General Sir Michael Jackson, GCB, CBE, DSO, ADC Gen (born 21 March 1944) is a British army officer, former commander of KFor in Kosovo as well as UNPROFOR (see Timeline of UN peacekeeping missions) commander in Bosnia.
Jackson's father was in the army. Jackson was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps aged 19 in 1963, specialising in the threat from the Soviet Union. He transferred to the Parachute Regiment in 1970 and served in Northern Ireland, rising to become the commanding officer of 1 Para in 1989.
In the 1990s, Jackson served in the NATO chain of command as a deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark. In this capacity, he is best known for refusing to block the runways of the Russian-occupied Pristina Airport, to isolate the Russian troops there. Had he complied with General Clark's order, there was a chance the British troops under his command could have come into armed conflict with the Russians; doing this without prior orders from Britain would have led to his dismissal for gross insubordination. On the other hand, defying Clark would have meant disobeying a direct order from a superior NATO officer (Clark was a four-star general; Jackson only a three-star). Jackson ultimately chose the latter course of action, though the point became irrelevant when the American government prevailed upon the Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians to prevent the Russians from using their airspace to fly reinforcements in. As a result, he was dubbed "Macho Jacko" by the British tabloid press.
During the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, Jackson, as Chief of the General Staff, ordered an inquiry into pictures released by the British tabloid The Daily Mirror that depicted alleged torture of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers. The Daily Mirror's editor Piers Morgan was later fired by the newspaper, after the newspaper was unable to prove the provenance of the pictures.
On February 23 2005, soldiers of 1st Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, were found guilty of abuse of Iraqi prisoners arrested for looting at an army camp called Bread Basket, in Basra, during May of 2003. After they were sentenced General Jackson, made a statement on television and said that: he was "appalled and disappointed" when he first saw photographs of the Iraqi detainees and that
- The incidents depicted are in direct contradiction to the core values and standards of the British Army ... Nevertheless, in the light of the evidence from this trial I do apologize on behalf of the army to those Iraqis who were abused and to the people of Iraq as a whole.
Jackson had bags under his eyes surgically removed. He refuses to be photographed in a suit, preferring military uniform instead, with the famous red beret of the Parachute Regiment.
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Last updated: 05-13-2005 07:56:04
