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Title: War crimes Author: Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group Date: 4 January 2021 Language: en Topics: Australia, Afghanistan, Imperialism Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/32131 Notes: Article in the latest issue of “The Anvil”, newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG). It can also be found directly at the following address: https://melbacg.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/the-anvil-vol-9-no-6.pdf
The Brereton report about allegations of war crimes against Afghan
civilians by Australian troops, mainly the Special Air Service Regiment,
was met in November with gasps of shock by the capitalist media and the
appointment of a special prosecutor to bring criminal charges. The
prosecutor’s appointment, however, was also the signal for the issue to
drop out of the media and normal service to resume in the area of
propaganda glorifying the military. When trials eventually occur, it
will be years after the report, when the military have fabricated a
story to exonerate the institution, whatever the fate of the individuals
mentioned.
Australia’s imperialist military and the governments that sent it to
Afghanistan shouldn’t get away with it so easily. The 39 murders named
in the report are only the ones for which whistleblowers could be found.
There are rumours of many more. This is inherently plausible because of
the nature of the practices the report itself describes:
their first kill.
were considered Taliban.
These features indicate that the murders discussed in the report are
just the tip of the iceberg. The last point, indeed, is actual official
US policy in waging the “War on Terror”, so the rotten apple defence
rings particularly hollow.
Having admitted that many war crimes had been committed, the Brereton
report goes on to pin as much blame on sergeants and corporals as
possible. Commissioned officers were found to be “bewildered” by
evidence of crimes, while exhibiting “abandoned curiosity”. These
officers were not just incompetent or lazy. At best, they were wilfully
ignorant. More likely, they were complicit through verbal arrangements
about what they needed to know and what they didn’t. There were credible
accusations of war crimes already, dating at least to 2009, so the
entire SAS command structure would have known whether their supervision
was sufficient to detect such events if they occurred.
Beneath all this, however, is the guilt of Australia’s military high
command and the governments, both Coalition and Labor, that decided to
send Australian troops to Afghanistan and keep them there. Australia’s
Afghan War was never about Afghanistan, but about the US alliance. It
was about supporting a US-dominated world order in which Australia has
the South Pacific franchise. This requires supporting US military action
in Asia and contributing enough military forces to be seen as a valuable
ally deserving its own sphere of influence.
In these circumstances, the military effort in Afghanistan quickly
became an occupation. All Afghan civilians were the enemy, unless they
were known tools of the occupiers. And so the fighting age males were
deemed fair game. Imperialist war cannot be waged justly, so the
political decisions of John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and other
Prime Ministers made the crimes of the soldiers on the ground
inevitable. The soldiers named in the secret version of the report
deserve to be in the dock, but so do their political masters.
The Brereton report revealed what could no longer be concealed. But the
cover-up, both of further crimes and the guilty parties all the way from
Lieutenants to Prime Ministers, has begun. Our best response is to
demand that Australia get out of Afghanistan.
END AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM