If You Want To Stop War Crimes, Stop Capitalism
Written By: Jack Barry
The inquiry found none of the crimes, including this
murder, were committed in the "heat of battle"
The ‘Brereton Report’, officially known as the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan (IGADF) Inquiry Report has brought to light the shameful acts of members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in the persecution of the “War on Terrorism’ in Afghanistan. The report found credible information about 23 incidents in which non-combatants were allegedly murdered and two incidents with credible information alleging cruel treatment of non-combatants.
25 active and former members of the ADF are implicated in these incidents, which involved a total of 39 people being killed and a further two being cruelly treated. Much has been said about ‘cultural issues’ in the Special Forces, about ‘codes of silence’, ‘blooding’, ‘throwdowns’ and more, making for salacious news stories and plenty of viewers and clicks.
I myself spent 6 years in the ADF. I was a Rifleman, 343-3. I attained the rank of Private (Proficient), and was deployed on a Non-Warlike deployment (that was a massive waste of time and money, for Australia, not for me, pretty good pay at least). In my time, I received one lesson on the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC), during my recruit training. During training with my unit, Laws of Armed Conflict, Rules of Engagement, Treatment of Prisoners of War, were, at best, treated with the ‘boilerplate’ attitude described in the report, with a focus not on how to avoid committing war crimes, but on how to protect yourself if you accidentally commit one. Things along the line of “If you can justify why you felt your life was in danger, you’ll be fine” that we see in most arms of the state apparatus that are permitted to use overt violence and lethal force.
“At worst, I was told by a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer, to not bother taking prisoners or treating enemy wounded and that we should just ‘slot them’ (a colloquial term for shooting them)”
At worst, I was told by a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer (SNCO), to not bother taking prisoners or treating enemy wounded (both are considered non-combatants under LOAC) and that we should just ‘slot them’ (a colloquial term for shooting them). This was all in the context of training exercises, within Australia, with no imminent risk of being involved in a live fire scenario where these laws would come into play. I admittedly did not challenge this openly, I dismissed it as just being an instruction from a crusty old Warrant Officer who was a bit ‘old school’, and I regret that now, but at the time I wasn’t much more than a kid. But I do not know how many of my fellow soldiers took that ‘lesson’, no-one else called it out, but no one else talked about it later either.
While the report is limited to investigating the Special Forces of the Australian Defence force, in the wider Army, stories of ‘throwdown’ weapons (weapons kept on hand to plant on the bodies of unarmed people killed in engagements to satisfy rules of engagement) are common place, whether they were ever needed, I can’t say, but as indicated in the report, their presence does imply intent to deceive investigators. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but this investigation was begun on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
But one of the more interesting parts of the report that has not been widely covered is the historical instances of Australian Military Personnel being involved in war crimes that is touched on in the report. It covers alleged war crimes and convictions of Australians ‘serving’ overseas. The burning of villages and murder of prisoners in the Boer War. Looting, rape, and murder during the campaign to put down the ‘Boxer Rebellion’. Murder of prisoners and civilians in Papua New Guinea at the onset of WW1. The Surafend Incident in Palestine, 1918, where in retaliation for the murder of a New Zealand Soldier by a local thief, approximately two hundred ANZAC and British troops, followed the thief to his village, proceeded to murder people, burn down the village, and then turn on a nearby Bedouin camp, killing an estimated 20 to 137 civilians. No-one was ever punished for this incident, and it is reported that in 1919, the 3rd Light Horse Regiment were told “We will speak of this incident no more”.
There is ample evidence (according to the report) that Australian Soldiers regularly murdered prisoners of war on the Western Front in WW1.
“Well the biggest lark I had was at Morlancourt, when we took it the first time. There were a lot of Jerries in a cellar, and I said to ‘em: ‘Come out, you Camarades!’ So out they came, a dozen of ‘em, with their hands up. ‘Turn out your pockets,’ I told ‘em. They turned ‘em out. Watches and gold and stuff, all dinkum. Then I said: ‘Now back to your cellar, you sons of bitches!’ For I couldn’t be bothered with ‘em. When they were all safely down I threw half a dozen Mills bombs in after ‘em. I’d got the stuff all right, and we weren’t taking prisoners that day”
Robert Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929) [Berghahn Books 1995 edition], p. 168-169.
In WW2, Australian Troops are alleged to have been indiscriminate in their firing upon Japanese soldiers and sailors whose ships had been sunk. Not only targeting legitimate targets like barges, but illegitimate ones such as individuals in lifeboats or using wreckage to stay afloat, particularly after the Battle of the Bismark Sea. Also, while Australia played a role in prosecuting enemy war crimes, war crimes legislation passed in 1945 and 1988 was explicitly tailored to exclude Australian conduct or allegations of war crimes by Australians from its scope, enabling these war crimes to go unpunished.
The report covers these incidents, including incidents from the Vietnam War and First Gulf War, but leaves out the Korean War, Malayan Emergency (called that, and not a civil war, because insurance companies in London would not have paid out in the case of a civil war) and Confrontations with Indonesia. But fundamentally, the thread that ties these war crimes together, across all conflicts Australia has participated in, is the very participation in the conflict itself.
“No amount of helmet cameras, LOAC lessons, or cultural change in the ADF will prevent war crimes from being committed by ADF Personnel”
While WW2 stands out as a war of self-defence against fascist aggression, and is thus more justifiable as Australia was under direct threat of invasion, the role capital and imperialism played in creating the war are clear. All the other wars we have been involved in are wars of imperialism. Boers in South Africa threatened British hegemony over the mineral resources in the country. WW1 saw the imperialist blocs run out of room to expand their economies, and thus were brought into conflict to redraw the maps so they could continue exploiting their colonies. The wars in Malaya, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all waged to maintain the hegemony of corporations in the imperialist countries over markets, resources, and labour against any threat posed to it, be that from socialism, or from an unruly puppet government that didn’t toe the line. Even the current tensions with China are a response to the threat Chinese capitalism poses to the traditional dominance of Anglo-European corporations over world capital and labour.
None of the recommendations from the IGADF report will stop war crimes. No amount of helmet cameras, LOAC lessons, or cultural change in the ADF will prevent war crimes from being committed by ADF Personnel. Helmet Cameras were already wide spread in the Special Forces, and as evidenced by what they have recorded, they have done nothing to prevent war crimes. The report itself shows that the cultural issues in the ADF have existed from its establishment, and are not limited to the Special Forces. Australians have committed war crimes in every war they have participated in. Hell, Australians were committing war crimes before there even was an Australia to commit them in the name of. From day one of European settlement genocide has been unfolding. There is no reforming the ADF to prevent war crimes, the only way to do so is to stop participating in wars.
Both the Coalition and Labor have been staunch proponents of Australia’s involvement in imperialist wars of aggression, with zero opposition to conflict from either party regardless of their role in government or opposition. The paltry attempt by the report to ‘depoliticise’ these war crimes is disappointingly idealist, stating;
“The responsibility lies with the Australian Defence Force, not with the government of the day.”
IGADF Afghanistan Inquiry, p. 34.
The governments of the day are directly responsible; they approved the deployment of the ADF to these conflicts and they have the power to withdraw them. They can, and they should.
But they won’t because it does not serve the interests of the ruling class to end these wars. They make billions off them, they punish anyone who defies them and they maintain control with them. But most of all, they need them; capitalism needs them. They need new markets, new workers, new resources, ‘new’ capital and the only place to get it is by taking it from someone else. In their relentless pursuit of growth, they will stop at nothing, not war, not war crimes, not the literal destruction of the planet’s biosphere, to ensure that they keep growing, keep exploiting and keep producing, no matter how much death it causes.
War crimes are part of war. You cannot escape them, they will happen, your side will commit them, no matter how hard they try not to. As the scale of the conflict increases, so will the amount of war crimes. So the solution cannot be to just create more rules about how we fight wars, the solution is to end wars. And just as agreeing not to commit war crimes hasn’t stopped war crimes, just agreeing to stop wars isn’t going to stop wars. We have to stop the root cause of war, we have to change the way we do things in a way that disincentivises war and conflict, and incentivises co-operation and collaboration, on a fundamental, material level. We need to end capitalism and build socialism.