Prince Harry calls on veterans “to support each other” after the fall of Kabul

His speech was expected. Because he lived there some of the most formative moments of his life. “What is happening in Afghanistan is echoed throughout the international Invictus community”, writes Prince Harry in a press release co-signed with the leaders of the Invictus Games Foundation, which organizes a sports competition reserved for veterans and war-disabled.

And it was for them that he had his first words, he who was a soldier for ten years. “Many participating and competing countries in the Invictus Games family are linked by a common experience, that of having served in Afghanistan for the past 20 years”, continues the text which does not forget to point out that the country now bruised also took part in this great popular gathering.

Prince Harry and his partners “encourage everyone within the Invictus network – and within the military community at large – to reach out and support each other”. A message of hope also sent to soldiers currently en route to Afghanistan to help evacuate Western nationals and Afghans who have worked alongside them in recent years. It only took ten days for the Taliban to regain power in most of the country and seize the capital Kabul. Enough to question many soldiers, who shared their doubts on social networks. “But why the hell are they dead?”, headlined Monday August 16 on DailyMail the day after the insurgents took control. At least 454 Britons have been killed in operation in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the British government.

Among them, comrades of Prince Harry. Prince Charles’ youngest son has been deployed to Afghanistan twice. In 2007, he joined the troops already there to be an Apache helicopter pilot. But his mission, kept secret by all the British media, was cut short after a leak in an Australian newspaper. The young man, called Captain Wales in the field, was exfiltrated from the country after ten weeks for his own safety and saw him very badly. “I was broken “, he tells ABC News in 2016. “I was an officer, I left my soldiers and it was not my decision (…). I did not know what was going to happen to them and I suddenly found myself on a delayed plane so that we could put the coffin of a Danish soldier “, continues the 23-year-old.

He then takes the time to observe around him and discovers seriously wounded comrades being repatriated. “I had never seen such injuries in 10 weeks. I had only heard of them”, he specifies. A shock that leads him to worry more about veterans, from their return to civil society to their mental health. Harry returned to Afghanistan in 2012 for 20 weeks. When he returned in January 2013, he said he had killed the Taliban. He has long been a target of the insurgents, who would have dreamed of kidnapping or killing the descendant of the Queen of England. One of his biographers Penny Junor assures us that “the army made a man of him”. An essential step to which he will return bluntly in his own memoirs, to be published next year.

Accompanied by his wife Meghan, he called on world leaders to do even more for Afghanistan at the next UN General Assembly and the next G20. “The world is extremely fragile right now (…). As an international community, it is the decisions we make now – to reduce the suffering of those we know and those whom we may never meet – that will prove our humanity “, insist the Sussexes in a press release on the website of their Archewell foundation, in which they also talk about the humanitarian disaster in Haiti after the earthquake and the never-ending coronavirus crisis. The couple slips the links of several associations, each day presenting themselves a little more as universal benefactors.