Remembering Op TELIC — 15 Years On

In May 2026, BFBS, the media charity serving the UK Armed Forces community worldwide, marked the 15th anniversary of the last British personnel leaving Iraq with a week-long social media commemoration of Operation TELIC.

Op TELIC is widely described by veterans as the forgotten conflict. Unlike the Falklands or Afghanistan, it receives comparatively little national recognition. BFBS set out to change that.

Under the campaign proposition Their Stories. Their Words. Their Service, we produced and published a week of veteran interview films, a Bite Size Conflict explainer video, a 29-minute documentary and a 179 Names carousel honouring every British service personnel and MOD civilian who lost their life during the conflict. All content was delivered in-house, across five platforms, with no paid social budget.

The results significantly outperformed channel benchmarks. The Op TELIC explainer reached nearly 200,000 views on Facebook with 87% coming from non-followers. The documentary accumulated over 831 hours of watch time on YouTube in a single week. The 179 Names carousel generated over 2,100 interactions on Instagram alone, with comments from veterans, bereaved families and serving personnel demonstrating the campaign reached people with a genuine personal connection to the conflict.

BFBS was there throughout Op TELIC, serving the people who fought in it.

Fifteen years on, we gave them the commemoration they deserved.

All performance data reflects figures captured within the first seven days of publication across each platform.