The real story of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan has not been reported
By Dr Daniel Mealey
Dear Australia, You haven’t been told the truth. You could be forgiven for believing the war in Afghanistan is over. Since the early days post- 9/11, the world world’s media has simply not reported the Taliban’s worsening crimes against humanity. This has not only prevented international help for the women and children suffering.
It’s also had a major impact on coalition soldiers coming home to civilians without the the requisite information to mount compassion in response to unthinkable trauma we endured over there. “Let there be no doubt: this is a war against women – banned from public life; prevented from accessing education; prohibited from working; barred from moving freely; imprisoned, disappeared and tortured including for speaking against these policies and resisting the repression.” said Agnes Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty International, May 2023.
The soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan were separated from their commanding officers by a highly fortified wall that kept the former in constant danger, and the latter in relative safety and ignorance. Missing from both sides of that wall were journalists like Nick McKenzie, and sociologists like Samantha Crompvoets. Yet these mischievous beatniks have driven the entire narrative of what happened in twenty years’ warring in that hell-hole, with the full support of those dangerously uninformed commanding officers whose continued failed leadership has driven 1,600 of their soldiers to suicide.
The problem with journalists who commandeer international media toward a contextually absent analysis of “war crimes,” is that the real war criminals get away with blue murder (and with no media to tell the story). Blue murder. Green-on-blue murder. All of the colours of murder in Afghanistan have remained unreported, with the real war criminals remaining at large. For the record, the “real war criminals” aren’t our soldiers.
And if you don’t know who the real war criminals are, who could blame you? There have been no journalists to inform you. Two major sentinel events occurred in the twenty year history of the Afghanistan war. The first of these events entailed the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre. The second involved planes taking off from Kabul International Airport twenty years later when we withdrew our allied forces for the last time.
Who could forget the citizens falling from those buildings on fire. And who could forget the citizens falling from the wings of those planes. All of these people desperately trying to escape the savagery of our Taliban enemy. Both of these events made international headlines with an international outpouring of grief. Similarly, this emotive response followed numerous Western terrorist events notwithstanding the Christchurch mosque massacres, and the 7/7 London Bombings.
It’s tempting to conclude that the stories of major Taliban war crimes taking place in Afghanistan over twenty years didn’t hit our media consequent to a national indifference to events that took place there. But apathy only occurs on an international level, in the absence of information. In the absence of information provided to the world about what was really happening in Afghanistan, the world was not indifferent to those events – they just didn’t know about them.
These events in the West resulted in comparatively greater media attention than events taking place in Afghanistan – not because we felt more empathy toward them, but because civilians were present there to react to them. Those citizens had mobile phones. They had cameras. And they had social media accounts to disseminate those stories around the globe with a speed, and an impact that checkmated international media to react in equal measure.
Between the two events of 9/11 and withdrawal of allied forces, there is a compelling twenty year absence of information in the annals of history about what was actually taking place in Afghanistan. Arguably, this is due to the fact that those present weren’t taking to the World Wide Web with their eye-witnessed experiences there. Those present were largely coalition and Taliban forces. In the context of an enormous Taliban regime that disguised themselves as civilians, the actual civilians feared death were they to show the world what was really happening.
They were censored. They were tortured. They were murdered. And it wasn’t our soldiers who were murdering them. I was in Afghanistan 2014 and 2015 as an Australian medical officer and I can assure you that no coalition soldier was using their Facebook accounts, and especially not discussing stories with journalists. I can assure you that daily, horrific events took place that nobody in the West was reporting. Those of us attached to the coalition effort were all conforming to the “bigger picture,” a picture that left no room for internet / media cowboys to wield the internet space with their egos. But in the absence of intelligent journalists to push beyond the limitations and confinement of the information presented to civilians of the world, the stories that our journalists have been telling the world have been fundamentally wrong.
This absence of any kind of military context in Australian journalistic commentary about our soldiers, is only part of the problem however. Again, the greater problem is that ADF leaders often have no military context either. They have collected an embarrassing swag of medals and post-nominals, yet ask any combat soldier where those leaders were postured during this war. (Answer: they were postured in the safety of a heavily fortified HQ, while the soldiers they now condemn and betray were exposed to unthinkable war trauma, and real war crimes- Taliban war crimes).
Needed here, are war-experienced ADF officers to step up to protect their soldiers from poorly-contextualised journalistic, and politicised vitriol about them. But those war-experienced leaders don’t exist. Or if they do, they are cowardly bowing to a toxic status quo; fatally confusing “protecting the green,” with “protecting themselves“ from a glaringly absent national criticism.” They have failed meet the basic expectation of their roles: to tell the truth. In the absence of that truth, compassion toward the plight of our soldiers has been non-existent.
Suicide only happens in a vacuum of compassion. And compassion only exists in the response to information.
What a great article Dr Mealey! Hitting the nail on the head! Yes those of us who served know who the real war criminals are and our Successive Governments and ADF leaders have failed to show any urgency or interest in bringing any of them to justice!! They are more interested in awarding themselves dubious honours and awards and seeking scapegoats! Angus Campbell has been in charge during the disgraceful Brereton Report ( a process that was back to front) and the suicides of hundreds of current and past ADF Personnel! He was one who attempted on numerous occasions to block any Royal Commission into those suicides!! He should be dismissed!
Well I heard Qld State Primary Schools are offering reading courses for mature students. Ed
The real war criminals are the fake leaders like Bush, Clinton, and all “coalition of the willing” countries who started the wars for profit, and send brainwashed young men to their death, thinking they are helping the good guys and their country.
No war is a good war, and normally more innocent get killed than guilty.
The real perpetrators sit in their luxury homes, towers and bunkers with no connection to a world other than the world of greed power and money, as war is very profitable for a very few, and deadly for many.
My father fought in the 2nd world war, on the Kokoda trail, and told me the officers were useless.
Soldiers are just cannon fodder, as far a the politicians are concerned. The only people who care about the rank and file are their beloved family and mates on the battlefield.
Unfortunately evil men rule the world and few good leaders can be counted.
Useless dialog with no facts about what happened. This report is a waste of time to read.
In 1979 Afghanistan had an all inclusive society that respected and protected religious and ethnic minorities and women’s rights. Its economy was necessarily state controlled to protect against predatory western corporations that were destroying its economy in the name of ‘free trade’ and open market policies.
Afghani women were protected under law; received the right to vote in the 1920s; and in the 1960s the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country moved toward full democracy.
Women contributed to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. By the early 1990s (i.e. just after the Russian military left, having built much civilian infrastucture such as roads and schools) an estimated 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women.
In 1979 (i.e. BEFORE the democratically elected Afghan government asked the Russian military to assist it to cope with a US instigated terrorist revolution) the US organised and funded Mujaheddin terrorists to overthrow Afghanistan’s democratically elected government. The result has been over 40 years of war, strife and abuse of female rights: https://www.globalresearch.ca/womens-rights-and-us-hegemony-from-afghanistan-to-syria/5572196?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
US interventionism sought to destroy the secular state and undermine women’s rights; and was instrumental in closing public schools and replacing them with koranic schools. Textbooks, with primers filled with jihadi rhetoric, were developed at the University of Nebraska and used in Afghanistan’s school system’s core curriculum.
Zbigniew Brzezinsk said publicly that on 3 July 1979 ‘president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.’
He also said: ‘on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.’
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/29/zbig-m29.html
The Soviet Union didn’t INVADE Afghanistan. It was invited by Afghanistan’s government to INTERVENE to fight against a PRIOR covert US proxy terrorist invasion of Afghanistan just as subsequently occurred in Somalia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Sudan etc.
In 1992 the Mujaheddin overthrew the Afghan government but were removed in turn by nationalist Taliban forces in 1996. As its Mujaheddin proxy had failed and the Taliban wasn’t amenable to US economic pressure and had virtually eliminated the CIA’s drug crops in Afghanistan, the US used the pretext that Osama Bin Lardin was responsible for 911 and invaded Afghanistan directly in 2002.
The US invasion evicted the Taliban government and the US military spent 20 years occupying and exploiting Afghanistan. Attacks against women and girls increased at a frightening pace. In 2012, female casualties increased by 20 percent over the previous year, and then by 61 percent in 2013.
ANY implication that Afghanistan’s current Taliban government is responsible for the oppression of Afghani females is disinformation. The US bears that responsibility.
Ron
simply answering: big brother takes us all for a ride, for we are nothing than human with a soul. games are played out but the costs are torture and giving our children to the lions. Except those who are orchestrating it….. game learned for eons……we have to learn how to finish it…..
@David. July 8 2023
The original photos of the My Lai were taken by a crew member of a helicopter that was there at the time. And there were several other villages near My Lai that received the same treatment at the same time.
The only reason that the Australian military seem to be fighting wars in other peoples countries is because the Australian governments of both sides have always been Yank butt sniffers for decades.
Investigations need to be made into the militaries activities in East Timor and in Iraq!!
If the Doctor was going to “tell all” he would have to write a whole book, would he not?
Dr Daniel Mealey quoted – “… Let there be no doubt: this is a war against women…”
… but that’s not the pretext which was used to send the Australian military on their murderous expedition to Afghanistan, was it? The original justification had something to do with the fake “War on Terror” following the 11 September 2001 False Flag – which, as we all know, was contrived to justify invading half a dozen countries in the space of five years.
Like it or not, now 20 years later, that’s all on the public record, no matter how we try to dress it up and obfuscate the inconvenient truth.
Funnily enough, the Taliban were once the honoured guests of the American Administration, highly lauded allies in much the same manner as Al Quaeda and yes, even that naughty Saddam Hussein back in the day.
And so, predictably, the official premise to justify the Afghan conflict has mutated and evolved to retrospectively whitewash this unilateral invasion of yet another Middle Eastern country. Strange how the Afghan opium industry, which was all but eliminated by those naughty Taliban by 2000, experienced an unprecedented resurgence under the motherly supervision of the “Coalition of the Willing” and the masterful management of the CIA – and we’re supposed to swallow the line that it’s all about women’s rights?
Seriously. Sure, we understand the need to rationalise how participating in something very very bad is done with the best of intentions when we’re in it up to our necks – but maybe some of these clowns in uniform should just bite the bullet (so to speak) and take a reality check.
And perhaps they should have called it the “Coalition of the Complicit”.
This “doctor” is full of crap! The Taliban was recruited, trained, armed and funded entirely by the US government with the idea that they were to fight the Russians who were in Afghanistan at that time! But when the Yanks butteed in and invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban then turned on the Yanks and kicked the coalitions butts!
As I knew three hours after the second 9/11 building went down, only one nation had the resources, expertise, and motivation to pull that off, and that was Israel. And while this was going on, several cheering Israelis were caught filming the entire saga, only to be released by the US and sent home.
And at that time, Osama bin Ladin was in a renal clinic, dying. The CIA knew this and, in fact,had created his organisation. All of this is ancient knowledge to any competent recorder of geopolitics. Ergo, the invasion of Afghanistan was on a pretext, and because of the phoney cause, after 20 years it failed. As several European national leaders noted with anger, there was no heroin in Europe while the Taliban were in control but as soon as the Yanks moved in , Europe was flooded whith heroin, its chemical signature exposing the source.
That Mealy has no idea what was going on should surprise nobody, most doctors still have no idea what is going on, as they kill people left right and centre.
I have only one question. Why, in the midst of an existential crisis, are we reading this crap.
Maybe this is why not much Facebook posting came from our Aussie soldiers in Afghanistan. obvious_bob is the Gary mentioned in this article:
https://cairnsnews.org/2022/07/26/aussie-feds-have-secrecy-deal-with-cia-offshoot-fakebook/
As Bosi said, the Australian senior military commanders would sell their grandmothers to get to a higher rank. When you consider the Russian Generals living with their troops, you can see why they are an effective fighting force. The situation in Vietnam with the Australians was similar to Afghanistan. Basic errors in command cost a lot of Australian lives. We would never had known about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, if the US military had banned official photographers, inserted into combat units. One also has to question the opium poppy crops in Afghanistan and who benefits? Why do Australian military always seem to be fighting wars in other people’s countries? Remember ” All the way with LBJ”? How long before we have to deal with a military invasion and another “Brisbane Line”? Are we members of Nato yet? Is it a requirement of the USUKA Agreement?
I understand that many senior ADF officers were not postured in a ‘heavily fortified HQ’. They were experiencing the ‘war’ in the comforts of Dubai.