Veterans’ anger over the Afghan War intensifies as war crimes investigations drag on

When SAS soldier Andy White asked his military-appointed lawyer what he should tell the inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan, he says the Navy captain said: “Just tell them what they want to know; they know everything.”

“Mate, you’re my lawyer, not my conscience,” Mr White recounted telling the lawyer in an interview with the Karl Stefanovic podcast broadcast on Wednesday.

A week later, when Mr White was questioned by Maj-Gen. Paul Brereton, the lawyer did not have much to say. “The only time he spoke was to suggest to Gen. Brereton that I take a piss and Brereton shouted at him to shut the f.... up,” Mr White said.

Last week’s news that an official investigation has cleared the Brereton Inquiry of treating witnesses unfairly was not welcomed by many of the veterans involved.

Former special forces brigadier Dan Fortune, who was questioned by the inquiry once, said in a Facebook post the report by a Northern Territory judge and a former military prosecutor praising the Brereton inquiry was “more evidence of institutional weaponised injustice”.

(The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force, which oversaw the Brereton Inquiry, referred a request for comment about Mr White’s assertions to the Defence Department.)

Veterans talking

In 2020 Maj-Gen. Brereton concluded that Australian special forces murdered 39 Afghans during the war and recommended 19 soldiers be investigated for potential charges. Only two have been charged, ex-SAS soldiers Oliver Schulz and Ben Roberts-Smith.

Instead of anger over the war fading over time, it appears to becoming more intense. With limited media interest in their experiences, hundreds of veterans have turned to podcasts to share their experiences and discuss Australia’s longest war and aftermath, including the heavy use of special forces, the post-combat investigations and the civilian legal system’s role in prosecuting alleged war crimes.

No official history exists to guide the debate. A decade after historians at the Australian War Memorial began work on a three-volume account, nothing has been published and there has been explanation why.

Military podcasters are filling the gap. In Adelaide, former paratrooper Sam Bamford uses his 2 Worlds Collide podcast to assail the government and military hierarchy over the treatment of veterans. In New Zealand, ex-SAS trooper Joe Hotai’s Go Always A Little Further podcast has emerged as a staunch defender of Mr Roberts-Smith, who is living in Brisbane awaiting a trial likely years away.

On Wednesday, Hotai interviewed another SAS veteran, Adam Slot, who joined the regiment in 2002 and left 19 years later.

Mr Slot engaged in an extended discussion about Mr Roberts-Smith, making him one of the few members of the regiment who served with the Victoria Cross recipient to talk in public about allegations Mr Slot acknowledged had badly tarnished the elite regiment’s reputation.

“We don’t go around assassinating people,” he said.

If officers thought prisoners may have been executed, did they report their suspicions to the army hierarchy, he asked.

“If you are in a position of command and you say that you have heard about all this stuff, what did you do about that?” he said.

Mr Slot said he supported Mr Roberts-Smith because of his actions during the 2010 Battle of Tizak, when the then corporal stormed a Taliban machine-gun position, the act recognised by the Victoria Cross. The Australians wiped out a force three times as large without suffering a fatality, a feat that was recognised with the first battle honours in the regiment’s history.

“If RS and the patrol commander didn’t do what they did, there would be dead Australian soldiers everywhere,” he said.

He also defended Mr Roberts-Smith against a finding in a defamation lawsuit in the Federal Court that he bullied a younger soldier who forgot oil for his Minimi machine-gun on a 2006 mission in Afghanistan. The machine-gun didn’t work properly when their team came under attack, risking their lives.

“The unit is full of alpha males,” Mr Slot said. “Everyone wants to be the best of the best. When you come across people who aren’t the best of the best and openly acknowledge they are not the best and let the team down, then I don’t think that is bullying.”

No band-aids

Mr Roberts-Smith has been charged with five counts of the war crime of murder. In four of the cases prosecutors allege other soldiers were involved. Four former SAS soldiers have been granted immunity from murder charges to testify against Mr Roberts-Smith, according to court documents.

The case has split the nation between those who say soldiers must be required to follow the laws of war and others who say civilian courts should not be used to judge acts on the battlefield.

Among the defenders of the SAS veterans being prosecuted is Liberal politician Phillip Thompson, the shadow minister for defence personnel and an Afghanistan military veteran.

In an interview with the Zero Limits Podcast in July, Mr Thompson complained Australia “lacked the fortitude” to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents who killed Australians. He cited a rogue Afghan Army sergeant named Hekmatullah who shot to death Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Private Robert Poate, and Sapper James Martin in 2012.

“The issue I have with all of this, and whether it’s Hekmatullah or all these other terrorists, is we have an elite units here in Australia, and their job is to hunt down, find and kill,” Mr Thompson said. “You want to ask them to go do it, and then all of a sudden you want to tell them that how they did it wasn’t right.

“Their job is literally not to go ahhh, and put band-aids on people. It is to go hunt down the enemy, and I expect them to do that. And as a member of Parliament, I expect them to do it and do it well.”

Mr Roberts-Smith was hunting Hekamatullah when he kicked an Afghan man, Ali Jan, off a cliff or embankment and ordered him shot, according to prosecutors.