Task Force Black by Mark Urban

On 30 May last year Operation Crichton, the UK special forces deployment in Iraq, ended. Over the previous six years operatives from the SAS, the Special Boat Service and a range of other elite units had killed or captured 3,500 people. Their own number had rarely exceeded 150 at any one time.

The majority of targets on near-nightly raids were captured. Between 350 and 400 were killed. Most of these were senior Islamic militants including a number linked to al-Qaida. Around 50 civilians were killed as well.

That Mark Urban, a BBC journalist also known for excellent recent books on the Napoleonic Wars, has been able to tell this story is a testament to his determination and investigative skill. Few reporters succeed in cultivating any sources within the closed world of the British special forces; Urban has found dozens who have spoken with unprecedented candour. The result is gripping and troubling in equal measure and an invaluable addition to the increasingly comprehensive literature on the Iraq war.

The author had to battle the Ministry of Defence to have his book published, and one wonders what reception a work more critical of British special forces' operations might have received in Whitehall. The author's personal admiration for the men who constitute his subject is clear. Language veers from the breathless – "Britain's hand-picked troops", the "SAS had got its man"– to the soldierly – firefights are "epic", problems are "aggro". The book reads extremely well – too well in a sense – with almost every chapter starting with helicopters circling at dawn, Land Rovers leaving bases in clouds of dust or C-130 transporters taking off or coming into land. There is a limited lay vocabulary available to describe the intense and complex reality of war but the style occasionally jars in what is otherwise a serious and accomplished work.

The narrow focus of the book sometimes forces the author to either ignore the broader context, local or regional, or condense extremely complex issues. Urban's two-page explanation of who or what was producing the horribly effective "explosively formed projectiles" which started featuring in roadside bombings of coalition troops, and why their source – probably Iran – was controversial, is nicely done and his unpicking of the political and legal labyrinth surrounding issues of prisoner detention and rules of engagements elegant and authoritative.

However, Urban's analysis is more difficult to sustain when he says that British special forces were deployed in the north and west of Iraq in 2003 to take the place of massive bodies of American troops which were prevented from reaching the theatre because "the rulers of certain countries did not want to risk the wrath of the Arab street by allowing overt movements of US troops through their ports towards Iraq" even though "they had been prepared to accede to the launching of highly secret coalition attacks from their territory". This was, Urban states, "a typical double-dealing Middle Eastern approach". Quite apart from recycling a terrible old stereotype about wily, untrustworthy Orientals, the most prominent among "those certain countries" was Turkey, and Ankara's choice was not about double-dealing (nor clearly the Arab street) but, as it was the Turkish parliament that voted to reject the Americans' multi-billion dollar sweeteners, about democracy. Urban does however skilfully communicate a mass of often technical information about his core subject without ever boring the reader.

Nor does Urban spare the rest of the British army. He argues that the UK's special forces effectively saved the nation's military honour in what was otherwise a war marked by early complacency, middling incompetence and finally a spineless lack of will. Urban quotes American commanders diplomatically praising the UK's contribution, though quite how critical the work of the SAS in Iraq was has to be seen in perspective. If the SAS killed or captured around 3,500, then the equivalent figure for the Joint Special Operations Command's US tasks across Iraq were, Urban says, estimated at 11,000-12,000 militants, of whom around 3,000 may have been killed.

In Task Force Black Iraqis rarely feature other than as militants to be killed or captured, civilians who get shot by accident, as corrupt policemen or as weak and venal politicians. There is little sense of the Iraqi people as players in their own destiny. This is perhaps inevitable. David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert, quotes an American special forces operator in Iraq saying he had "never met an Iraqi who wasn't in handcuffs".

Special forces are a high-grade specialised tool to be used sparingly in given circumstances. Their courage and skill is beyond doubt. But I wonder if they are entirely worthy of the enormous attention we lavish on them. Even with excellent books such as this.
Guardian