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Positioning the Sniper Photograph.

Cowards and Pros.

Part I

Slide 1

“Hey Walt. The Sharps is a sniper’s weapon. There’s two types of people who like to

kill from a distance: cowards and pros. In my experience, they’re both dangerous.”

Spoken by Omar in ‘Longmeir’; ‘The Pilot’.

One of the most persistent themes around the discourse of

photography and press coverage to come out of recent conflicts

in Iraq and Afghanistan concerns the paucity of images that

depict actual combat. Numerous (Griffin and Lee 1995),

(Zelizer 2005), (Carr 2006),(Kennedy 2008) (Johnson & Fahmy

2010) have protested that the photographs that appear in the

press present a particular view of war that is sanitised

through limited reference to the destructive consequences of

conflict. Photographs that depict actual combat are rare

(Griffin and Lee systematic analysis of images of war from the

Gulf War revealed that only 3% of photographs depicted combat)

and photographs that depict death are almost non-existent.

Those Photographs that depict the destructive consequences of

war that do enter the public sphere are mediated first by the

temporal and spatial dislocation of distance, rendered

possible through the asymmetric distribution of power and

technology and then by the optical interruption of the lens

that fractures the connectivity of cause and event. Finally

they are mediated by our understanding of digital reality, the

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blurring of the lines between computer generation and the

physical. Consequently, the Western world is left distanced

and the field of war is split across two conflicting spheres

of understanding: the localised violence and horrors of the

battlefield and the psychologically filtered war in mass

media; “War is no longer confined to the place in which it

occurs as a one-time event – the battlefield, for example –

but is reproduced and broadcast as a picture in display

showcases” (Azoulay, 2001:32).

The images we see on our screens or, to an ever decreasing

degree, as artefacts are not necessarily decoded as truth,

they are realistic rather than real. As Manovich predicted in

1995: “ Traditional film editing and optical printing are

being replaced by digital editing and image processing which

blur the lines between production and post-production, between

shooting and editing”. (1995: 58)

Apart from the stories that reproduce the vernacular images of

atrocities such as Abu Ghraib, there is one exception to the

intolerance of depictions of death or even the possibility of

impending death. Photographs that accompany stories of

snipers, their achievements and their victims appear to avoid

the moral, ethical or strategic dilemmas associated with the

taking, disseminating and viewing of the visceral nature of

war at first hand. Snipers are both lauded and reviled in the

press, the photographs that depict their craft are either

condemned as evidence of atrocity perpetrated by the

individual or they are presented as paragons of national pride

in league tables that list their professional achievements.

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This paper examines the uses of photography to portray the

convoluted and contradictory role of snipers and sniping as

acts of individual noble endeavour and heinous crime through

an analysis of the photographs that accompanied two separate

journalistic articles. A third article which examines the

consequences of disrupting the established discourse of

sanitised technological warfare is also discussed. Audience

responses to press articles reporting on sniper activities are

complex, quite apart from the moral predicament of

acknowledging the skill in the long distance kill, the concept

of the sniper at times seems to conflict with warrior codes of

honour. These ethical dimension to the sniper’s craft is

hardly a recent phenomenon as Tweedie in an article on a

British run sniper school in Serbia relates:

“The sniper is the bogie man of the battlefield, a fixture

since the 18th century, when reasonably accurate long-range

shooting became possible. A notable early success occurred

during the American War of Independence when, on October 7,

1777, a rebel marksman killed the British general Simon

Fraser.

A month earlier, during the Battle of the Brandywine, Captain

Patrick Ferguson managed to get a tall American officer, quite

possibly George Washington, in his sights. But Ferguson

decided not to shoot because the man had his back turned

towards him.” (Tweedie: 2013)

Slide 2

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Today, this chivalric distinction is not the issue; the cross

hairs of the sniper’s telescopic sights are a ubiquitous icon

made familiar to us all through the glossy, embossed book

covers of novels such as Frederick Forsyth’s 1973 novel; “The

day of the Jackal”, simulated imagery depicting famous

assassinations, numerous films and, more recently in the high

resolution video games predicted by Manovich.

Part II

Slide 3

In February 2013, Mor Ostrovski a member of a sniper team in

the Israeli army (IDF) earned a certain notoriety when he

posted an image on his personal Instagram site. The image he

posted was taken through the telescopic sights of his sniper’s

rifle and showed the crosshairs centred on the back of the

head of a Palestinian youth. Ostrovski was investigated by the

Military Police and he was disciplined under military law.

Inside Israel the story was given significant coverage and the

influential news organisation, Yedioth Ahronoth, were granted

an interview with the IDF which was disseminated through other

Israeli media portals. The IDF spokesman reported to Ynetnews

that they had concluded; "Since the documented offence isn't

criminal and since the legal procedure conducted by the

soldier's commanding officer was found appropriate, a

disciplinary action was decided to be sufficient." (Times of

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Israel. Feb 20th 2013) Ostrovski closed his Instragam account

but his photograph had already been made public through

electronic and print dissemination by world and domestic (i.e.

Israeli and Palestinian) news outlets. The disquiet felt in

Israel about the behaviour of this soldier was echoed in the

reports published by the world’s press and in many cases

served as a vehicle to reinforce the established discourses of

the region and the conflict. This was not the first incident

involving members of the IDF taking inappropriate imagery

while on active service but it arguably ranks among the most

contentious incidents not involving the photographic practices

of female members of the IDF.

Slide 4

The other arenas of conflict that has featured prominently in

the media for more than a decade that makes more insistent

demands on British audiences are obviously the interventionist

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2011 the Daily Telegraph

and the Daily Mail published an article by Toby Harnden,

(edited by Oliver Pickup) author of the book, ‘Dead Men Risen:

The Sniper’s Story’, about two British snipers stationed in

Helmand Province in 2009. In the article they are referred to

as; Potter and Osmond, who, the reader is informed, are

‘identified by pseudonyms for security purposes’ and that

between them they chalked up seventy five confirmed kills in

just forty days. The article is accompanied by six photographs

to illustrate their tale.

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Three of the photographs are purported to be taken through the

telescopic sights of a sniper’s rifle. Both the sequence of

photographs from Afghanistan and the single image from

Palestine share narratives of an almost omnipotent power over

life and death. In both cases the audience is invited to share

the sniper’s optically enhanced observation of people who are

made unaware of the imminent possibility of their own deaths

by the immense distances over which a sniper operates. The

scrutiny that we as audience bring to the photographs shares a

further attribute with the original circumstances that

generated the photographs. An army sniper is required to

assess the person in their sights to determine whether or not

they constitute a legitimate target which nominally translates

into an identifiable threat to whatever strategic objectives

are currently in force. Although spatially and temporally

dislocated from events, the audience is also encouraged to

assess the morality of the judgements made by an individual

soldier. Ultimately we are being asked to either condemn or

condone either the decision to shoot or, as Ostovsky’s case

illustrates, the decision to place the crosshairs over a

potential target. It could be argued that the sniper’s role on

the battlefield places far greater demands on individual

morality than for any other soldier on the ground. The

responsibility for taking the life of an individual identified

through the telescopic sights of a weapon can only lie with

the person with the finger on the trigger.

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Ostovsky’s photograph is unquestionably disturbing, a

denotative analysis of the image reveals that the picture

comprises two focal lengths, when the photograph was taken the

camera was positioned a short distance away from the eyecup of

the telescopic sights with the youth shown in optically

enhanced telephoto, the crosshairs just to the left of his

head. Around the frame of the sights, the immediate

environment shared by Ostovsky and the youth can be seen in

the neutral perspective of a standard focal length lens

without light filtration. The connotative narrative that

emerges from this juxtaposition of focal lengths is one that

serves to emphasise factors about the relationship that exists

between snipers and their victims. Snipers regularly operate

from a range of over 10000 metres, often from a concealed

position. As a result intended targets do not normally know

they are in the sights of a sniper, they are vulnerable and

defenceless against an adversary they not only cannot see, but

whose presence they are often totally unaware of. Except in

the case of assassination, the anonymity of the sniper is

often mirrored in the anonymity of the target. Both the

vulnerability and the anonymity of the youth in Ostovsky’s

photograph are illustrated by the evidence of distance, the

relaxed posture of the youth and the fact that we can only see

the back of his head.

The most obvious difference between Ostovsky’s story and

Osmond and Potter’s is the fact that any narrative that is

constructed around Ostovsky’s actions are derived from a

single autobiographical photograph and refer to a discrete

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event. Whereas Osmond and Potter’s story is concerned with a

tour of duty in Afghanistan and the article published by the

Telegraph and the Daily Mail is taken from a book and is

illustrated with six rather than just one photograph.

The first image in the sequence depicts six figures, five

standing and one crouched, the standing figures are shown

walking along a road beside a compound and at least two

weapons can quite clearly be discerned thus confirming to the

viewer that at least part of the group potentially constituted

a legitimate target. The photograph is framed and dissected by

the view through a telescopic sight; this is the scene as

observed by the sniper. In case there is any doubt the

accompanying caption in the Daily Telegraph states: ‘Armed

Taliban fighters seen through the scope of a sniper's rifle in Helmand in 2009.’ In

contrast to Ostovsky’s photograph the figures in the scope are

engaged in the same conflict that has placed the British

sniper on the ground in Afghanistan, they are the foe, who

have taken up arms to fight for their own ideological

position. They are also walking forwards towards the sniper,

towards British positions, they are active. Denotatively,

Ostovsky’s target was engaged in none of these activities.

However, it is not only the implications of intent or the

evidence of weapons that mark the differences in these images.

The narrative that emerges from Ostovsky’s photograph is a

narrative of inference, there is the potential for atrocity

held in the mute instance of the photograph but, as far as we

know, it is never consumated. The narrative structure of

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Osmond and Potter’s story is illustrated as a linear dramatic

structure suggesting a chronological performance.

The Second and third images from the sequence are also framed

by the details of the telescopic sights. In the second image

soldiers in uniform (we are informed that they are from 4

rifles) can be made out inspecting two prone figures on the

ground. In the background a group of Afghan men can be seen,

half hidden in a ditch observing the soldiers. In the third

picture the Afghan men have moved forward to collect the

bodies, two soldiers are still in evidence on the scene. The

background for the second and third photographs is a compound

wall of similar height and appearance to the wall shown in the

first photograph. In terms of classic dramatic narrative,

these photographs represent the first two elements of plot

structure. The first image provides the exposition; the

adversaries in the conflict are identified as is the mise en

scène, the environment, in which the narrative unfolds while

the second and third images provide the ‘climax’ ,the two bodies

shot by the unseen protagonist are now lying dead on the

ground. The rising tension in the action is held by the

framing of the telescopic sights, the targets are identified,

and the sniper takes aim and shoots. But even a cursory

analysis of the photographs reveals a problem with this

particular narrative. It is interrupted, temporally

dislocated, the article reveals that the dead bodies in the

road are not individuals from the figures in the first

photograph and we are made aware that multiple threads exist

in this narrative. The text and the captions remind us that

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this is essentially a description of the skill,

professionalism and the effectiveness of two snipers during a

tour of duty in Afghanistan evidenced by, in the first

instance, the number of recorded confirmed kills attributed to

each. It also provides a detailed account of one particular

incident during this tour in which Osmond shot two Taliban

fighters with a single bullet. The inclusion of this incident

as a subplot to the main storyline presented contiguously

through the photographs, reiterates the dialectic of the

sniper’s position in the public conscious. The intertwining of

two narrative threads might be considered disingenuous but

equally its duality could be argued to reflect a media

articulation of our relationship with the sniper. In either

case its primary effect is to disrupt the visual narrative of

the sequence of photographs thereby helping to maintain the

mythology that surrounds the sniper.

Certain types of shots are awarded a special nomenclature, the

one bullet two dead Taliban achieved by Osmond is known as a

Quigley in British army slang and is a reference to the 1990

western;  ‘Quigley Down Under’ in which Tom

Selleck's character manages the 'trick shot’. Photographs two

and three are records of this event, the two Taliban were

riding a motorbike, one was a known Taliban leader and the

pillion passenger was carrying a walkie-talkie which under the

rules of engagement, was designated a hostile act. Osmond

fired a single shot which killed both men. The fact that there

is no motorcycle in the first photograph confirms that it

records a completely different event that, just like

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Ostovsky’s single image, offers no conclusion. I would argue

that the denotative similarities evident in all three

photographs are sufficient to suggest that they were taken

from the same location (possible an established sniper’s

observation point) but the repeated framing through telescopic

sights, although not explicit, detracts attention from the

convoluted temporality of the narrative threads. In other

words the singularity of the ‘Quigley’ shot is enmeshed within

the extended tour and the photographic sequence is provided

with a possible connotation of chronological continuity. In

another departure from Ostovsky’s image, the viewer is

presented with evidence that the Taliban are armed and active

in the area, the implication reinforced by the framing being

that Osmond and Potter were justified in taking action.

In the context of the article, photographs one, two and three

elevate Osmond and Potter to hero status, individual

celebrities within the anonymous hierarchy of military

culture. Harnden quotes their commanding office in the Daily

Telegraph article:

“Major Mark Gidlow-Jackson describes Potter and Osmond as the “epitome of the

thinking riflemen” that his regiment sought to produce. “They know the

consequences of what they’re doing and they are very measured men. They are both

highly dedicated to the art of sniping. They’re both quiet, softly spoken, utterly

charming, two of the nicest men in the company, if the most dangerous.”” (Harnden

2011)

It is at this point in the sequence that the nature of the

celebrity status afforded snipers becomes apparent. Entwined

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within the detailed account of the incident are statical data

relating to the shot. We are informed that both Potter and

Osmond use an L96 sniper rifle that uses 9.62mm ammunition and

that the majority of kills were achieved at a range of 1,2oo

metres. We are also informed that Potter achieved a kill at a

range of 1,430 metres and that Osmond’s Quigley was a 196

metre shot. This statistical data resonates with the type of

information that that accompanies reports on the prowess of

top athletes. The report and the photographs reiterate the

skill displayed by the snipers n achieving their goals.

Photographs four and five carry the sporting metaphor further,

photograph four denotes a probably temporary wooden structure,

a wall and a roof resting on a beam. Two British army ration

packs are on prominent display labelled with a union flag and

a menu number. On the top plank below the beam the words;

“sniper hits” has been chalked with eleven chalked stick

figures drawn underneath. The caption reads: “Potter and

Osmond's sniper tally at PB Shamal Storrai.” Photograph five continues

the sporting metaphor, Osmond and Potter are shown sitting

astride the motorcycle the two Taliban were riding when they

were shot. The photograph can therefore be interpreted as the

ultimate trophy photograph, the spoils of war and the winner’s

cup. The sixth and final photograph in the sequence wraps up

the narrative, it depicts Osmond and Potter walking away from

the camera looking relaxed and carrying the tools of their

trade. In terms of dramatic structural sequence it represents

denouement or resolution, the concluding act in the narrative.

This sense of closure is reinforced by the caption: “Potter (left)

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and Osmond leave PB Shamal Storrai at the end of their tour, two hours after

achieving their final two kills.” The adherence to dramatic structure

that this final photograph represents is only achieved through

the same manipulation of temporality evident in the opening

three photographs. The caption informs us that the photograph

records the last day of the tour; it also informs us that

Osmond and Potter have achieved their final two kills. It

would be disingenuous to suggest duplicity here, the only

connection to the singular event with the motor bike is in the

number of Taliban shot. However, the presentation of the

photographs as sequential narrative and the ubiquity of

dramatic structure could potentially aggregate the discrete

temporal events depicted in photographs one, four and six with

the sequence (two, three and five) that recount the ‘Quigley’

episode.

One feature of the photographs that is really intriguing is

the suggestion that the power of celebrity is so potent that

it can challenge a necessity for anonymity. In Photograph five

both Osmond and Potter are facing the camera; both men have

had their identities disguised through the simple expedient of

placing a black bar over their eyes in post-production.

Photograph six shows both men in full combat uniform,

including helmets walking away from the camera, in both

photographs the demands for anonymity have been acknowledged

yet caption five informs us that Osmond is shown on the left

while caption six identifies Potter on the left and we need to

remember that both these names are pseudonyms.

Slide 5

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One other intriguing photograph from Osmond and Potter’s story

came to light; it was taken from an advertisement for

Harnden’s book published in the Daily Telrgraph, it depicts

the two dead Taliban lying in the road through the telescopic

sights but in this image, the camera is further back and the

viewer is presented with the peripheral detail of the sniper’s

camoflaged position. The juxtaposed perspectives of the

diferent focal legths reinforces the idea of the distance

between the sniper and his target. However, it also connotes a

sense of remoteness that potentially detracts from the

intimacy of the constructed narrative presented in the

published article.

Part III

Slide 6

“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed

men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter" (Ernest

Hemmingway 1936)

The argument for assimilating snipers into the fraternity of

sporting celebrities is borne out by the reaction of the

world’s press to Ostovsky’s photograph. The image speaks of

the unassailable, omnipotent power of the sniper, the decision

to take life divested of its moral and ethical implications by

the intervention of the optical power of the telescopic sight

and the ballistic power of the bullet. The distance between

the sniper and their target reduces the humanity of the

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encounter; it is a question of technologies and perception. It

is only by placing their eye to the cup of their telescopic

sight that the target comes into sharp focus, the peripheral,

unmediated, environment around the sight, the environment

inhabited by the sniper, is subsumed by the minute detail

picked out in the sights. To paraphrase Voltaire; Ostovsky’s

photograph appears to be a depiction of power but without any

sense of responsibility. It is also unsporting, the potential

target is a seated youth, apparently unarmed and with his back

to the sniper. He may not have been shot but the connotation

of the photograph suggests that he is not in the game and, I

would suggest, it is this fact more than any other that

separates Ostovsky’s photograph from other ‘through the

sights’ photographs.

Slide 7

The concept of snipers being afforded celebrity status based

on sporting rather than military prowess is also evident in

press coverage recounting stories without the benefit of

‘through the sights’ photographs. A common feature of sniper

stories is that they frequently either focus on body count

tallies or extreme distance shots. There are various league

tables that publish the name, nationality and regiment of

individual outstanding snipers alongside information about the

type of weapon used and the ammunition favoured by the sniper.

These tables are invariably ordered according to the longest

distance of shot.

Slide 8

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The current holder of the record is Craig Harrison (The silent

assassin) a British sniper with the Household Calvary whose

record breaking shooting of two Taliban fighters was widely

reported in the international press. In accordance with the

conventions that have propagated around the myth of the

sniper, the coverage included comparative and statistical

information on Harrison’s rifle and a number of detailed

accounts about the event. In addition to the laudatory

press coverage, Harrison’s shooting ability has also been

recognised by the Guinness book of Records.

Slide 9 – Slide 10

Unfortunately all the media attention given to Harrison in

201o put his and his family’s lives in great danger. The

coverage of Harrison’s exploits included a posed portrait,

that was reproduced in broadsheet and tabloid papers around

the world along with details of where he lived, that he was

married (to a hair dresser) and had a daughter (about to take

her GCSE exams).

Slide 11

In May 2013 the Daily Telegraph reported that Harrison had

been awarded £100,000 after the “MOD blew his cover after a

catastrophic blunder” (Hall. 2013) In her article Hall

recounts:

“Craig Harrison and his family were put in danger of being kidnapped by Al Qaeda

sympathisers and was forced to quit his Army home, temporarily leave the country

and remove his teenage daughter from school before her GCSE exams, after a

“catastrophic” blunder, according to police intelligence. The stress led to the

LONGEST CONFIRMED SNIPER KILL

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Household Cavalry veteran, who was commended for killing two Taliban gunmen

from more than a mile-and-a-half away, being placed on permanent sick leave and

he is now to be medically discharged from the Army.”

Harrison gave his interview to the media on the understanding

that in accordance with MOD protocols that recognise the high

target value of snipers for terrorists; his identity would not

be revealed. However, the MOD neglected to inform the press of

the need to maintain his anonymity and his personal details

were published around the world.

Part IV

"Man or woman, young or old, my sights are steady, and my trigger cold. Walk or

run, laugh or cry you’re in my A.O., now you die!" (A.O. - Area of Operations)

Anonymous quote attributed to an American sniper.

Slide 12

These stories all serve to illustrate the complex dialectic of

the sniper’s role on the twenty first century battlefield,

hero or villain; warrior or celebrity, a killer devoid of

empathy or dedicated professional operating with surgical

precision. The evidence suggests that snipers fill the

requirements for all these labels and that we shouldn’t be

surprised to see Ostovsky’s passive photograph cast him in

the role of villain while Osmond and Potter’s image of two

dead bodies lying on a dusty road elevate them to warrior

heroes. In the age old traditions of such heroes, a champion

arises to exemplify the codes of the art of war, Harrison

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holds the record for the longest shot, other snipers have

racked up a greater tally of confirmed kills, others leave

trademark signatures to tell the world whose finger was on the

distant trigger that unerringly took out the target; “For one

woman, a member of Alpha Group, the anti-terrorist arm of the Russian special

forces, it is a shot to the victim’s left eye.” (Tweedie: 2013)

Our relationship with the sniper as articulated through the

press appears somewhat chaotic if not actually schizophrenic

in nature. The question that arises from the sniper photograph

is; how does the fascination with the myth of the sniper

intersect or inform other narratives of war? The tensions that

are created go further than the typical discourses of the

morality of the interventionist wars waged by the West since

the first Gulf war of 1991. In the asymmetric wars of today

which pits nationally sponsored technological superiority

against a mostly unidentified ideologically motivated enemy,

sniper stories are almost unique in bringing individual voices

to the discourse. In his analysis of media representation of

contemporary conflict since the First Gulf War, Griffin (2010)

argues:

“The dearth of actual combat coverage was echoed in the lack of images revealing

destructive consequences of the war. Our [Griffin and Lee 1995] data supported the

observation made by many other commentators that this was a ‘sanitized’ war”

(Griffin 2010: 27)

He goes on to discuss the use of still frames taken from video

cameras mounted on laser guided munitions:

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“This simulated view… was quickly seized upon as an emblem of a new kind of

high-tech warfare, spawning descriptors such as ‘Nintendo warfare’ to characterise

the abstract electronic imagery that seemed to be replacing images of soldiers in

combat.” (Ibid)

The stories of the snipers and their victims offer a different

perspective to the narratives of smart munitions dropped

remotely with pin point precision on a target, or the atrocity

of the faceless suicide bomber who blows himself up in a

crowded market place. The polar extremes of death and

destruction brought about by discriminate western technologies

and indiscriminate ideological sacrifice both relegate loss

through death to statistic al data. The individuals who die

often seem to simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong

time. The sniper redresses the balance, the decision to shoot

or not shoot is based on what the sniper ‘reads’ through his

telescopic sights. Although mute and asymmetric in power; a

relationship between the sniper and the target nevertheless is

formed.

Recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been extensively

photographed from what are essentially two distinctive

viewpoints. The first takes the perspective of the dominant

political and military agencies. Photographs that are

disseminated through official sources and compliant media

channels seek to reinforce messages of neoliberal intervention

(Freedman, 2005) including moral obligations of governance,

the rigorous adherence to the legalities proscribed by

international bodies and the sanitisation of war through the

extensive use of technologies. War reporting in the twenty

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first century has largely been articulated through the mantras

of shock and awe, precision munitions and limited collateral

damage all of which reinforce the insistence of a

sanitisation of war. As Zehfus suggests “praise for precision

not only produces Western warfare as ethical but also both

relies upon and reproduces a particular kind of ethics, based

on the notion of non-combatant protection”. (2010: 543)

The second perspective is far more immediate and personal; it

deals with individual experiences of local events during war.

These photographs are generally either endorsed through

embedded journalism or they are unsanctioned records taken by

serving soldiers and independent journalists. Although

predominantly benign in terms of their content, as Abu Ghraib

and other images of atrocity have graphically demonstrated,

unsanctioned photographs can have a profoundly disruptive

impact to received narratives. The convergence of digital

technologies such as camera phones and helmet cameras has

ensured that every soldier on a contemporary battlefield is

potentially carrying not only a photographically enabled

device, but quite possibly a means of near instantaneous

dissemination.

The one area where all the competing narratives appear to

converge is the very specific continued use of snipers on the

battlefield by coalition forces. Veneration of the arsenal of

technology and the anonymity of monolithic military might that

features so prominently in the official archives; is mirrored

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by the recognition and acknowledgement of the individual; the

photographs that dominate the personal archives of the

vernacular. The spatial discrepancy of high tech warfare and

the soldier on the ground is adjusted by matching the skill of

the individual with the immense range of the weapon he

controls. However, this coalescence of perspectives still

fails to offer a unified view of the nature of contemporary

war and the confusion that ensues can be discerned in media

coverage of the practices of snipers. The atrocity

(vernacular) photographs that have entered the public sphere

all have one thing in common; they are the photographs of

human encounter. They are photographs of visceral proximity

whereas the official photographs that celebrate the arsenal of

drones and smart munitions are photographs of technology,

distance and anonymity.

Sniper photographs bridge the gap between the technologically

sanitised war fought at arm’s length against an enemy who,

while unsponsored and unencumbered by the status of nationhood

can nevertheless engage in a war of media spectacle on equal

terms with the west and the immediacy of for survival of the

individual combatants on the front line.

Perhaps, it is this humanising factor in a largely technical

war that has created our schizophrenic relationship with the

sniper. The death and destruction that accompanies all wars

has been made remote by the first world’s return to

discriminate warfare. The excesses of indiscriminate war made

real by the bombing of civilians in their cities that

culminated with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and

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the resulting spectre of the mushroom cloud that kept the

metaphorical fingers off the trigger during the Cold War

stand-off of assured mutual annihilation, have been replaced

by assurances of pinpoint accuracy and limited collateral

damage. Morality has been restored to the business of killing.

It is perhaps ironic then this new morality is driven by

technological advancements in accuracy motivated partially by

the demands of an ever increasing legal dimension to waging

war, that the ability to make moral or ethical decisions is

being taken out of death.

Snipers and smart bombs satisfy our competing emotions of

revulsion and fascination with war. They both identify their

targets and therefore both are discriminate in their acts of

destruction. Both destroy their targets from long range and

without warning, the smart bomb takes out hard targets, the

sniper soft but in both cases the minutiae of death and

destruction can be obscured (sanitised) by distance. The

sniper, concerned with the death of an individual, is the

paradigmatic example of the discriminate infantry soldier

while the smart bomb, free of moral or ethical dimension is

the paradigmatic example of discriminate long range projectile

munition.

Part V

Slide 13

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While writing this article it was reported that a British

sniper had managed to kill six Taliban with a single bullet.

The story was widely published in the press, including ‘The

Independent’ at the end of March 2014. The MOD and the press

have obviously learnt from the disastrous coverage of Craig

Harrison’s story and we are simply told the sniper’s age (20)

and that he is a lance corporal in the Coldstream Guards. We

are however given the statistical information that the shot

was made from a distance of 850 metres and that the same

sniper also shot a Taliban machine gunner at a range of 1,340

metres. The six men died when the sniper shot a Taliban

fighter who appears to have been wearing a suicide vest. The

article does include a quote from the commanding officer,

given to the Daily Telegraph:

“Lt Col Richard Slack, commanding officer of 9/12 Royal

Lancers, described what happened as British and Afghan troops

engaged about 15 to 20 Taliban fighters. “The guy was wearing

a vest. He was identified by the sniper moving down a tree

line and coming up over a ditch,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “He

had a shawl on. It rose up and the sniper saw he had a machine

gun. “They were in contact and he was moving to a firing

position. The sniper engaged him and the guy exploded. “There

was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, 'I think I’ve

just shot a suicide bomber’. The rest of them were killed in

the blast.” (Johnston. 2014)

Discriminate and indiscriminate intent and death neatly

wrapped in the statistics of war.

24

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