Special Air Service Regiment
The Australian Special Air Service Company was formed on 25 July 1957, and was based upon the concept of 22 Special Air Service originated by David Stirling in 1941 during WWII. The Company was expanded to become The Special Air Service Regiment on the 4th September 1964. From this time the Australian Special Air Service has continued to distinguish itself in many theatres of conflict and United Nations duties through to the present day.
The Special Air Service Regiment [SASR] in particular, and Special Forces in general were allowed to drift out of army control and not under any other control. It became almost a service within a service and respective chiefs of army – they’d been split from the line of command so they weren’t part of the forces command, land command, construct. They were a separate entity operating independently under special operations command. Over the period from 2005 to 2016, more than 26,000 Australians served in Afghanistan, 3,000 of them in the Special Operations Task Group.
Between 1966 and 1971 each of three "sabre" squadrons of the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) completed two tours of Vietnam. The SAS was based at Nui Dat where they acted as the "eyes and the ears" of the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) and operated throughout Phuoc Tuy province as well as in Bien Hoa, Long Khanh, and Binh Tuy provinces. The SAS personnel were highly trained and their role in Vietnam varied from conducting reconnaissance patrols and observing enemy movement to offensive operations deep in enemy territory. The SAS had the highest "kill" ratio of any Australian unit in Vietnam. The Australian SAS operated closely with the New Zealand SAS and New Zealand SAS soldiers were attached to each Australian squadron.
The main impetus for the establishment of the Counter Terrorist (CT) capability in the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) was the bomb attack near the Hilton Hotel in Sydney in February 1978. The Australian Army had been planning to develop a CT capability before this attack, but the Hilton bombing ensured that the proposal would have political support. On 21 September 1978 the Intelligence and Security Committee of Cabinet agreed that Australia would adopt a ‘hard line’ policy in dealing with terrorists and that if tactical negotiations aimed at persuading the terrorists to surrender failed, and in particular, if violent action by the terrorists (for example, killing or injuring hostages or major property damage) was anticipated, ‘action could be taken to subdue the terrorists by force’.
On 01 May 1979 the Government approved the establishment of ‘a specialised and dedicated counter terrorist assault team’, to be available to the Commonwealth to deal, where authorised, with high risk terrorist incidents. The strength of the assault team was not to exceed three officers and 26 soldiers and the codeword Gauntlet was to be used when referring to the TAG. The TAG headquarters was to consist of the commanding officer of the SASR, his operations officer and two signalers.
On 27 May 1980 the Government considered advice about the vulnerability of off-shore oil installations in Bass Strait and agreed ‘that the threat of terrorist attack was real and potentially highly dangerous’. It authorised the ADF to establish a special group to deal with such an attack. The CGS therefore authorised the raising of another assault team (codename Nullah) for off-shore oil installations. As his directive explained; ‘It is the view of the Government that the threat of terrorist attack to the installations is real and potentially highly dangerous’. The offshore assault team became operational in November 1980. The two teams, Gauntlet and Nullah, were part of the 1st SAS squadron which had responsibility for the CT capability.
Following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the Prime Minister directed that the ADF needed to be able to respond to two simultaneous and geographically separate terrorist incidents. As a result, after 4 RAR returned from service in East Timor in 2001, on 7 January 2002 it began to develop a CT capability, and on 22 July 2002 was able to bring online a new TAG, known as TAG East. By this time the SASR had reverted to its normal organisation, with only one TAG, known as TAG West. Also, by this time Special Operations Command had been formed with SASR, 4 RAR (Commando), the 1st Commando Regiment (Army Reserve), the Incident Response Regiment and a Special Operations Logistics Squadron. Helicopters of the 171st Aviation Squadron were assigned permanently to Special Operations Command for CT/SR training and operations. In 2009 4 RAR changed its name to become the 2nd Commando Regiment.
Since the TAG was formed in 1980 it, or elements of it, have been deployed by Government direction on a series of activities on which the TAG would use armed force to resolve a situation had it arisen. Those activities would now be given the name of an operation, and could well have been formally prescribed as an operation. These include:
- 1981 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.
- 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. Brigadier R. G. Curtis, who commanded the TAG for this deployment, has written: ‘There was no doubt in the minds of the deployed CT force that this was an operational deployment and that the TAG would be called upon to respond should a high risk terrorist incident occur’.
- 1994 Pre-deployment of elements to Townsville and then to HMAS Tobruk for recovery operations in Bougainville if ordered, Operation Lagoon.
- 1997 Pre-deployment of elements to Butterworth/Penang in Malaysia, for recovery operations in Phnom Penh if ordered. Part of Operation Vista.
- 2000 Sydney Olympics 2000. The armed ADF element of Operation Gold.
- 2001 MV Tampa, off Christmas Island. The CT/SR capability was employed to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers onto Australian territory.
- 2001-2 CHOGM, Brisbane and Sunshine Coast. Operations Guardian and Guardian II.
- 2003 MV Pong Su, off the east coast of Australia. The ship was secured to prevent further smuggling of large quantities of heroin into Australia. Operation Tartan.
- 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. The armed ADF element of Operation Acolyte.
- 2006 Deployment to waters off Fiji to recover Australian nationals if ordered, Operation Quickstep.
- 2007 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum Sydney. Operation Deluge.
Personnel who served between the end of the Vietnam commitment (1972) and the commitment to East Timor (1999) served for almost 20 years without ever being deployed overseas. The Government’s initial and ongoing decisions both to raise and maintain the CT/SR capability were based on a need to deal with high risk terrorist incidents that could occur with little or no warning in Australia. In a historical sense, these incidents have in fact, not eventuated.
Afghanistan
The Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO presented the Battle Honour Eastern Shah Wali Kot to the 2nd Special Air Service Squadron of the Special Air Service Regiment at a parade at Campbell Barracks, Swanbourne attended by the Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith MP on Friday, 10 May 2013. The battle honour had previously been announced by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard MP and the Minister on 26 March 2013. Eastern Shah Wali Kot is the first Army Battle Honour awarded since the end of the Vietnam War and was awarded by the Chief of Army to the Special Air Service Regiment and to the 2nd Commando Regiment for their outstanding performance during the Shah Wali Kot Offensive in Afghanistan from May to June 2010.
The Law of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law prohibit as war crimes the murder and cruel treatment of non-combatants and persons who are hors-de-combat (that is, out- of- the- fight) because they have been seriously wounded, or have surrendered or been captured and are prisoners or ‘persons under control’, in a non-international armed conflict, which the war in Afghanistan was.
There have been allegations of serious human rights violations against all parties involved in the conflict in Afghanistan. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently conducting an investigation focused on ‘Alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Afghanistan since 1 May 2003’.[3] On a number of separate occasions since 2006, reports have been published in the Australian media alleging that a few Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel operating in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2013 engaged in criminal conduct.
On 6 November 2020, the Chief of the Defence Force received the Afghanistan Inquiry report from the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) and he announced the findings on 19 November 2020. On 09 March 2016, Special Operations Commander Australia (SOCAUST) wrote to Chief of Army (CA) regarding rumours concerning the culture and behaviour of or concerning Special Operations Command (SOCOMD), including second- or third-hand narratives relating to Special Operations Task Group deployments in Afghanistan during the period 2007 to 2016. These stories came to the attention of SOCAUST from a variety of sources. The rumours relate to the military justice system and include allegations of criminal, unlawful or inappropriate conduct including deviance from professional standards.
It was recognised before the Inquiry was started, there was an issue with leadership accepting practises that should not have been permitted. For example, drinking on operations was ‘tacitly endorsed’, and such things had, over the years, resulted in an inherited culture that was endemic across deployed SOCOMD forces and had become normalised…the extended period over which this applied, translated into generational behaviours which involved all ranks. The result was a kind of organisational blindness, where the collective sacrifice on operations justified certain excesses. The organisation became voluntarily ‘collectively blind’ to what was going on.
There was also a perception that the Army wasn’t actually interested in learning lessons – ‘there was no learning mechanism in place’. Inquiries were felt to be about arse-covering rather than being interested in making sure that it wasn’t repeated. In this environment especially, the cost of not fitting in was high. For example, for a junior officer, not being accepted by their soldiers could mean the end of your Special Forces career. The guidance and nurturing normally provided by NCOs to their junior officers was replaced by a more domineering or controlling approach. For some rotations, a new team member fresh into theater who hadn’t yet shot someone would be required to shoot a prisoner, ‘to pop his cherry…to prove that he was up to it’. That appeared to be the price of entry into the in group.
One account spoke of ‘Guys just had this blood lust. Psychos. Absolute Psychos. And we bred them’. If there is a concentration of people predisposed to a particular type of behavior in one place, it is seems obvious that there is a greater chance of seeing that behavior. If the system is looking for and expecting enemy killed in action, it would be naïve not to expect that this is what people are going to try and achieve, by whatever means were available. Australian force began to align themselves towards a ‘Warrior mentality’ culturally at odds with the mission that was still supposed to be based on a ‘hearts and minds’ approach, and with the ADF as a whole.
While alcohol on deployments was linked to ‘risky or unacceptable behaviours’, it is ‘difficult to conclude that almost everyone in the SOCOMD chain of command was not aware of this’. Alcohol was widely justified as a coping mechanism for stress, grief and high tempo operations and the unit was basically given a pass because it was ‘special’, reinforcing a perception of entitlement, with the ‘logic of exceptionalism warranting the application of different rules and behaviours to those that applied to other ADF members’.
Some soldiers believed quite passionately that an Australian soldier is expected to ‘muck up’ on operations. It seemed as though many soldiers felt that they were almost obliged to live up to a rogue, irreverent and scruffy stereotype (a distorted view of the larrikin) and that their leaders ought to tolerate such things’. They were, after all, the ‘Force of Choice’ of the Australian government for a number of years. ‘The hyperbole surrounding the contribution of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan makes the soldiers feel entitled to be treated almost as Roman gladiators’. Unsurprisingly, this may have led to a feeling of ‘exceptionalism’ and even a sense of entitlement.
The Inquiry found that there was credible information of 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or persons hors-de-combat were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder, and a further two incidents in which a non-combatant or person horsde- combat was mistreated in circumstances which, if so accepted, would be the war crime of cruel treatment. These incidents involved: a total of 39 individuals killed, and a further two cruelly treated; and a total of 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel who were perpetrators, either as principals or accessories, some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.
Junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner, in order to achieve the soldier’s first kill, in a practice that was known as ‘blooding’. This would happen after the target compound had been secured, and local nationals had been secured as ‘persons under control’. Typically, the patrol commander would take a person under control and the junior member, who would then be directed to kill the person under control. ‘Throwdowns’ would be placed with the body, and a ‘cover story’ was created for the purposes of operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny. This was reinforced with a code of silence.
The criminal behavior of a few was commenced, committed, continued and concealed at the patrol commander level, that is, at corporal or sergeant level. To a junior Special Air Service Regiment trooper, the patrol commander is a ‘demigod’, and one who can make or break the career of a trooper, who is trained to obey and to implement their superior commander’s intent. To such a trooper, who has invested a great deal in gaining entry into Special Air Service Regiment, the prospect of being characterised as a ‘lemon’ and not doing what was expected of them was a terrible one, which could jeopardise everything for which they had worked. They were in a foreign environment, far from the influence of the norms of ordinary Australian society, where the incident could be compartmentalised as something that happened outside the wire to stay outside the wire.
The Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Commander Joint Task Force 633, Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Headquarters. Nor is the Inquiry of the view that there was any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes. It is easy now, with the benefit of retrospectivity, to identify steps that could have been taken and things that could have been done.
However, in judging the reasonableness of conduct at the time, it needs to be borne in mind that few would have imagined some elite soldiers would engage in the conduct that has been described; for that reason there would not have been a significant index of suspicion, rather the first natural response would have been disbelief. Commanders set the conditions in which their units may flourish or wither, including the culture which promotes, permits or prohibits certain behaviours. It is clear that there must have been within Special Operations Task Group a culture that at least permitted these behaviors.
The position of the Special Air Service Regiment troop commanders calls for some sympathy. Their position was a difficult one. Invariably, they were on their first Special Operations Task Group deployment. They were in an environment in which the non-commissioned officers had achieved ascendancy, just as they had from their role as gatekeepers to Special Air Service Regiment selection, and their extended role when new officers were ‘under training’ and thus regularly subordinate to them. They were not well-mentored, but were rather left to swim or sink. Those who did try to wrestle back some control were ostracised, and often did not receive the support of superior officers. In that context, given the arduous selection process and how hard it is to get there in the first place, it is to an extent understandable that some might not be prepared to risk that position at the time to try to stop what was seen as an organisationally routine practice.
A substantial indirect responsibility falls upon those in Special Air Service Regiment who embraced or fostered the ‘warrior culture’ and the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it. Special Forces operators should pride themselves on being model professional soldiers, not on being ‘warrior heroes.’ Some domestic commanders of Special Air Service Regiment bear significant responsibility for contributing to the environment in which war crimes were committed, most notably those who embraced or fostered the ‘warrior culture’ and empowered, or did not restrain, the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it.
The liberal interpretation of when a ‘squirter’ (a local national observed to run from a compound of interest) could be taken to be ‘directly participating in hostilities’, coupled with an understanding of how to describe an engagement to satisfy reporting expectations, combined to contribute to the creation of a sense of impunity among operators.
Command accepted with little question that complaints by local elders of civilian casualty incidents were an insurgent tactic, in which the elders were either complicit or coerced, and/or motivated by compensation; yet there is little evidence to support this: to the contrary, many of the complaints now appear to have been legitimate.
Coalition Forces were tasked with keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. GEN Petraeus also identified that incurring civilian casualties in the course of a ‘tactical’ victory can often amount to a strategic setback. The only way this can be avoided is to identify when such civilian casualties are incurred and to take steps to avoid then in future operations. This requires a robust system of oversight and investigation of allegations of civilian casualties.
The mandatory use of body-cameras by police in many parts of Australia has proved successful in confirming lawful actions, rebutting false complaints, and exposing misconduct, and is now widely accepted. Use of official helmet cameras by Special Forces operators, perhaps more than any other single measure, would be a powerful assurance of the lawful and appropriate use of force on operations, as well as providing other benefits in terms of information collection, and mitigating the security risk associated with unofficial imagery.
Some Joint Operations Command lawyers above the SF Task Group started to try and assert some control over what they increasingly believed were ‘sanctioned massacres’. The ROE were tightened up, but there was scepticism about whether this had any actual effect as ‘SF just got more creative in how they wrote up incidents’. As the lawyers started to become more ‘troublesome’, the SF unit started to rely more on their own lawyers, "with the promise of being inside their ‘elite tent’, doing cool stuff in return for legally polishing their version of events and the truth in a way that created enough doubt as to exonerate them…’"
The Meritorious Unit Citation is a collective group decoration awarded to a unit for sustained outstanding service in warlike operations. Although many members of SOTG demonstrated great courage and commitment, and although it had considerable achievements, what is now known must disentitle the unit as a whole to qualification for recognition for sustained outstanding service. It has to be said that what this Report discloses is disgraceful, not meritorious. Revocation of the award of the meritorious unit citation would be an effective demonstration of the collective responsibility and accountability of SOTG as a whole for those events. The Inquiry recommends that the award of the Meritorious Unit Citation to SOTG (TF 66) be revoked.
The evidence does not reveal a consistent pattern of misbehavior in 2nd Commando Regiment (2 Cdo Regt) or any of its sub-units, as it did in SASR and at least two of its squadrons. On 19 October 2020 Chief of the Army advised the Special Air Service Regiment that the 2nd Special Air Service Squadron would be struck off the Army ORBAT, not because it was the only squadron involved in these issues but because it was at a time one of the squadrons involved in the allegations made. And there will be a permanent record by striking that squadron title from the Army ORBAT at this period. The Chief of the Army will work over time to adjust and then re-raise a different squadron titled differently.
