Years after the invasion of Afghanistan by coalition forces, horrible stories of atrocities and war crimes committed by the American, British and Australian forces keep comming.
One such story was published on 8 June 2018, in The Sydney Morning Herald, with the title, “Abdul’s brother went out to buy flour. He never came home” by Nick McKenzie & Chris Masters.
A truly horrifying story of an innocent man killed by a member of the Australian SAS Regiment, an elite part of Australian defence force, shows a heinous culture in the unit, that could be just a tip of the iceberg.
Its story of Ali Jan, a shepherd in his late 30s.
Abdul Ahmad, the brother of Ali Jan, tells his brother's story, narrated by Nick McKenzie & Chris Masters.
The day before Ali Jan was pushed from a cliff, and then shot, by an SASR (Special Air Service Regiment) operative, he had travelled by donkey to Darwan to get flour. He had left his pregnant wife, and seven young children behind, telling them he would be back soon.
“After arriving in Darwan, Ali Jan had dinner and settled in for the night at a relative’s home... He planned to return home the next morning.
But when the sun rose on what was to be the last day of Ali Jan’s life, it revealed a group of heavily armed Australian soldiers sweeping through Darwan on a manhunt.
They were searching for a rogue Afghan National Army sergeant called Hekmatullah who, days earlier, shot dead three… diggers and injured two others”
“By the time the Australian special forces soldiers arrived in Darwan, the wanted man had vanished. Hoping to find any trace of his whereabouts, they began arresting dozens of local men for questioning. At some point, Ali Jan was also detained.
Most of the men were later released, but Ali Jan never arrived home.”
“The Australian special forces soldier led his prisoner (Ali Jan ) towards a ridge above a dry creek bed near the Afghan village of Darwan.
The prisoner’s fate lay in the hands of the man leading him to the edge. His own hands were bound.”
And the man leading was, as one SASR officer called him, "Leonidas", after a fearsome warrior of ancient Sparta. The handcuffed detainee was Ali Jan.
Leonidas kicked “the hell” out of Ali Jan, then took him to the edge of a rocky cliff perhaps 10 meters high. “Leonidas gave himself a short run-up then kicked the detainee off the edge. As he plunged, his face smashed into rocks. Then the injured man was executed…”
“When the soldiers had flown away, the villagers recognised the dead man as Ali Jan.... They dispatched a young boy to run to a village three hours away with the news.
Expecting her husband to return home to the hills with flour and gossip from the village, Ali Jan’s pregnant wife, Bibi, instead received word that he was dead.
Ali Jan's brother, Abdul Ahmad, was with her. He recalls reeling in disbelief that "a person who went to get flour" could somehow end up dead. When the news sunk in, it brought utter despair.
"Then the screams started," Ahmad says.
"Ali Jan's mother was crying day and night for a week. His two elder daughters were screaming and running after their grandmother'' in a state of bewilderment, pleading to be told their father was alive.
Ahmad said Ali Jan's death had left his wife, Bibi, struggling to put food on the table. They can no longer afford meat or to send the children to school.”
It was September 11, 2012.
“Since then, speculation about what happened in that village in the rugged hills of Afghanistan’s central Oruzgan province has only intensified, travelling across continents and time zones. In the Perth barracks of Australia’s most elite fighting unit, the Special Air Services Regiment, the incident is discussed in hushed tones. In southern Afghanistan it evokes grief.
Now, five years after Ali Jan was walked towards the cliff edge, rumour has hardened into allegations, and then into evidence. Fairfax Media has spent months looking into Ali Jan’s fate as part of broader investigation into the behaviour of SASR forces in Afghanistan. The investigation involved interviews with dozens of current and former soldiers and senior officials, and unearthed highly confidential documents and briefings. Fairfax Media also hired an Afghan journalist to track down Darwan villagers and Ali Jan's family to tell their story.
Among the special forces soldiers risking their careers to brief Fairfax reporters are those who have also been summoned to give evidence to a special inquiry now being held into the actions of Australians in Afghanistan. This inquiry is run by a Supreme Court judge with the backing of top military officials.
Behind closed doors, the words “war crimes” are being used. Not only specific incidents, but the entire culture and command structure of Australia’s most renowned and trusted fighting force is now under scrutiny in a manner unprecedented in Australian military history. In May 2015, as the colder nights advanced on Canberra, a newly minted Special Operations Commander issued a memo.”
“During 13 years on the battleground in Afghanistan, the SASR had sent 23 rotations involving thousands of men and hundreds of missions.”
“Major General Jeff Sengelman, an intense and cerebral officer known for speaking his mind, began his report by describing three concerning incidents: an SASR member had been caught stealing explosives, another had been arrested for armed robbery, and a third had lost weapons.”
“These incidents, wrote the new commander, were symptoms of something deeper and more worrying: a “gradual erosion of leadership and accountability across the full span of command responsibilities”.
“He was worried, he said, that the nation’s most revered group of soldiers was “no longer holding itself to account.
Sengelman urged SASR members to write to him personally about their concerns. It was a bold move.”
Through out the history, since WWII, SASR had “its historical penchant for secrecy has remain unchanged. Everything is classified until it is not.”
“The 700-odd members – half of whom are active “operators” … cannot be photographed or discuss their work. They are men used to anonymity, and who tend to resent anyone, including one of their own, breaking ranks. They love the mystique,” is how one special forces insider described it in a leaked defence report charting the special forces’ culture…”
“It wasn’t just this culture that Sengelman was challenging....” It was the “killing civilians or getting up your ‘kill count’.”
“But in spite of this fierce pride and the taboo about breaking ranks, members began writing to Sengelman... They speak of an untold story from Afghanistan involving a small number of regiment members who began to confuse secrecy with impunity; men whose actions exist in the shadowy margins of what constitutes proper behaviour in combat.
As one highly decorated Afghanistan SASR veteran puts it: “I’m all for dropping the hammer [shooting people] when the time comes. But that doesn’t mean killing civilians or getting up your ‘kill count’ when you can take a prisoner instead.”
Says another who fought at Tizak: “I’ve got no problem with taking out bad fellas. But what happened at Darwan and elsewhere isn’t right.”
“As the letter count grew, Sengelman called his boss, then Chief of Army Angus Campbell, himself a former SASR officer. Together, they commissioned a defence consultant, Dr Samantha Crompvoets, to dig further.
Crompvoets was given free rein. She spoke to people from the Chief of Defence Force downwards in preparing her highly confidential 2016 report, which Fairfax Media has seen. Crompvoets wrote of SASR “insiders” initially disclosing information "sotto voce" or in the quiet voice. Over time, she wrote, these insiders got “much louder … and difficult to ignore” as they spoke of “extremely serious breaches of accountability and trust.
At their most serious, Crompvoets wrote, their accounts concerned the “unsanctioned and illegal application of violence on operations, disregard for human life and dignity, and the perception of a complete lack of accountability”.
“Crompvoets, Sengelman and Campbell all declined to be interviewed. But by the end of 2016, all three were acutely aware that one SASR soldier was being whispered about more than most. He had deployed repeatedly to Afghanistan and formed impeccable connections up the chain of command.
One SASR officer, to himself, called this man "Leonidas", after a fearsome warrior of ancient Sparta. Leonidas was part of the sweep through Darwan on September 11, 2012. And it was Leonidas who had allegedly led Ali Jan to the edge.”
Sparta and Hollywood
"Questions inside the regiment about Leonidas, who Fairfax Media unsuccessfully sought to interview and who cannot be named for legal reasons, began to be asked in 2009. At the time, he was part of an SASR patrol that was increasingly dividing the regiment. A warrior culture was being embraced by some special forces troops but loathed by others. It involved tattoos and a devotion to the Hollywood movie 300, which glorifies the fighting prowess of the ancient Spartans, and whose climactic moment involves an enemy soldier being kicked off a precipice.
Several former SASR officers say this rock-star ethos emboldened certain soldiers to test the elasticity of the rules of engagement – rules that govern when a soldier can take a life.”
“The Regiment over time prided itself on being an organisation that broke the rules but not the law,” explains one former officer. “What happened, though, was during the Afghan campaign, there was a group of individuals who believed they were immune from the law.”
“A specialist embedded with the SASR noted two distinct personalities emerging...”
“The specialist says some soldiers sought redeployment in Afghanistan because they loved the hunt. Others came to feel uneasy...”
“The patrol Leonidas belonged to appeared unburdened by such introspection. In this group, sources say, junior members were pushed to kill rather than detain.”
“...members of this patrol tacked a “kill board” to the wall of their patrol room. Members of another patrol heard Leonidas urging his fellow patrol members on – “only two more to go, boys” – a suspected reference to reaching a desired kill count to record on the board.”
“Sources say the patrol fused a warrior ethos with the regiment’s secretive culture. Its aggressive approach drew some admirers, including officers.... Leonidas, too, had his fierce backers, including regiment members who believed his assertive soldiering was setting an example for others in the regiment.”
Rumblings and discontent
“By 2010, there were disparate rumblings about incidents involving Leonidas’ patrol on the battlefield. A prisoner of war was found dead in suspicious circumstances by a member of another patrol; an SASR soldier discovered the bodies of two farmers in a field without weapons...”
“... in 2012... witnesses began emerging with vivid, first-hand testimony about what Samantha Crompvoets later described as “unsanctioned and illegal application of violence”.
“... Chris Masters, who was the only journalist to have been embedded with Australian special forces soldiers (SASR) in Afghanistan, believes a desensitisation occurred within the forces that allegedly allowed a "kill count mentality to develop".
Stories differ about the precise sequence of events leading to the fatal bullet being fired, although both witnesses say Leonidas was party to the decision to “get him [the PUC] out of his misery”.
A secret hearing
“In late 2017, a SASR soldier who had been at Darwan received an unexpected call from a defence investigator working for NSW Supreme Court judge Paul Brereton. Justice Brereton, the investigator explained, wanted the soldier to attend a secret hearing.
Several weeks later, another SASR member was summoned for questioning. This year, many more have been grilled.
In 2016, and partly as a result of the Crompvoets inquiry, Justice Brereton was commissioned by the then Chief of Army, Angus Campbell, to investigate what the defence department described as “rumours” of special forces’ misconduct in Afghanistan.”
“I was blown away by the detail he had,” says one interviewee.
“Yet both soldiers, and several others who’ve been interviewed, say they are unsure if Brereton has the power and backing... to expose all that he finds.”
“Brereton’s inquiry... is limited to a “scoping” exercise and that any credible evidence of war crimes will need to be referred to the Australian Federal Police for a subsequent inquiry.”
“Brereton inquiry would make "recommendations" about how to deal with any substantiated allegations of war crimes.”
"The IGADF Afghanistan Inquiry has... been aware of... significant issues involving the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan...”
“And yet evidence is mounting. During research for this story, two first-hand witnesses provided detailed, corroboratory accounts of Leonidas’ directing an Afghan partner-force soldier to execute a prisoner of war in October 2012.
Evidence also extends beyond Leonidas and his collaborators, to a small number of other SASR members. This evidence points to other summary executions or attempts to cover up civilian deaths…”
“In her confidential report, Samantha Crompvoets warned the issues she had uncovered… involved “problems deeply embedded in the culture” of the special forces…”
“Crompvoets also warned of “a deep impediment to change because of the extent to which leaders with SOF [special operation forces’] backgrounds, highly placed throughout the ADO [defence] and beyond, were compromised by their own participation or complicity in problematic behaviours of the past”.
“… those who are fighting behind the scenes for transparency are serving or former SASR members. Angus Campbell, who in April was selected to become the next Chief of the Defence Force, appears to be among them.
One of his last moves as Chief of Army has been to restrict soldiers from wearing clothing adorned with controversial symbols, such as death heads and Spartan warrior iconography. It was met with howls of resistance from many in Defence and some in the media.”
Nick McKenzie is a leading investigative journalist. He's won Australia's top journalism award, the Walkley, seven times and covers politics, business, foreign affairs and defence, human rights issues, the criminal justice system and social affairs. nmckenzie@fairfaxmedia.com.au or +61 401877402
