Full Transcript for Why SAS troops used wrong rules of engagement

understanding of what hostility looked like or had looked like previously, and then applying that to a circumstance. So they had seen a lot of Afghans running towards the river and getting caged weapons and then coming back and attacking them. So if they came to a compound of interest and they saw someone running towards the river, then they may consider that to be a hostile act. But it's likely that something like that would not have been allowed under Australian rules of engagement. The best example of that is in the report that I cited. They said that patrol reports would come back to legal offices and officers and they said that they had killed people who had just seen running away, and the legal officer said, you know, this really doesn't cut the mustard, so please, can you please rewrite this report with more descriptors so it's more in line with Australian rules of engagement. So that's what it happened. 00:06:42 Speaker 1: So why were the soldiers following rules that they weren't actually training. They were trained in Australian rules of engagement. Why are they practicing in if rules of engagement if they're not trained in those. 00:06:53 Speaker 3: Rules, Well, it certainly looks like the Australian soldiers thought that they were allowed to use these rules of engagement. And the thing that was really particularly interesting for me I had written a book about the kill capture program, and basically that's what the ESAs did primarily in Afghanistan. They come into country, there was multiple lists of people who were bad guys essentially as far as they were concerned. One of the lists had six thousand people, and then they just went out there and did mission after mission, either capturing or killing them. One of the major issues with these twenty twelve killings and the report that I found after that, was that normally you have a very strict and codified understanding of when you can employ your weapons system, whereas in this instance, the sas were using their own understanding of what hostile intents and hostile acts were. So it wasn't something that was written down. It was just them saying, we've been in Afghanistan for a long time, we know what the enemy looks like. I can tell when someone who's running away is a bad guy, so I can shoot him because I can make that distinction. 00:08:00 Speaker 1: After the break. Who knew this was happening? Ben, There's now evidence that some Australian soldiers in Afghanistan used foreign rules and engagement. That's a way to justify killings. Did the bosses know this was happening. It's a question of which bosses knew. But some bosses almost certainly or undoubtedly knew that this was happening. I mean the fact that these patrol reports were being changed. They had to be changed by someone. They were being sent back to the soldiers. So as soon as you see a report and it shows that the rules of engagement that were being used and not the ones that you should be using, then you are aware of that and you have an obligation to report that. But you weren't reporting that. You were sending it back to the soldiers, and it was this sort of go along to get a long attitude. The Breading Inquiry was supposed to be a sweeping investigation into misconduct and alleged crimes by Australian forces. Did they look into this? 00:08:55 Speaker 3: They didn't look into. 00:08:56 Speaker 2: This, turning to the Inspector General's report. He found none of the alleged unlawful killings were described as being in the heat of battle. None were alleged to have occurred in circumstances in which the intent of the perpetrator was unclear, confused or mistaken. 00:09:19 Speaker 3: This is one of the things that I put to defense. I said, in the Breton Report, they say that the Australians had a good understanding of which rules of engagements they should be using and they applied those. But it seems that you know this report that I've seen that was a twenty thirteen report calling this a systemic failure. This would have been a report that would have been available to Paul Burretton and his team. So it's something that should have been flagged in the Breton Report but wasn't. 00:09:42 Speaker 1: Do we know why. 00:09:43 Speaker 3: We don't know why. 00:09:44 Speaker 1: And as you've been reporting on this, what do you think the skirting of these rules says about Australia's role in the war in Afghanistan. 00:09:51 Speaker 3: I don't know whether it's a case of skirting the rules. I mean, it puts me in the mind of this quote from the Cromfort's report. So when Samantha Cromforts did her report. There was an officer who often of quote saying, you know, special forces, you've got to love them like brothers and watch them like children. So if these guys think that they should be using or allowed to use this ICA rules of engagement that they weren't trained on and that their legal officers weren't briefing them on, then it's not exactly their failure if they're using this rule of engagement in the way that they thought that it could be used. But what it does say I think about our operations in Afghanistan is that we did get to a point where there was a maximalist attitude in regards to kinetic activity. So there was a lot of shooting and a lot of killing that probably didn't need to happen. 00:10:35 Speaker 1: What is the Department Offense sit to you about they're doing to address this. 00:10:39 Speaker 3: I would be surprised if they're addressing this at all. My understanding is that they generally don't talk about rules of engagement with the media, But they did send me a line saying that, you know, Burton report had noted that rules of engagement changed temporarily and from a geolocation perspective suggesting that they were allowed to use these ICE rules of engagement. This report that I got from twenty thirteen does not say that. It says that the Australians were obliged the Essays included to use Australian rules of engagement. 00:11:11 Speaker

1: The Essays has suffered huge reputational damage from this, but also from the findings and the Bread inquiry. What impact has that had on our special forces capability? 00:11:21 Speaker 3: I mean there's been two erosions of capability, and one's post Afghanistan. As you said, there's been this reputational damage. It's been difficult to deploy Australian sas, especially in theaters where it's sort of primarily a Muslim population. That's been an issue. A lot of soldiers have decided that they just don't want to be in the army anymore. So, you know, you invest a million dollars a year into these guys. You know they got these twenty year careers. You've got twenty million dollars behind a corporal or sergeant. Then he just decides to walk away because this feels like he's being treated poorly. So you have that erosion, but then you have this other erosion. That happened over Afghanistan. Because theesas they're meant to be, you know, all of the cliches, the tip of the spear, the greatest soul, they're also meant to be the Swiss army knives. And in a time when they were meant to be sort of migrating over to being able to do other things gray role intelligence gathering, they were being used as basically an American fungible force. They were just doing these kill capture missions. They were doing the same thing over and over again against a force that was not a near peer opponent, and so their martial skills went down in that period as well. So you've had these two instances where we've had a lessening of capacity. 00:12:27 Speaker 1: What are the chances of any of us getting to the bottom of this as to what actually happened, what rules were applied. 00:12:33 Speaker 3: Well, I think that if you want to understand any one part of Afghanistan, then you kind of have to understand the whole thing. And I think the only way that we can understand the whole thing is it's not through defamation. It's not even through murder cases as the one coming up with Oliver Schultz. It's a raw commission. You need to have a body with subpoena powers. You need to be able to get to the offices, you need to be able to get to the politicians, and you need to be able to talk to the soldiers in an open, closed environment. So if you think, as this report suggests that there were systemic failures, that you know, officers had done things that sort of had allowed or fostered a circumstance in which unnecessary killings happened, I think the only way that we would get justice is through something like a royal commission. 00:13:20 Speaker 1: Well, Ben, thank you so much for your reporting and thank you so much for your time. Thanks also within use. Today, nurses have gathered outside New South Wales Parliament to protest hate speech after two nurses were filmed threatening to harm Israeli patients. New South Wales and Midwives Association Assistant General Secretary Michael Waits s his members were horrified and devastated by the footage. Meanwhile, the New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb says police have spoken to the Israeli influencer who captured the video, who has agreed to say apply an unedited version. The investigation is ongoing and the nurses have been stood down and communities in Western Australias Pilbury region are bracing for impact as tropical cyclone Zelia intensifies to a category five system, bringing winds of up to two hundred and ninety kilometers an hour. Authorities of closed schools, highways and the port Headling Port, while emergency services prepare for widespread flooding and damage. Evacuation centers have been set up as residents are worned to expect life threatening additions when the cyclone makes landfall. On Friday evening. Seven Am is a daily shave from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Adigus Basto, Shane Anderson, Chris Dangate, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zoltenvecho and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Cogan of Envelope AUDEO. We'll be back Monday. Thanks for listening, came