Jonathon Riley (British Army officer)

Lieutenant-General Jonathon Peter Riley, CB, DSO PhD MA FRGS FR Hist S(born 16 January 1955) is a retired British Army officer and military historian.

Riley was brought up in Yorkshire, West Sussex and the Channel Islands. He was educated at the Prebendal School in Chichester, St Mary's School in Beverley and Kingston Grammar School, before gaining a degree in geography from University College, London, a master's degree in history at Leeds University and a PhD at Cranfield.

Riley joined the British army as a Territorial in 1971 and then, gaining a Military Scholarship he entered the RMA Sandhurst in 1973. He was commissioned into the Queen's Regiment in March 1974. He was promoted to lieutenant on 9 March 1976, to captain on 9 September 1980, and, having attended the Staff College, Camberley in 1987, he was promoted to major at the end of the year. During this time he saw six tours of active service in Northern Ireland. and service in Germany, Canada and British Honduras. He transferred into The Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1990. He was a member of the OSCE Mission to the Former Yugoslavia, and then the EC Monitor Mission, during 1992, serving in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Bulgaria.

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1993, Riley undertook a tour as an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley that year. He was deployed as Commanding Officer of the 1st Bn The Royal Welch Fusiliers to the Muslim enclave of Goražde in 1995 under a mandate to ensure the Serbs did not violate the NATO ultimatum. The Army of Republika Srpska attacked the town without warning, capturing 33 soldiers under Riley's command, and several hundred other fellow United Nations peacekeepers elsewhere, in May. Having halted the initial Serb attack, the battalion handed over the defence of the enclave successfully to the Bosnian 81st Division. During the siege that followed, Protocol was broken when first the Director of Military Operations, then the Chief of the General Staff and finally Prime Minister John Major telephoned Riley to be briefed on the situation. The enclave was successfully defended and unlike Srebrenica and Zepa it never fell to the Serbs; the 33 Fusiliers and fellow UN peacekeepers were later released; the battalion evacuated the enclave in contact with the enemy in advance of the NATO air campaign against the Serbs. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for gallant and distinguished services in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia in 1996 and promoted to full colonel in July 1997 and became Chief of Staff of the 1st Armoured Division, with whom he served in Germany and again in Bosnia.

Promoted to brigadier on 31 December 1998, Riley became Commander of 1 Mechanized Brigade in Bosnia in 1999 and was Commander of the UK Joint Task Force in Sierra Leone in 2000 and 2001. He was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service for his service in Sierra Leone, which successfully concluded the ten-year war there. and became Deputy Commandant of the Staff College and Director of the Higher Command and Staff Course in 2001.

Riley was deployed as Deputy Commanding General of the Coalition Military Advisory and Training Team in Iraq in May 2003 and then became Commanding General Multi-National Division (South East), Iraq and GOC British Forces in October 2004 with promotion to major-general. In 2005, he was awarded the United States' Legion of Merit for his service in Iraq. He served as the senior British officer on the staff of the Commander, US Central Command, from September 2005 to August 2007.

Riley served as Colonel of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, from 2006 to 2007.

On 18 December 2007, Riley was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-General having been appointed deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in September 2007. He was awarded the NATO Meritorious Service Medal by the Secretary-General of NATO and, having been appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2008 New Year Honours, he transferred to the reserve on 15 September 2009.

On 14 December 2009, Riley gave evidence to The Iraq Inquiry in which he stated that British troops had not expected to be faced with an insurgency and also defended the decision to disband the Iraqi Army after the invasion. Then in February 2011 he gave evidence at the trial of Radovan Karadžić at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on the incident in May 1995 when his troops had been held in captivity. In 2013 he also gave evidence at the trial of Ratko Mladic.

Riley was appointed Director General and Master of the Royal Armouries, Britain's national collection of arms and armour, early in September 2009 but resigned in November 2012 in order to undergo treatment for prostate cancer. Subsequently, he was appointed Visiting Professor in War Studies at King's College London. He is currently Director of Generalship Ltd and President of Harlech International Associates. He advises the Welsh Government on the commemorations of the Great War as a member of two committees under the chairmanship of Professor Sir Deian Hopkin. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2010 and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2016.

Riley has written and edited a number of books on military history, including:

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• From Pole to Pole: Life of Quintin Riley, 1905–80 (1987)
• The Monitor Mission in the Balkans (1992)
• Soldiers of the Queen: The History of the Queen's Regiment 1966–1992 (1993) ISBN 0-948251-65-4 OCLC 29634690
• White Dragon: The Royal Welch Fusiliers in Bosnia (editor) (1995)
• Napoleon and the World War of 1813 (2000)
• Regimental Records of The Royal Welch Fusiliers, Vol VI 1945–1969 and Vol VII 1970–2000 (2001)
• The Life and Campaigns of General Hughie Stockwell: From Norway, Through Burma, to Suez (2007)
• Napoleon as a General: Command from the Battlefield to Grand Strategy (2007)
• That Astonishing Infantry: The History of the Royal Welch Fusiliers 1689–2006 (2008) ISBN 1-84415-653-2 OCLC 176923405
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