Afghan war crimes inquiry costs UK £58m with no findings yet after 3.5 years

In the long reckoning that follows war, Britain finds itself three and a half years into an inquiry examining whether its most elite soldiers murdered unarmed Afghan civilians and children during night raids between 2010 and 2013 — and has spent £58 million without a single finding to show for it. The Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, launched in 2023 with a promise of results within 18 months, has been stretched by the sheer weight of the allegations and the Ministry of Defence's slow disclosure of evidence. It is a familiar tension in democratic societies: the machinery of account