In a small village outside the city of Haddam, in Northern England, in January, a group of about 100 men and boys were gathered around a TV set to watch a film.
It was about the war in Afghanistan and how it had affected Britain and other countries.
It showed a man being shot in the head and then being shot again and again in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
The killer had a bomb strapped to his body, but it was a harmless toy.
No one had seen the man before the attack.
The young men were part of the British Army’s Special Air Service.
This is a special team of highly trained and well-equipped soldiers trained to handle and manage the threat of terrorists and terrorist-related incidents.
For them, the Taliban was a common enemy, but they also had their own problems to deal with, including an influx of foreign fighters from the Middle East.
There was also the threat posed by the radical Islamist group, Al Qaeda, which had been active in the region for a decade.
The army had a small and tightly controlled force of more than 200 special forces soldiers.
The local MP, James Pym, had been a close friend of the MP for Woking for 20 years and had seen how the force had been used against Al Qaeda.
He knew the threat to British forces posed to the people of Woking.
And Pym knew that if he stood up for his own people, there would be an army response.
It would be something like the Battle of Britain in 1917.
In a village near Haddams, the British army had become the country’s first major paramilitary force, known as the Special Air Services.
In the 1960s, as Britain’s security services struggled to contain a massive terrorist threat, they also struggled to maintain a high level of morale.
The government faced criticism from many quarters.
But when the country was in turmoil, it was the British military that took the lead, often acting as the first line of defence against terrorist attacks.
“You’d think the whole world would be worried about us.
We are the greatest armed forces in the world,” said David Wight, a retired general and MP for Oldham West and Royton.
“We’re not worried about the terrorists.
They are.”
In the past decade, the special forces had been trained by the British Defence Intelligence Agency (MI5) and had been part of MI5’s counter-terrorism unit.
But the training and equipment that was put to use had been heavily compromised.
In 2007, the Government ordered a review of how the special services were trained.
The review was chaired by a retired MI5 officer and set out to find ways to improve the use of the equipment and techniques that were already being used in counter-terror operations.
The team was led by the former head of MI6, Sir Peter Hayman, and included the former commander of MI4, Mike Haydon.
The report said there were a number of problems with how the Special Forces were being used and the way in which they were being trained.
Among other things, it found the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) had not been properly trained on the nature of counter-terrorist operations.
And the British forces had failed to have a comprehensive understanding of how they were supposed to operate in the volatile region of Afghanistan.
In their report, the team said the British were doing a poor job of protecting themselves against terrorists.
“The Special Forces cannot be trusted to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, and therefore cannot be relied upon to protect the UK against terrorism elsewhere in the UK,” the report said.
The UK is now spending billions of pounds on counter-Terrorism, counter-extremism and anti-terrorism training, but the report concluded that the Special Units training was not effective.
“There is a huge gap between what is being done in terms of what is happening in Afghanistan on the ground and what is going on on the battlefield,” said James Rennie, who is the chair of the Special Unit Association, a lobbying group for special forces personnel.
“If we don’t change the way the British special forces are trained, the country will be very vulnerable to being infiltrated by Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organisation.”
The review said the Special Ops Force needed to develop better and more integrated relationships with Afghan forces and better training of Afghan special forces.
The group called for more scrutiny of the training of Special Forces soldiers and for a review into the use and standards of the weapons used by the Special Army Service (SAS), the elite special forces unit that trains SAS soldiers in Afghanistan.
“Our special forces units are not equipped to deal directly with terrorist groups and their techniques, which is why they have been put under such intense pressure and are now in a very difficult position,” said Rennies report.
“This review is needed now.”
But while the Special Teams are facing the greatest threat of all, the Special
