Government clears Afghanistan war history for publication after Nightly reveals three-year wait for clearance

A committee of senior public servants approved publication of the first volume of the official history of the Australian Defence Force’s role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars three hours after The Nightly reported the book had been waiting three years for approval.

But three more volumes covering the most sensitive periods of the Afghanistan War, including when war crimes were allegedly committed by the Special Air Service Regiment, remain unpublished years after they were completed.

On Monday, the Opposition spokesman for veterans’ affairs, Michael McCormack, reiterated concerns expressed by RSL president Peter Tinley and Australian War Memorial Director Matt Anderson about the long wait for the books.

“Even as reader, I will be looking forward to reading them and I don’t know why there is a delay,” Mr McCormack told The Nightly. “I simply don’t. It’s not a matter of covering anything up. What is there to be covered up?”

On Friday October 2, the Defence Department contacted the chief historian of the Australian War Memorial’s histories of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Craig Stockings, stating that it had reviewed the volume covering the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2006 and that publication would be allowed to go ahead.

The volume was written by former Royal Australian Navy historian David Stevens and will be published by the UNSW Press.

The book is likely to focus on the task group that arrived in the Persian Gulf in late 2001, the frigates HMAS Sydney and Adelaide and the amphibious transport HMAS Kanimbla, and fighting by the Special Air Service Regiment immediately after the initial US-led invasion.

The book may reveal details of a little-known but important part of SAS history: its involvement in Operation Anaconda in 2002. The missions used 3000 coalition soldiers to attack about 1000 al-Qaeda fighters in the Shahi Kot valley in eastern Afghanistan. Instead of running away, the al-Qaeda fighters used caves and fortified positions to fight, leading to bloody close-range combat.

Australian SAS teams guided Western air attacks on al-Qaeda camps for more than a week, killing significant numbers of enemy fighters, destroying enemy equipment and protecting coalition soldiers fighting in the valley, according to an account by an SAS officer present at the time, Dan McDaniel.

Avoiding embarrassment

The decision to clear the first volume allowed the government to avoid the embarrassment of being accused of suppressing the only comprehensive accounts of Australia’s last military conflicts before veterans, dignitaries and the general public gathered at the War Memorial on Sunday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war.

Two other volumes of the official histories were submitted for approval two and three years ago covering the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 and the Afghanistan War from 2010 to 2014.

Both are awaiting clearance by departments and agencies involved in national security, including the Defence Department, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the intelligence agencies and the Office of the Special Investigator, which is responsible for investigating war crimes.

Departments and agencies are allowed to vet the books for inadvertent security breaches but do not have the right to challenge the independent historians’ opinions or conclusions.

A third book about the Afghanistan war from 2005 to 2010 has been finished but not submitted to the government because of delays approving the other volumes, according to a source.

Suppression of the books has disturbed veterans of the wars. The books contain no new information about war crimes allegations, according to a person familiar with the contents, but could explore the army’s preference for using special forces instead of regular troops to fight the Taliban insurgency.

“They must not be improperly delayed, censored or otherwise sabotaged by bureaucrats seeking to bury incompetent decisions, or former Ministers trying to polish out uncomfortable aspects of their political legacies,” said Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James on X.

A former senior government official said “They’re terrified about what’s in there.”

A spokesperson for the Defence Department said: “Defence continues to support the Australian War Memorial’s Official Histories Project.”

History, not PR

The books are part of a tradition of independent, government-funded military histories that began with the famed war correspondent C.E.W. Bean’s account of the First World War.

Official histories on the East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq missions were approved by the Abbott Coalition Government in 2015 and allocated $12.6 million after lobbying by David Horner, a Vietnam veteran who wrote the official history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The amount was later increased to $17 million.

Professor Stockings and his team have conducted more than 3000 interviews and read hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Australia has never conducted a public inquiry into its conduct of the Afghanistan war, which was lost when the Taliban captured Kabul in 2021.

Near the start of the project, Professor Stockings, a former infantry officer, said he did not intend to celebrate the military or promote Australian nationalism, a criticism sometimes made of previous official histories.

“It is historical, purely and simply,” he wrote in 2018. “The day the project fails to engage with difficult and sensitive issues in a forthright manner is the day credibility is lost. There are simply too many veterans who know better — and that is not my style in any case.”