War crimes: Australian forces illegally killed 39 unarmed civilians, according to a report.
Canberra, Australia:
Australia’s top general said on Thursday there was credible evidence that his special forces illegally killed 39 civilians and unarmed prisoners during the war in Afghanistan, referring the matter to a special war crimes prosecutor.
Upon receiving the damning results of a years-long investigation into military misconduct in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, Defense Force Chief Angus Campbell said that a “destructive” culture of impunity among elite troops led to a series of alleged murders and cover-ups spanning nearly a decade.
“Some patrols took the law into their own hands, the rules were broken, stories were made up, lies were told and prisoners were killed,” Campbell said, apologizing “sincerely and without reservation” to the people of Afghanistan.
“This shameful record includes alleged cases in which new members of the patrol were forced to shoot a prisoner to achieve the first murder of that soldier, in a gruesome practice known as ‘bloodletting.’
The accused young soldiers would organize a skirmish to account for the incident, according to the report.
The army’s inspector general himself on Thursday produced a harrowing – and highly worded – 465-page official investigation detailing dozens of killings “outside the heat of battle.”
It recommended that 19 people be referred to the Australian Federal Police and compensation be paid to the families of the victims.
Campbell went a step further, saying that those involved in the alleged unlawful killing of 39 people had “tainted” his regiment, the armed forces and Australia and would be referred to the office of the special investigator for war crimes.
Campbell also moved to revoke some distinguished service medals awarded to special operations forces that served in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, more than 26,000 Australian soldiers were sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside US and allied forces against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups.
Australian combat troops officially left the country in 2013, but a number of often brutal accounts of the conduct of elite special forces units have emerged since then.
They range from reports of troops killing a six-year-old boy in a house raid to a prisoner who was shot and killed to save space in a helicopter.
– ‘Brutal truths’ –
The Australian government tried to cushion the blow of the report, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australians last week to prepare for the “honest and brutal truths” contained in the redacted document.
Morrison also called his Afghan counterpart on Wednesday to foreshadow “some disturbing allegations” that the government was taking “very seriously.”
President Ashraf Ghani’s office took a different interpretation of the conversation, saying in a series of tweets that Morrison had “expressed his deepest regret for the misconduct”, a characterization that was strongly disputed by Australian officials.
Last week, Morrison announced the appointment of a special investigator to prosecute the alleged war crimes, a move designed to avoid any prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
An independent panel was also created to drive leadership and cultural changes within the military.
The revelations are a serious blow to the prestige of the country’s military, which is widely revered by Australians.
Its historic campaigns, from Gallipoli in World War I to Kokoda in Papua during World War II, have played a crucial role in fostering the country’s identity, independent of British colonial power.
The Australian government had spent years trying to suppress whistleblower reports of the alleged wrongdoing, and the police even investigated the reporters involved in exposing those accounts.
The matter first came to public attention in 2017 when the national broadcaster ABC published so-called “Afghan files”, which allegedly killed unarmed men and boys in Afghanistan by Australian troops.
In response, Australian police launched an investigation into two ABC reporters for obtaining classified information, including by raiding the station’s Sydney headquarters last year, before dropping the case.
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