that it used to or indeed the personnel and the
flexibility within the system. And yet there are sort of
whispers of conscription and whatnot.
Do I mean, do you see that there is going to be an active push
for engagement in a in a kinetic conflict for, you know, with the
United Kingdom involved? I mean, so, so first on the
kinetic thing, which I think is, is absolutely intriguing.
And that kinetic would not survive if it wasn't for the
British taxpayer. So I think 92% of his income is
reliant on the MOD. And as you say, then there's
this strange and weird circumstance where it then flows
back into the pockets of Reform UK, which, you know, by all
accounts, if you read Umberto echoes framing of what
constitutes air fascism. I think that, you know, Reform
UK suddenly ticks lots of the boxes of something that could be
a precursor to a fascistic political framing.
So I have great concern about that with regard to the general
military industrial complex. You know, just as a gentleman is
in need of a Good Wife, an army is in need of a good war.
And I think that if you don't then raise the spectre of, of
Russia or China. I mean Tom Tug and hat his his,
the thing that keeps him up at night is the threat of China.
Russia is obviously a more existential threat.
And I'm not trying to diminish I've been to Ukraine 7 times.
So I'm not trying to diminish the fact that, that, that
Ukraine has been absolutely devastated by Russian imperial
endeavour. But simultaneously, when you
look at the linguistic map of, of Ukraine, certainly Russia was
a major feature there. I mean, I, you know, there's not
many people in, in Britain who speak Russian.
I, I have yet to see any tangible appetite by Putin to,
you know, to, to, to want to take the threat exquisitely into
the NATO space. Now, certainly there, there the,
you know, there's certainly in the hands of jostling that's
occurring along the border flyovers and all the rest.
But what I found very interesting is that, you know,
I, I went, I, I did a Freedom of Information request six years
ago. I think it was asking how many
times RAF jets have been scrambled to address a Russian
threat. And I think it was, you know,
every month, for instance. And I took this to the BBC and I
said, you should report on this. And they were like, no, it's not
for us. But intriguingly, Fast forward
six years, that story, if I came out with it now, would probably
lead every single paper. In other words, newspapers don't
accept that. You know, there isn't a historic
background to this. I'll give you another example.
Boris Johnson gave absolutely £0 to Ukraine in his first year of
premiership when, when prime as Prime Minister, his first year,
he gave 0 lbs of aid to Ukraine at all.
So this notion, this rhetoric we are sort of always standing with
Ukraine didn't occur even after Don Bass and Luhansk had been
effectively taken over by pro Russian forces.
We didn't give them any money at all.
So, so I I would say that there is always a danger of a
constructed enemy and a constructed sense of urgency.
And I've charted the times where defence chiefs have come out
saying that there's an existential national threat to
our way of life. At the same time the budgets are
under debate and they rise and fall in almost perfect sync.
So three months before any budgetary sign off is granted by
#11 you get a defence chief coming out or a former defence
chief saying that Britain is under threat like never before.
And so I, I can't, I, you can't divest.
And one of the interesting things is I think there are only
two people in British cultural life in the media who are asked
for their opinion in the face of, of an economic reality.
So estate agents are always asking whether house prices will
rise or fail. And of course, estate agents is
always going to say it's going to rise because no estate agent
wants to be out of a job. And the second person is always
a defense chief. You always ask ex military
whether we need security. And you know, there are very few
former generals who are pacifists.
So most generals will go. Of course, we need more money.
We always need more money. But actually, if you look at
where the UK is in terms of defense spend, we're only second
behind Germany. But in terms of per capita,
we're way ahead of Germany. So we are the biggest defense
spenders apart from the US in NATO.
We, you know, and, and one of my questions ultimately is, yes,
maybe we do need to lean into defence spending if that's what
the general rhetoric is. But then I have to say, well,
what, what are we defending? Are we defending our interests
in Borneo or Brunei or Dar es Salaam or Kenya or wherever the
hell we are because we seem to be everywhere?
Or are we actually saying our primary interest is this
sceptred Isle? I mean, we are, you know,
granted one of the greatest, greatest opportunities that we
have, you know, an island nation.
We it'd be pretty damn hard to invade us.
And if we were invaded, I'm not entirely sure what mineral
resources people would be able to claim as Putin is claiming in
the Donbas. So there's a question of why
would we be invaded? What would be the benefit?
What would be the outcome? And none of this is ever
discussed. And the only other thing that
just to, I'm sure you've got a question, but the next thing I'd
finally I'd say is that whenever we, we discuss about the defence
of the realm, we never, ever bring up the fact that we have
nuclear weapons. So obviously if we were invaded,
we, we could just respond with a nuclear attack, which obviously
would be terrible. But you know, the, the, the idea
that we have nuclear weapons is never really articulated in the
media nor in the defence review as being a primary defence of
our nation. So the impulse is always that we
need more and more and more, and that the enemy is always at the
gates. Yes, it is, although actually it
is interesting to note how many references there are to nuclear
in the strategic defense review this year.
But it but in a in a sort of more limited sense as though you
know, there are there, there is such a thing as a tactical
nuclear capability. I mean, I think there's much
debate to be had on that. Going back to.
What you were saying about, you know, the targeting of militants
at the same time as apparently not killing single or at least
only killing one civilian. I mean, it just, it makes
absolutely no sense. Now we are sort of short ish on
time now, but one thing I did just want to put to you and I
don't want to sort of, you know, bring the tone down as it were.
But but bearing in mind your, you know, your concern and your
objective with regard to action on on violence.
I just put the words I, I, I'm pray seeing because I can't
remember exactly what he said. But Karen Prendergast, who was
Under Secretary general political affairs at United
Nations some time ago, was interviewed for a documentary
about Sudan a while back. And he was very, very candid in
saying that, you know, plenary bodies like the United Nations
will be full of people who do say, we must do something about
it. We will do something about it.
You know, we are going to stop XY and Z, but they don't mean
it. And you spoke at the at the
outset about getting 80 nations to sign up to, you know, making
a commitment. And I, I don't mean to be
cynical exactly, but but I mean, where do you see the, the sort
of divide between people committing either in writing or
verbally and, and actually doing something about it?
And and is are we on a, you know, a sort of sliding scale if
things getting worse or better in that guard?
I mean, I, I, I, I, I don't think it's a downer at all.
And I mean anyone worth their salt is having an existential,
you know, contemplation about the nature of the international
rules based order as they stand. I certainly think that.
The creation of things like the Geneva Conventions have
certainly saved lives, I think. I think that people, you know,
particularly in the fog of war and the chaos of conflict, need
rules to fall back on because then you have to be reminded as
to what you're fighting for. I think that one of the reasons
why I'm an investigative journalist in this space is it
seeks to align statement with deed.
And you know, a lot of my life is spent saying, well, you
signed up to this and then the realities you're doing this.
So the UK government says there are 30 countries out there that
are human rights of concern and yet we're, we're sending arms to
22 of them. You know, and to me that is OK.
I'm going to use your statement of goodness and intent and I'm
going to hold you up to the reality of what you actually do.
Now, does that have an impact? I, I can only say that I know
I've been part of maybe some of the investigations that led to
the inquiry into SAS killings in Afghanistan or allegations
thereof. I've been part, I was involved
in the WikiLeaks. I was involved in the early days
of exposing the US drone strikes killed civilians.
I, I think I've created a, a small body of work that might
have at the very least added some weight of truth to combat
claims and rhetorical statements that are made in these halls of
power. And so, you know, does that hold
an effect? I mean, I think one has to be be
modest in ones ambitions and honest in ones impacts.
And I'm probably, you know, in the great, in the great scheme
of things, I hope I will be able to die one day old and in my
dotage, but knowing that I did no harm.
And I, I hope that that is the, the, the, the, the journey
through life. But I cannot say that there are
probably many people who will die who will look back on their
life and wonder whether they did inadvertently do harm or lie
for, for in, in their ambitions to either put themselves at the
forefront or through a misplaced national nationalistic
ambitions. And so, I mean, do I think that
the job that you and I have, which is trying to hold truth to
power is important unbelievably. And I, I often contemplate
democracy as being a very fragile bird that you have to
nurture and tend. And if we wasn't for that
nurturing and tending, which it requires truth and transparency
and eternal inquiry, then, you know, we would be in a much
darker place than we find ourselves now.
So I know I, I often contemplate and I've been to plenty of
places where there is absolute restriction on journalistic
activity around the world and those places are far darker than
Britain. So my, my pessimism, which
aligns with some of the the implications, though that the
implicit statements in your question, my, my pessimism is
always, I think, buoyed up by an optimism that ultimately truth,
goodness and fairness rooted in empathy prevails.
In Overton, that is a very good place with which to draw to a
close. But before I let you go, will
you please tell us where we can find more about what you're
doing and indeed any sort of social media sites that you use
and so forth? So please come to that website
whichisaoav.org.uk you can subscribe to our newsletters on
that and everything is retweeted on Blue Sky and on X on AOAV or
my own name, Ian with two eyes Overton.
Super. And that will be in the notes
that accompany this interview. That's been a fascinating
insight to a slice of what it is you've been doing over the last
several decades and perhaps we'll reconvene in future.
But Ian Everton, thank you very much indeed for joining me with
UK column. Thank you.