War evidence spurring calls for inquiries

ISLAMABAD — An international human rights group and an Afghan envoy on Thursday urged nations whose militaries have served as part of the U.s.-led coalition in Afghanistan — including America and Britain — to follow Australia’s example and probe their own soldiers’ conduct in the 19-year war.

The appeal came after Australia’s public release of a report alleging unlawful killings by elite Australian troops in Afghanistan.

The report — the result of a fouryear investigation — found evidence that some among Australia’s elite troops killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and civilians. Some of the crimes, which began in 2009, with most occurring in 2012 and 2013, could rise to the level of war crimes.

A practice noted in the report was the so-called “blooding,” where new soldiers to the battlefield were encouraged to kill an Afghan to get a first “kill.” It alleged that items such a gun or a cellphone were placed on the slain victim to claim he was an insurgent.

“It’s important to understand that the elite Australian special forces were not alone in committing these atrocities,” said Patricia Gossman, senior researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch.

“Their soldiers have even said it was widely known that U.K. and U.S. special forces had carried out similar crimes,” she said. “It was part of a sick culture that essentially treated Afghans living in these contested areas as if they were all dangerous criminals — even the children — or simply as not human.”

Gossman said that about the same time as some of the Australian offenses occurred, there was a case of “alleged involvement of U.S. special forces in the forced disappearance, murder and torture of Afghan civilians in the Nerkh district of Wardak (province) in 2012-2013.”

The Australian report, she said, should put “pressure on other coalition members to do better, including the U.S. and also the UK.” Grossman added that there has been a similar probe in Britain that was never publicized. Britain “buried its own investigation and failed to prosecute those accused of serious crimes,” she said.

A former adviser to the Afghan government, Torek Farhadi, said that it took courage for the Australian government to acknowledge the crimes but that from “an Afghan’s viewpoint, redress and compensation will be important.”

“Australia must follow up with the victims,” he said.

Farhadi said abuses by the U.s.-led coalition forces started being reported to Afghan leaders soon after the Taliban were overthrown by the U.S.led coalition in 2001.

“Afghan leaders were too insecure to confront the coalition,” he added.

But a few years later, Afghanistan’s then-president Hamid Karzai began to complain about night raids conducted by international forces, reports of unlawful detentions and abuses by coalition and Afghan forces. He called for an immediate stop, but Farhadi said Karzai “was quickly scolded as a non-team player by the U.S. and the coalition.”

The International Criminal Court judges this year authorized an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity possibly committed by Afghan government forces, the Taliban, American troops and U.S. foreign intelligence operatives. Washington, which has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and refuses to cooperate with it, condemned the decision.

The probe was authorized after the ICC in 2018 received 1.7 million statements alleging atrocities.