Australian special forces allegedly killed 39 unarmed Afghans - report

[teacherclaire]

Australian special forces allegedly killed 39 unarmed Afghans - report

 

Unarmed, perhaps. But not unnamed. 

[mark131v]

An interesting read:

 

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/whistleblower-and-former-sas-medic-says-he-feels-vindicated-by-findings-of-the-igadf-afghanistan-war-crimes-inquiry/ar-BB1baQ1o

[Rookiescot]

8 minutes ago, mark131v said:

 

Tbh, I wouldn't argue it was wrong...

 

My experience was that the Afghan militias they employed where ferocious and you would not want to be against them but they were corrupt and would use their position to rob and kill and basically better their position

 

Problem is we are bringing western morals to a medieval society they were still stoning women for refusing to wear the Burqua in 2001 still doing it 2006 and still in 2008, I would bet it's still happening today. Apples and oranges...

Thats why you back the moderate leaders and embed western forces with them. The more radical leaders are soon replaced when their opposition has better weapons and more manpower because they pay better.

Its odd. We ask the military to come up with an entry plan to defeat someone but the politicians who started the damned thing never seem to have an exit strategy. 

[Thorgal]

16 minutes ago, car720 said:

So would we all but let us not forget just why wars are fought and by who and for whom.  It is dirty business fought by hard men in the name of evil.

 

“Dirty business by hard men in the name of evil.”

 

Quote from link:

 

There was a pretty big drinking culture while we were deployed," he said.

 

"There were multiple parties where it wasn't just your average sitting around having a drink, having some conversations. It was pretty intense. There were assaults."

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-19/braden-chapman-says-he-is-ready-to-tell-a-jury-what-he-saw/12891050

[Salerno]

22 minutes ago, car720 said:

True but are we also not keen to murder these guys right now considering the key word in all this is alleged.

 

Have you seen any of the bodycam footage or interviews of witnesses? It's eye opening.

 

It's a tragedy on so many levels - for the victims, for Australia, for our current troops, for our former troops living (and dieing) with the PTSD that these cases have played a part in and also in no small measure for the perpetrators themselves (nobody joins up to kill "innocent" civilians).

Edited November 20, 2020 by Salerno

[mark131v]

1 minute ago, Rookiescot said:

Thats why you back the moderate leaders and embed western forces with them. The more radical leaders are soon replaced when their opposition has better weapons and more manpower because they pay better.

Its odd. We ask the military to come up with an entry plan to defeat someone but the politicians who started the damned thing never seem to have an exit strategy. 

 

Mate I was on the ground in 2006 when the then Defence secretary was telling the press we were going to wipe out the heroin industry and it would be done without a shot fired, at that time we where surrounded by hundreds of acres of poppies, strangely enough it didn't work out quite the way he said

 

I never met a moderate warlord, we where operating from a base protected by Afghan militia paid for by the US and at the time that worked well so long as you didn't look to hard at their behaviour to their enemies and members of the local population, absolutely ferocious though...

[Kerryd]

I spent 10 years working in Afghanistan as a civilian (2003-2005, 2006-2014), mostly supporting the Canadian contingent but for the last couple years we were also supporting the Aussies.
(I retired from the Army in 2003 to take the job in Afghanistan.)

Killing unarmed civilians is always wrong. Sometimes innocents die in battle, usually from collateral damage. (For example, blasting a building housing people who are shooting at you and finding out later there were women and kids in there as well. A lot of terrorists deliberately use places like schools and hospitals to launch attacks from as they know any retaliation will likely result in innocent casualties. Hamas in Gaza are well known for using exactly those tactics.)
The Americans have a history of "oops, we hit the wrong target" incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq (which no one calls war crimes of course but if the other side does the same thing............).

But to deliberately kill innocents or prisoners ? There is no justification for that. Not only is it a crime (war zone or not) it is a violation of the "code" of a professional soldier. It is one of the things that makes us different from the ****ing terrorists.

When the US went into Somalia in the early 90s (remember Black Hawk Down ?) Canada also sent a contingent from our Airborne Regiment. At the time, they were our "best of the best". 
But their status went to their heads as well. There were discipline issues with the Regiment before they deployed and more while they were in Somalia, culminating in a squad of soldiers detaining a suspected thief and torturing him to death.

When the news broke out, those soldiers ended up being arrested, charged and sent to prison. That would have been the end of it except one ex-army guy who was publishing a magazine aimed specifically for the military, published a video he'd been sent about a hazing incident in the regiment. He claims he published it to try and show what was happening before Somalia and he apparently thought it might somehow help reduce the charges against the accused.

Instead it resulted in the entire Airborne Regiment being disbanded within weeks. It too was stricken from the Order Of Battle. (The ultimate shame for a military unit.)


One thing people don't realize about what happens in places like the Middle East (and Africa) is that the enemy doesn't wear uniforms. There is virtually know way to know who is the enemy and who is an innocent civilian - until they start shooting at you.
And often enough, if that person is killed, by the time the "authorities" arrive on scene, any weapons and ammo he may have had will have disappeared. Often within minutes of him being killed (or even quicker in some cases).
Suddenly, the armed insurgent/terrorist that was shooting at you is now an "unarmed civilian". Without his weapon, he looks just like everyone else on the street.

One incident in early on in Afghanistan, when the Canadians were still based outside of Kabul, involved a patrol being shot at by someone behind a stone wall in a field. Before the troops could assault the position, the shooting stopped and they saw a kid, maybe 8 years old, walking away from the area dragging a rifle (it was almost as big as he was). 
When the troops got to the wall, there was old farmer Aziz, brewing some tea, pretending like he didn't have a clue what was going on.

As they couldn't prove he was the one who'd shot at them and they weren't going to arrest the kid, all they could do was take the weapon and leave. 

I imagine had old Aziz killed a few of the troops things might have turned out differently. I can also imagine that had the troops laid down fire on that position and killed "whoever" was shooting at them, all the press would have been about how they killed some innocent kid, not about the kid's (father/grandfather) who was shooting at the troops.

When I was in Croatia in the early 90s (same time as the Airborne was in Somalia actually) we were restricted in the amount of ammo we could carry, our magazines had tape over them which had to be removed before placing them in a rifle, we had to physically verify how many rounds we had every couple of weeks and we were not allowed to have "personal" weapons in theatre. (It used to be common practice for some people to have their own handguns or other weapons with them in war zones).

All of those measures were meant to ensure that no one decided to "take the law into their own hands" after witnessing some of the atrocities that were committed in Croatia while we were there. The fear was that some of the guys might decide to take matters into their own hands after catching the people who'd just machine-gunned a family of 8 to death in their car. (Yeah, that actually happened.) All 3 sides, the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims were just as bad. There were no "good guys" in that conflict.

The fear was probably justified, especially when the guys would hand over assorted criminals to the local cops and then watch the cops walk them out the back door and let them go. (Seriously - we had people watching the cops all the time and they were doing just that, all the time. Turns out, they were also responsible for transporting a lot of the weapons and ammo around to the various "secret militias" as the only vehicles we weren't allowed to search were cop cars !! (Something to do with us trying to show them that we respected them and thought they were the "good guys".)
A lot of the criminals we caught were members of those same militias. 

I was shot at numerous times, especially during the last 3 months of my deployment. We had to drive into the "Serb" held area around Nova Gradiska, about 60kms from our camp by the shortest route. That meant driving through the "no man's land" between our Sector (Sector West) and the Serb lines. 
Quite often we'd get to our destination (or back to camp) and find fresh bullet holes in the trucks. Luckily they never learned how to "lead a target" properly. 

And yes, the Taliban and Al Qaeda had zero problem with murdering scores of innocent civilians as well, even when there were no military or gov't officials around. They are still doing it and they can't use the excuse that they are "trying to drive the infidel invaders out of the country" any more.

It's about power and control of the drug trade. (While we were in the 'stan, it was estimated that 80% of the heroin in Europe originated from Afghanistan, despite the claims by the Taliban that they supposedly had eliminated most of the opium being grown there. They didn't eliminate any of it, they took control of it and simply stopped reporting how much there was. When the Americans were poised to invade, the Taliban threated to "throw open the warehouses" and flood Europe with cheap heroin.)

However, we in the West like to believe that we are better than them.
We live by a higher "morale code" which prohibits us from "doing unto them as they do unto others".
It is the main reason we can't win wars in those countries. We aren't willing to get our hands dirty while the opposition has no problem with doing things like strapping a bomb vest onto a mentally disabled kid and sending him into the middle of a crowded market before remote detonating the bomb. (Yes, that really happened.) 
Or hanging a 10 year old kid as a "spy" because they found he had two dollar bills in his pocket (probably earned at a market near one of the ISAF bases).

That is how they've been doing war there for thousands of years. They have zero respect for anyone who isn't willing to do the same, whether it's the "enemy" or their own people. 
We aren't willing to to stoop to that level and they know it and that is why we are never going to win against them.


 

[tandor]

10 hours ago, webfact said:

 

...hmmm...leave them alone..they're doing a difficult job as it is in a theatre of War..what did you think they should do, hand out Christmas card ?

[mark131v]

3 minutes ago, Kerryd said:

I spent 10 years working in Afghanistan as a civilian (2003-2005, 2006-2014), mostly supporting the Canadian contingent but for the last couple years we were also supporting the Aussies.
(I retired from the Army in 2003 to take the job in Afghanistan.)

Killing unarmed civilians is always wrong. Sometimes innocents die in battle, usually from collateral damage. (For example, blasting a building housing people who are shooting at you and finding out later there were women and kids in there as well. A lot of terrorists deliberately use places like schools and hospitals to launch attacks from as they know any retaliation will likely result in innocent casualties. Hamas in Gaza are well known for using exactly those tactics.)
The Americans have a history of "oops, we hit the wrong target" incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq (which no one calls war crimes of course but if the other side does the same thing............).

But to deliberately kill innocents or prisoners ? There is no justification for that. Not only is it a crime (war zone or not) it is a violation of the "code" of a professional soldier. It is one of the things that makes us different from the ****ing terrorists.

When the US went into Somalia in the early 90s (remember Black Hawk Down ?) Canada also sent a contingent from our Airborne Regiment. At the time, they were our "best of the best". 
But their status went to their heads as well. There were discipline issues with the Regiment before they deployed and more while they were in Somalia, culminating in a squad of soldiers detaining a suspected thief and torturing him to death.

When the news broke out, those soldiers ended up being arrested, charged and sent to prison. That would have been the end of it except one ex-army guy who was publishing a magazine aimed specifically for the military, published a video he'd been sent about a hazing incident in the regiment. He claims he published it to try and show what was happening before Somalia and he apparently thought it might somehow help reduce the charges against the accused.

Instead it resulted in the entire Airborne Regiment being disbanded within weeks. It too was stricken from the Order Of Battle. (The ultimate shame for a military unit.)


One thing people don't realize about what happens in places like the Middle East (and Africa) is that the enemy doesn't wear uniforms. There is virtually know way to know who is the enemy and who is an innocent civilian - until they start shooting at you.
And often enough, if that person is killed, by the time the "authorities" arrive on scene, any weapons and ammo he may have had will have disappeared. Often within minutes of him being killed (or even quicker in some cases).
Suddenly, the armed insurgent/terrorist that was shooting at you is now an "unarmed civilian". Without his weapon, he looks just like everyone else on the street.

One incident in early on in Afghanistan, when the Canadians were still based outside of Kabul, involved a patrol being shot at by someone behind a stone wall in a field. Before the troops could assault the position, the shooting stopped and they saw a kid, maybe 8 years old, walking away from the area dragging a rifle (it was almost as big as he was). 
When the troops got to the wall, there was old farmer Aziz, brewing some tea, pretending like he didn't have a clue what was going on.

As they couldn't prove he was the one who'd shot at them and they weren't going to arrest the kid, all they could do was take the weapon and leave. 

I imagine had old Aziz killed a few of the troops things might have turned out differently. I can also imagine that had the troops laid down fire on that position and killed "whoever" was shooting at them, all the press would have been about how they killed some innocent kid, not about the kid's (father/grandfather) who was shooting at the troops.

When I was in Croatia in the early 90s (same time as the Airborne was in Somalia actually) we were restricted in the amount of ammo we could carry, our magazines had tape over them which had to be removed before placing them in a rifle, we had to physically verify how many rounds we had every couple of weeks and we were not allowed to have "personal" weapons in theatre. (It used to be common practice for some people to have their own handguns or other weapons with them in war zones).

All of those measures were meant to ensure that no one decided to "take the law into their own hands" after witnessing some of the atrocities that were committed in Croatia while we were there. The fear was that some of the guys might decide to take matters into their own hands after catching the people who'd just machine-gunned a family of 8 to death in their car. (Yeah, that actually happened.) All 3 sides, the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims were just as bad. There were no "good guys" in that conflict.

The fear was probably justified, especially when the guys would hand over assorted criminals to the local cops and then watch the cops walk them out the back door and let them go. (Seriously - we had people watching the cops all the time and they were doing just that, all the time. Turns out, they were also responsible for transporting a lot of the weapons and ammo around to the various "secret militias" as the only vehicles we weren't allowed to search were cop cars !! (Something to do with us trying to show them that we respected them and thought they were the "good guys".)
A lot of the criminals we caught were members of those same militias. 

I was shot at numerous times, especially during the last 3 months of my deployment. We had to drive into the "Serb" held area around Nova Gradiska, about 60kms from our camp by the shortest route. That meant driving through the "no man's land" between our Sector (Sector West) and the Serb lines. 
Quite often we'd get to our destination (or back to camp) and find fresh bullet holes in the trucks. Luckily they never learned how to "lead a target" properly. 

And yes, the Taliban and Al Qaeda had zero problem with murdering scores of innocent civilians as well, even when there were no military or gov't officials around. They are still doing it and they can't use the excuse that they are "trying to drive the infidel invaders out of the country" any more.

It's about power and control of the drug trade. (While we were in the 'stan, it was estimated that 80% of the heroin in Europe originated from Afghanistan, despite the claims by the Taliban that they supposedly had eliminated most of the opium being grown there. They didn't eliminate any of it, they took control of it and simply stopped reporting how much there was. When the Americans were poised to invade, the Taliban threated to "throw open the warehouses" and flood Europe with cheap heroin.)

However, we in the West like to believe that we are better than them.
We live by a higher "morale code" which prohibits us from "doing unto them as they do unto others".
It is the main reason we can't win wars in those countries. We aren't willing to get our hands dirty while the opposition has no problem with doing things like strapping a bomb vest onto a mentally disabled kid and sending him into the middle of a crowded market before remote detonating the bomb. (Yes, that really happened.) 
Or hanging a 10 year old kid as a "spy" because they found he had two dollar bills in his pocket (probably earned at a market near one of the ISAF bases).

That is how they've been doing war there for thousands of years. They have zero respect for anyone who isn't willing to do the same, whether it's the "enemy" or their own people. 
We aren't willing to to stoop to that level and they know it and that is why we are never going to win against them.


 

 Did you ever meet that crazy Yank that ran Kajacki dam, absolutely crazy, alone in the middle of bandit country with his local militia to protect him!! 

 

He had a veritable zoo of camels and those huge mountain dogs. He had them trained to go berserk at the sight of beards and black turbans, never seen dogs as big and scary looking in my life. Woke up one night with one licking my face I reckon that cost me 5 years of life...

[piewarmer]

The guy who blew the whistle on it all was set up for a very hard fall, suddenly he is being treated as a good guy for speaking out. 

This is very rare these days, whistleblowers should not be treated as criminals but they bloody well are.

[Pilotman]

1 hour ago, Thorgal said:

 

The Geneva Conventions comprise treaties that establish the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war.

 

Killing prisoners and shooting at non-combatant civilians is not allowed. OP is about non-combat execution of 39 Afghani civilians.

 

I have no problem if you’re convinced that the conventions of Geneva are only applicable within the Canton of Geneva...

great in theory, doesn't always compute in actual combat.  Some things are just not that black or white.  

[Pilotman]

43 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

 

The Talib are not profesional western forces. We should be aiming for better standards than them.

standards of what exactly, killing people?  You fight fire with more intense fire or there is no point to any of it, a truth that politicos always fail to acknowledge . 

[OnTheRun]

3 hours ago, Katipo said:

Considering that we really shouldn't be in the middle-east at all, there is no excuse for this.

Families of victims killed by terrorists trained in the region may think differently.

[mark131v]

2 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

standards of what exactly, killing people?  You fight fire with more intense fire or there is no point to any of it, a truth that politicos always fail to acknowledge . 

 

Agreed, that is why we were destined to fail against the Taliban. We didn't have the belly to get down in the pit and do what was required, this topic just emphasis that

 

We have a press and sections of society that simply don't understand that to win you need to be dirtier than your enemy and do whatever needs to be done

 

The Afghans understand this and will do whatever is required no matter how revolting, that's why they won but that is also why they will never develop and will continue to be a backward medieval country 

[mark131v]

29 minutes ago, Kerryd said:

That is how they've been doing war there for thousands of years. They have zero respect for anyone who isn't willing to do the same, whether it's the "enemy" or their own people. 
We aren't willing to to stoop to that level and they know it and that is why we are never going to win against them.

 

That right there is the absolute heart of the issue and something people who have never been there or operated with Afghans will ever understand

[CNXexpat]

8 hours ago, simple1 said:

Australian SAS in Afghanistan had been recognised as the best of the best by NATO commanders. Announcement of war crimes prosecutions in the coming years, is a major blow to the prestige of Australian armed forces.

 

Cold bloodied murder of unarmed POW and civilians (so called 'blooding' of new recruits) by Oz SF in Afghanistan has been front page news here in Oz for a few days. The SAS squadron mainly responsible for the murders has been disbanded and removed from the military order of battle - all those who served (approx 3000) have to hand in their awards for service in Afghanistan.

Some few huge idiots make a whole army looking bad. But what´s also shocking, that rumors and evidences are in the world since a long time but instead of follow them and investigate deeper, the investing press got problems. 

[Natai Beach]

2 hours ago, Grumpy one said:

Rephrase that to how many of the locals were terrorists, armed or not

who are the terrorists? 
 

We went in their apparently because little Jonny Howard was George Bushs little lapdog.

George Bush went into Afghanistan because  a Saudi national attack New York. Why didn’t he go into Saudi? Because of money/oil.

The Saudi bloke was actually in Pakistan. 
Afghanistan did not declare war on Australia. In the 18 years we have been killing them, none of them have attacked Australia.
We went in there with big weapons attacking them. They were zero threat to Australia. 
The Saudi bloke was killed years ago. 9 long years ago.

But we are still there. Not sure why. 
 

Then our soldiers went around killing women, unarmed farmers and children and planting weapons on them, lying and covering it up. In their country. 
That’s sound like terrorism to me.

 

If they showed up in Oz shooting and killing us and bombing us with drones for no apparent reason I would call them terrorists.

But they didn’t. We did it to them. 
 

A very similar story to what we did in Iraq. We attacked them with our weapons of mass destruction using the excuse that they had WOMD. They didn’t, and we killed thousands of them as well.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Natai Beach

[Natai Beach]

22 minutes ago, mark131v said:

 

That right there is the absolute heart of the issue and something people who have never been there or operated with Afghans will ever understand

why did Australia declare war on Afghanistan?

 

[Pilotman]

2 minutes ago, CNXexpat said:

Some few huge idiots make a whole army looking bad. But what´s also shocking, that rumors and evidences are in the world since a long time but instead of follow them and investigate deeper, the investing press got problems. 

they don't look bad to me, they sound like people doing a job that few in society would be prepare to do, to defend democracy and the way of way of life that all the hand wringing liberals enjoy, but don't like to acknowledge the price. don't criticise   unless you have served. 

[mark131v]

2 minutes ago, Natai Beach said:

why did Australia declare war on Afghanistan?

 

 

I don't know and don't care I am not Australian but that still doesn't change the fact that if you have never walked in their shoes or shared their experience you will never ever understand

 

I do not condone extra judicial killing but I do understand how it could happen, you probably never will as you have probably never experienced the sheer horror of watching your friends murdered, for that you should be grateful...

[CNXexpat]

2 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

they don't look bad to me, they sound like people doing a job that few in society would be prepare to do, to defend democracy and the way of way of life that all the hand wringing liberals enjoy, but don't like to acknowledge the price. don't criticise   unless you have served. 

For me killing civil people, kids and women looks bad. It´s the same if you would say that shooting suspects from 20 cm in the back like US policemen did is not to criticize unless I was a policeman. 

[Chomper Higgot]

3 hours ago, Pilotman said:

talking their medals  off them seems a trifle harsh to me. People who have never been in their situation just don't understand the pressure and stress such troops are under.  I don't condone ex judicial killing, neither am I naïve enough to think that it doesn't happen, a lot and is sometimes the most expedient cause of action for troops in their situation. 

‘Expediency’ is not a defense for soldiers executing unarmed civilians and prisoners, nor should it be.

[Pilotman]

12 minutes ago, CNXexpat said:

For me killing civil people, kids and women looks bad. It´s the same if you would say that shooting suspects from 20 cm in the back like US policemen did is not to criticize unless I was a policeman. 

no where comparable. One is in civilian setting, the other in a war. 

[rudi49jr]

3 hours ago, Pilotman said:

its not that simple, it never is. Snipers in Iraq would kill women and children if they were in the act of terrorism.  Its war, it happens. Maybe you saw the movie American Sniper? True to life. 

But this was nothing like that. This was young special forces soldiers being ‘blooded’, forced to kill someone so that they would have a first kill under their belt. Please tell me how “that is war and that it happens”. I know it happens, perhaps much more than we will ever know, but that doesn’t mean we should condone it or sweep it under the rug. 

[Chomper Higgot]

You won’t catch me making excuses for war crimes.

[Pilotman]

2 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

But this was nothing like that. This was young special forces soldiers being ‘blooded’, forced to kill someone so that they would have a first kill under their belt. Please tell me how “that is war and that it happens”. I know it happens, perhaps much more than we will ever know, but that doesn’t mean we should condone it or sweep it under the rug. 

haha, ignorance is bliss 

[Traubert]

Why was Aus in Afghanistan anyway? On Americas say so?

[NanLaew]

6 hours ago, RJRS1301 said:

Those named in the reports, will now be referred for further investigation and possible prosecution, however this report took four years, and it could be a decade before any criminal prosecutions begin.

 

And another ten or fifteen years for the whole lamentably long and sad procedure to come to any conclusion by which time most officers and NCO's found responsible will have either passed away or be in such a frail physical and mental state that their defense lawyers will successfully argue that any custodial sentence would 'mean a premature end to life' and deny them their human rights.

 

'twas ever thus.

[mark131v]

!

Edited November 20, 2020 by mark131v
Cant be arsed..

[Thorgal]

25 minutes ago, Traubert said:

Why was Aus in Afghanistan anyway? On Americas say so?

 

To bring in democracy and organise free  elections.

Or bring back the stinger-missiles donated to the Taliban against Russian helicopter attacks in the 80’s...