How the 'good war' went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning ... - 0 views
-
As the post-9/11 Afghanistan conflict dragged deep into its second decade, with persistent rumours alleging impropriety, brutality, and even possible war crimes swirling among Australia’s tight-knit defence community, Dr Samantha Crompvoets, a civilian sociologist, was commissioned to investigate alleged cultural failings within its special forces.
-
Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Canberra Times over a series of 2018 articles he claims defamed him because they portrayed him as committing war crimes while on deployment in Afghanistan. He strenuously denies all allegations and has previously rejected them as malicious and deeply troubling.
-
US soldiers were convicted over the deaths of two unarmed Afghan civilians on Bagram airbase in 2002. Two soldiers from a self-declared “kill team” pleaded guilty to murder while deployed, while Staff Sergeant Robert Bales pleaded guilty to the murder of 16 Afghan civilians during a shooting spree in Kandahar province in 2012. Members of the storied Seal Team 6 have been accused of war crimes, including beheading and mutilating slain enemies.
- ...12 more annotations...
-
These were soldiers from the militaries of liberal democracies, avowedly promoting the rule of law and seeking to bring peace and stability to a country that has known little but conflict for generations. Yet some have been accused of the most serious crimes imaginable, of targeting civilians, of torturing captives, of slaughtering children.
-
In her 45-page report sent to Australian defence force chiefs, Crompvoets wrote of the “well-crafted reports” of special forces operations that offered legal justification for the actions of soldiers.
-
During Major Chris Green’s deployment with the UK’s Grenadier Guards in Helmand province in 2012, he became increasingly concerned that special forces tactics were undermining the coalition’s broader counterinsurgency mission.
-
“People knew laws were being broken, people understood the modus operandi of the night raids. But every time an operator reported back from these raids and didn’t find themselves in front of a tribunal that just further convinced them they were doing the right thing, that the laws didn’t apply to them.”
-
“War is dynamic and imperfect and the freedom and autonomy in special forces is a double-edged sword,” one SAS member told Crompvoets.
-
Frank Ledwidge, a barrister and former military officer who served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that over the course of the Afghan war, a culture developed among coalition special forces that celebrated violence, prioritised kill statistics and dehumanised those they fought.
-
The JPEL was a list of “kill or capture” objectives – targets that were considered combatants and could be lawfully killed. It was a dynamic document, with names being added or subtracted as intelligence came in. Allegedly this dynamism was exploited.
-
Australia’s initial involvement, between 2001 and 2002, was focused on combating al-Qaida: “We weren’t trying to seize and hold ground. It was a mission entirely appropriate for our special forces.”
-
“The multiple rotations of people into Afghanistan particularly, some operators went there 12 times. That must affect their mental health ... or impact the way they went about their operations. Certainly it would impact upon the judgment questions about why they are there.
-
Saul argues there are drivers, too, of non-compliance with international humanitarian law. Moral disengagement emerges from combatants finding justifications for violations, and from a dehumanisation of the enemy.
-
When Sergeant Alexander Blackman of the Royal Marines shot a wounded, unarmed insurgent at point-blank range in the chest in Helmand in September 2011, he turned to his comrades and said: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere, fellas. I’ve just broke the Geneva convention.”
-
“If there’s no structural change that challenges those power dynamics within special forces, there won’t be enduring changes.”