IN war there are no rules, or so some people will tell you. Having spent most of my working life reporting from frontlines around the world, I can recall many occasions when it would have been all too easy to agree with such pernicious thinking.

Frankly, I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve witnessed conflicts being fought seemingly without respect for the rules of warfare that were drafted in the wake of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Those hospitals I’ve seen shelled, those prisoners mistreated, the specific targeting of civilians, the aid convoys blocked from reaching those in need – all of these constitute what might be deemed war crimes under international humanitarian and human rights law.

It’s a terrible paradox, then, that never has there been a more developed level of these laws than we have right now while at the same time never have so many innocent civilians been the victims of war crimes.

It’s a state of affairs unlikely to improve unless the international capacity to enforce such laws is embraced and it will certainly only deteriorate should nations backtrack on their responsibility to uphold laws relating to armed conflict.

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Which brings me to one particular piece of backtracking and yet another shameful example of the UK Government’s flagrant disregard of the international rules-based order.

Last week it was the Internal Market Bill, this week it’s the Overseas Operations Bill, which came before the UK Parliament for a second reading yesterday. For those readers unfamiliar with the bill, it’s being sold as legislation to protect British soldiers, and to help curb historical claims of criminality against those who have been operating in foreign theatres of operation such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the legislation’s proposals is for prosecutions of torture and other serious crimes to be made within five years. Only charges relating to rape and sexual violence are exempt from the cut-off.

But as many senior military officials, human rights workers and lawyers have rightly pointed out, the implications of the time limit are obvious, providing as it does a “de facto immunity” for service personnel facing allegations of war crimes. It also effectively decriminalises torture, as has been made clear to the UK Government by the UN rapporteur on torture.

As ever with such machinations within Johnson’s Government, the devil is in the detail, such as the vague definition of what constitutes a “relevant offence”. For example, while sexual offences are exempt from the proposed new law, murder and torture are not. In other words this could mean, for example, a British soldier who rapes and murders a woman while serving outside the UK could be prosecuted for rape, but not murder.

As ever with the Tory Government it’s all about bending the rules. This at heart has nothing to do with protecting British soldiers.

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As the UK’s most senior retired soldier, 81-year-old Field Marshal Charles Guthrie, pointed out in a letter to The Sunday Times, these measures “appear to have been dreamt up by those who have seen too little of the world to understand why the rules of war matter”.

I’ve personally seen something of that “world” Guthrie speaks of, having been embedded as a journalist alongside UK forces on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’m in little doubt – whatever one’s own political reservations about such military campaigns – that the vast majority of troops involved act with the utmost courage and discipline and by the rules of war so far as can be determined. I also think it wrong that many should be endlessly pursued in legal claims that serve mainly to make certain lawyers money rather than have justice done by way of the victims.

BUT this should not prevent investigations, accountability and prosecutions from taking place, to which the latest proposed legislation could prove an obstacle.

As another senior soldier General Sir Nick Parker, a former British commander of land forces, said this week, we cannot have a “two-tier” justice system, in which British troops are treated differently to civilians. What we need is to investigate properly so that those who deserve to be prosecuted are.

In a comment piece in The Herald this week, Stewart McDonald, the SNP’s spokesperson for defence, outlined options for facilitating such accountability. His suggestion that the remit of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee or the Intelligence and Security Committee could be expanded to provide such a role is a sound and constructive proposal, even if the UK Government appear unwilling to listen

As the Ministry of Defence’s own doctrine states, “there are no circumstances in which torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment can ever be justified”.

Yet here we have legislation contained with the Overseas Operations Bill that serves not only to effectively sanction war crimes by British forces, but will once again damage the UK’s standing in the international community, and sow further mistrust even among allies about the motives of the Johnson Government.

The codes of conduct in war set out after 1945 were an effort to prevent a repetition of the worst of abuses of the Second World War. They were meant at least to enable post-war governments to assure their citizens that lessons had been learned and standards set.

Earlier this week Frank Ledwidge, a former army intelligence officer and author of Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure In Iraq And Afghanistan, described the Overseas Operations Bill as a “squalid piece of legislation”.

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Ledwidge knows a thing or two about war criminals, having had experience tracking them down in Bosnia and Kosovo. He pointed out that the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is currently conducting a preliminary investigation into allegations of British war crimes in Iraq, is unlikely to target just the small fry and footsoldier or military interrogator.

“When the ICC does come for us, which it will if this bill is enacted, it won’t be the soldiers they’ll be after,” Ledwidge warned. “The men we hunted down in Bosnia were not the trigger-pullers. They were the commanders, the generals and the politicians who sent them and allowed these crimes to happen.”

Yes it’s a squalid affair all round and one becoming all too familiar under this UK Government. In a time when war crimes are still being committed globally and leaders like Johnson turn their backs on international rule of law and institutions, it’s more important than ever that we uphold the values that matter. Even in politics, as in war, there must be rules.