Obituaries from Oruzgan

An incident in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan in April 2009, proved to be just another inconsequential drop in the bloodbath that has become the nine-year war. Australian soldiers killed three unarmed men, referred to in Defence Reports as FAM KIA (fighting age males killed in action), acronyms that cleverly dehumanise the Afghan population for the Western world, and disguise the fact that many fighting age males are only 15 years old.

This incident warranted no further investigation, no administrative action against those responsible for the deaths, nor any changes to the methodology for assessing the risk of civilian casualties in operations of this kind. What makes this incident more disturbing is that it was shortly preceded by the killing of six Afghan civilians by three Australian soldiers, on 12 February 2009. One of the soldiers has been charged with manslaughter and two others face lesser charges, including failure to follow orders and dangerous conduct.

A man Amrullah Khan, as well as a teenage girl Zakera, ten-year-old Esanullah, eleven-year-old Nawab, two-year-old girl Gulsima and one-year-old Esmatullah were all killed on that night. Three former Australian soldiers from the Special Operations Task Groups set out to hunt down a local Taliban leader, Mullah Noorullah. After failing to find him at an initial compound, the soldiers claim that they entered a second house where an insurgent repeatedly fired upon them at extreme close range from within a room containing women and children. The day after the attack, Lieutenant General Mark Evans, head of joint operations, stated that there had been an exchange of fire between the Taliban and Australian forces. The puzzling thing is that the Taliban commander they were looking for, Mullah Noorullah, was killed three months later.

The survivors of that night have still not been interviewed by the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service. However, Zahir Khan, brother of Amrullah Khan, has stated to media that there were no Taliban insurgents in the house and that Australian soldiers attacked in the dead of night, shooting without identifying targets. The wife of Amrullah Khan also claims that Australian soldiers later admitted they had made a mistake and were in the wrong compound.

The case against the soldiers then hinges on whether they took adequate precautions not to harm civilians. They have expressed their remorse over the incidents, publicly stating on 27 September, “Words will never adequately express our regret that women and children were killed on 12 February 2009. ”

As the faces of war, these unnamed soldiers will cop the blame for these atrocities. This is despite the ideal aims of most of those deployed to make a positive difference to the lives of the Afghan people. According to Andrew Cheeseman from the Stop the War coalition, Australian troops have been placed in a dangerous and precarious position by forces that do not have these objectives in mind. He insists that the aims of the war can only be political, and also believes that the lives of Afghan civilians should be worth more than the strategic aims of the United States and Australian armies. For the United States, the war in Afghanistan is part of “projecting US dominance over the Middle East generally and penning China in, intimidating them. Australia assists America in exchange for support in the dominance of the Asia Pacific region, particularly the Solomon Islands and Indonesia.”

This alliance between the United and Australia is problematic and complicated by the disparities between each countries commitment to the Geneva Convention. In 1977, two protocols to the 1949 Geneva conventions were approved to protect civilians from becoming objects of attack. Over 150 nations had approved the 1949 conventions, while approximately half did not in 1977. Jake Lynch, Associate Professor and Director for Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, explained that instead of signing this article, “the United States developed high tech weaponry for warfare which claims to distinguish between civilians and insurgents… however, this results largely in the death of civilians. By allying ourselves with the US, we are signing up to this way.”

“This way” refers to a military approach characterised by insidious tactics and the justification of children’s deaths as collateral damage.  The propaganda that has filled the pages of many mainstream Australian newspapers also testifies to how the media has distorted the coverage of the war. As Cheeseman states, “there is no coverage from anything other than the soldiers perspective… never from the people fighting on the other side, whether they’re Taliban or whether they just want independence.”

This highlights the desire of many Afghans to be free of the great powers that have used their homeland as a political pawn for centuries. The claim that once coalition led troops pull out, the country will collapse into ruin is both simplistic and insulting to the abilities of the Afghan people, who marched through Kabul in August demanding the right to come together and forge the destiny of their country.

The initial aim of the war, to remove al-Qaeda, has been lost in the nine-year struggle that has killed 21 Australians and according to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan left 2412 civilians dead in 2009 alone. In sustaining both physical injuries and psychological trauma, Australian troops, like the Afghan civilians, become collateral damage in a war that has no end in sight.