Some Australian SAS officers knew that soldiers under their command were using “throwdowns” – planting weapons on dead Afghan civilians to portray them as combatants – but did nothing to stop the unlawful practice, a previously unpublished military report has said. Posted online this week, the executive summary of a 2021 investigation into the “cultural context” of the special operations command by the inspector general of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) is scathing about the “breakdown of command” and the erosion of military discipline during special forces operations in Afghanistan, which “resulted in episodes of potential and actual egregious behaviour”. A previously published IGADF report, the Brereton Inquiry, made public in 2020, found credible information that Australian special forces personnel murdered 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners.
But the Brereton report largely exonerated officers, saying the “criminal behaviour” it uncovered “was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed at patrol commander level”. Patrol commanders in the Australian SAS are not commissioned officers, they are typically corporals or sergeants. However, the newly released report, commissioned after the Brereton findings by former defence force chief – and SAS officer – Angus Campbell in 2021, found some SAS officers knew about alleged “unlawful behaviour” and did not act to stop them.
A failure to do so has a corrosive effect on behaviours, morale and ultimately, military discipline, which in this case resulted in episodes of potential and actual egregious behaviour.” SAS officers allowed the regiment to develop an “uncontrolled ‘warrior’ ethos” and the long, grinding, nature of the Afghan conflict, to which a small cohort of SAS soldiers were repeatedly sent on dangerous, corrosive deployments, contributed to moral injury and impaired decision-making. The use of “throwdowns” was a known breach that officers failed to stop. The failure to address the widely known use of throwdowns is an example of this.
The tolerance of officers of overt non-compliance sent a powerful signal.” Similarly, soldiers wrote false reports of their actions on the battlefield, focused on rules of engagement and laced with circumlocution, which “assisted perpetrators of misconduct to conceal their actions”. The expression was used with such regularity that it lost meaning.” The report’s executive summary says there was “a significant failure of good leadership and effective command” across the SAS commanders, and that the reporting systems designed to prevent misconduct had become “depleted and largely unreliable”, giving officers “a false level of assurance”.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
