What the SAS is doing in Afghanistan

Killing civilians, apparently:

New Zealand Special Air Force soldiers led a botched raid on a Kabul factory on Friday that left two Afghan workers dead and two with life threatening injuries, the Times newspaper reports.

The soldiers are identified in the report as the commander "Sean" and his deputy "James".

The raid has outraged the Afghan Government because it was done without their approval.

This incident needs to be thoroughly investigated, and if there is any suggestion of negligence, the soldiers responsible must be held to account. While they're there, our soldiers owe a duty of care to the people of Afghanistan; they cannot be allowed to murder them by incompetence and then just walk away as if nothing had happened.

But what really bites about this is that we have to hear about it from the foreign media, rather than our own. And it makes the government's policy of secrecy around the deployment seem more than a little self-interested, a blatant attempt to limit public debate and insulate themselves from the consequences of their decision, rather than accepting responsibility for their actions.