Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

This war enjoyed early success, but stuttered and soured after the UK’s
mission expanded to Helmand in the south of the country. The war
dragged on, costing an estimated 95,000 lives over 13 years, including
those of 453 British servicemen and women, and brought little discernible
benefit to the people of Afghanistan. The 21st century’s second war – the
2003 invasion of Iraq – was possibly the UK’s greatest foreign policy
disaster since Suez. Casualty estimates vary widely, from 150,000 dead
to more than a million. What cannot be disputed is that 179 of the dead
were British. More than a decade later, Iraq remains in chaos.
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The post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought in the full
glare of the media and came to haunt the politicians who had initiated
them. Despite this, Britain continued to invest in war – politically,
technically and financially – as a means of projecting power and
securing influence among key allies, and also, it seemed at times, in an
attempt to impose order and a degree of familiarity upon a chaotic and
unpredictable world.
But could this be done in secret? Surely, in the age of global media, 24-
hour rolling news, social media, and the troops’ own ability to record
and instantly share images of conflict, it would be impossible for a
British government to go to war and conceal its actions, in the way that
Britain’s war in Dhofar was hidden from the public for six-and-a-half
years? Tony Jeapes, who commanded the first SAS squadron that was
covertly deployed to Oman, considered this question, and concluded that
while such secrecy was “an ideal state of affairs”, it would probably be
impossible to repeat.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15