Death in Darwan

Updated

Australia's elite special forces descended on a small village in Afghanistan in search of a killer. When they left, three Afghan villagers were dead.

The dim light of a new day was still creeping across Darwan, but the men of the village were already beginning their work.

As smoke from cooking fires curled into the air from the mud-walled compounds, they headed out into the fields.

But then, the faint sound of rotor blades whispered over the village. The inhabitants of this hardscrabble corner of southern Afghanistan looked to the sky, and soon the source of the noise came into view.

Helicopters settled on the arid brown slopes around the village and disgorged dozens of Australian SAS troopers and Afghan soldiers, bristling with weapons and with faces painted green and black.

As the soldiers advanced towards the houses, they stopped one villager in a field and asked him a question in the local Pashtu language: "Where is the house of Haji Mohammad Gul?"



By the time the helicopters lifted off, it was close to noon. Three Afghan men were confirmed dead, but the villagers did not have much time to mourn. There were graves to be dug.

What happened in Darwan nearly six years ago is not in the past.

To this day it torments several who were there — both relatives of the dead and some Australian soldiers — and a secretive Defence inquiry is investigating whether any members of our special forces in Afghanistan may have crossed the line.

When the raiding party of Australians and their Afghan paramilitary allies descended on Darwan on September 11, 2012, they were searching for Australia's number one target in Afghanistan.

'Things did get a bit heavy-handed'

A fortnight before, a rogue Afghan Army sergeant named Hekmatullah murdered three Australian soldiers — Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Private Robert Poate and Sapper James Martin — as they played cards at a patrol base called Wahab, then fled the base.

Australian military sources have described a fevered period in which our special forces soldiers were sent out on mission after mission, hunting the fugitive Afghan soldier. One source told the ABC "things did get a bit heavy-handed," while another said "things went a bit sideways there".

Intelligence suggested that Hekmatullah had slipped west from Wahab, then north along the thin green strip that marked the path of the Helmand River, so Coalition forces dropped leaflets in areas through which the rogue soldier might pass.

One of those places was Nawjay, a collection of compounds in a crook of the Helmand near Darwan. And there, somebody read a leaflet and picked up a telephone.

As dawn broke in Darwan, one of the rudimentary mud-walled compounds was bursting with people.

An extended family headed by the patriarch, Haji Mohammad Gul, had been supplemented by relatives from far and wide.

Mohammad Gul's brother, Haji Nazar Gul, had come from the neighbouring province of Helmand, while a nephew, Ali Jan Faqir, had descended from some nearby mountains the previous evening to buy some flour and had stayed the night. Also present was Yaro Mama Faqir, Mohammad Gul's brother-in-law.

In video interviews recorded by Bilal Sawary, a highly-regarded Afghan journalist retained by the ABC, two sons of Haji Mohammad Gul — Sayed Hamid Khan and Sayed Jan — described what allegedly happened that morning.

"When the helicopters arrived I told my uncle — 'let's go home'. In our area when there was a raid, we would go to a house and sit in a room. I told him, let's go home and sit in the room and have tea," Sayed Hamid Khan says.

"When we picked up the tea, there was a shout in the yard. When I heard the shout, I couldn't understand. [The soldiers] shouted at me and waved at me. I called my paternal uncle. I told him, Haji Kaka they want us to come out."

"Haji Kaka was ahead of me, followed by me, and Yaro Mama Faqir was following me. We walked towards them in a line. When we got close they said 'raise your hands!'. So we had our hands in the air like this, walking towards them. When we got there, they were searching us like this and making us sit over there. They made us all sit there, and then started asking us questions."

According to the brothers, the soldiers began, through an interpreter, by saying they were there because somebody in the nearby village of Nawjay had seen Hekmatullah on a wanted leaflet, and phoned the security forces to say Mohammad Gul's family was sheltering the fugitive.

They accused the men of being Taliban sympathisers, of sheltering Hekmatullah, and of having taken him by motorbike to meet with the Taliban.

Sayed Jan says he responded by admitting the family had been "roaming around" with the Taliban, but that was because they were entwined in a property dispute the Taliban had to adjudicate. He said he told the soldiers that his family had been falsely accused by other villagers.

"Dear soldier, by God, if I have seen Milay [Hekmatullah], by God if I knew him. Yes, we heard about him. There might have been a rumour. He might have come, but I did not recognise him," Sayed Hamid Khan says he responded to the accusations.

In a subsequent interview, an elder from the village, which lies in a zone of Taliban control, said the family had sheltered Hekmatullah, and that other villagers were angered by that. He went on to say, however, he did not believe the family of Haji Mohammad Gul had ties to the Taliban.

The soldiers' suspicions about the villagers were heightened by the discovery of two guns in a room of the compound.

Sayed Jan and Sayed Hamid Khan say they responded that the guns were left there for safekeeping by somebody from outside the area who was trying to sell them.

The men say their uncles were questioned about who they were, and why they had come to Darwan.

Blood and almonds

Soon afterwards, according to Sayed Hamid Khan, the soldiers made Haji Nazar Gul and Yaro Mama Faqir stand up, and took them into a room where they stored almonds. It was the last time the two of them were seen alive.

"There were almonds in the room, a noise started in the almonds. With the noise, shots were fired," he says.

"When shots were fired — they were silenced shots like if you shoot into the water. If you place a gun into the water — it will shoot silence shots.

"When shots were fired," says Sayed Hamid Khan, he turned to Yaro Mama's son, who was sitting next to him and said "they shot the ones they took away from us".

Yaro Mama's son tried to reassure him, saying that it was the sound of padlocks being shot off by soldiers searching the room.

The men say no-one saw what happened in the almond room, but later that day Yaro Mama Faqir and Haji Nazar Gul were found dead.

They say their uncles were unarmed and under detention when they were taken into the almond room.

However, the ABC understands that at the post-mission debrief, the Australian soldiers involved reportedly said that the two men were armed, so any shootings were justified.

What happened to Ali Jan Faqir?

Ali Jan Faqir had led his donkeys down from the mountains the night before. The family says the 36-year-old father had come to Darwan to collect some flour, then spent the night with his extended family at Haji Muhammad Gul's compound.

His family describes him as a quiet, modest man, who had no truck with violence or guns, and no connection to the Taliban or other factions in Afghanistan's conflict.

According to the accounts of Sayed Hamid Khan, Sayed Jan and other villagers, when the Australians arrived the next morning, Ali Jan Faqir had already loaded up his donkeys and started the journey back to his family.

But as the helicopters came into view he turned back and sought refuge in the home of a villager called Man Gul.

"When the foreigners went up to Ali Jan Faqir they asked him where were you going? Ali Jan Faqir told them 'I have stuff on donkeys over there and I am going to the mountain where my house is,'" says Sayed Hamid Khan.

Then, they say, Ali Jan Faqir was led away by the soldiers. Hours later he was dead.

The ABC has not been able to locate any eyewitnesses to Ali Jan Faqir's death or the events immediately preceding it, but a number of accounts circulating in the village have him being kicked or thrown from a high earth bank, or wall, into a ditch.

When Bilal Sarwary asked Sayed Hamid Khan and Sayed Jan, in a videoed interview, whether anybody in the village was thrown from the upper story of a house, Sayed Hamid Khan responded: "That was his brother," pointing to Ali Jan Faqir's brother Ghulab Shah, who was sitting next to him. "His brother was thrown from a high retaining wall."

'He screamed'

Ghulab Shah interjects: "He was thrown from the top of a very high retaining wall all the way down into a ditch. He was kicked and thrown into the ditch."

In a subsequent interview Sayed Hamid Khan said villagers whose homes were near the retaining wall later told him that they had seen Ali Jan Faqir with his hands cuffed, shot and then thrown from the retaining wall.

They said his body was found beneath a nearby bush, with a radio next to it.

There are conflicting stories circulating about whether Ali Jan was shot and then thrown or kicked from the wall, or thrown or kicked first, then shot.

"The women and people said when he was thrown from the retaining wall, he screamed," says Sayed Hamid Khan.

In stark contrast to this version of events, however, the ABC understands that after Ali Jan Faqir's death, an Australian soldier stated over the radio that a spotter — or somebody relaying the movements of the Australian and Afghan soldiers to the Taliban — had been killed.

When the Australians left Darwan, they plucked six men from among the crowd of more than 50 people they had detained. Among them was Sayed Jan.

The six were flown, blindfolded, back to the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt, where Australian special forces had their base, Camp Russell.

Sayed Jan describes how he was held for seven days and questioned.

"One of them was talking to us in Pashtu, there was another one sitting over there," he says.

"The Pashtu-speaking person was sitting behind me, the other one was sitting in front of me. He was saying, 'look at me, don't look behind at him'. Then they asked me questions, 'what were you doing? What did you do with Hekmatullah?'.

Sayed Jan denied knowing Hekmatullah, but he says his interrogator refused to accept his story.

"I told him, if you cut me into pieces, and even if we don't see our village again, we can't lie," Sayed Jan says.

"He said, 'your life will end in the jail, if you don't accept [you were] fighting and [you know] Hekmatullah'.

"I said, 'if my life is finishing 70 times, we can't do — we can't lie. By God, I haven't seen Hekmatullah, and by God, I haven't fought alongside him'."

Sayed Jan says what allegedly happened next shocked him.

"They brought pictures — one of them was the photo of my paternal uncle [Haji Nazar Gul]. When I looked at it, he had blood coming from here [pointing at his forehead], he was dead and there was a gun laying with him.

"He said, 'if you haven't fought alongside [Hekmatullah] then who is this?' I said, 'this is my paternal uncle'. He asked, 'was he with you?' I said, 'yes'.

"Then, he brought another picture of my maternal uncle [Yaro Mama Faqir] and asked me, 'who is this?' I said, he is my maternal uncle. He was staying over with us. He said, he was with you guys? He stayed the night over with you guys? I said, yes."

Sayed Jan says the photograph showed his uncle with a weapon.

He says he was told: "You should admit that these people were with you! — they have guns and magazines, and you are still not accepting the fight?"

"These people … came out ahead of me to the soldiers, and had their hands in the air like this," Sayed Jan says he replied, speaking of his two uncles and cousin.

The Australians eventually released Sayed Jan and the five other men of the village. The men found a car and driver at the Tarin Kowt bazaar and began their journey home.

As the Australians and their Afghan allies left Darwan, Sayed Hamid Khan says they warned the villagers: "If you come out before the sound of the helicopters fades, we will kill you."

"When the sound of helicopters disappeared, I came out. I was the first one to come out, I came towards home," he says, weeping.

"When I arrived … Aziza was crying, her hands and clothes were red in blood. Abu [Mum] was crying, her hands were red in blood.

Soon after, in the home village of Ali Jan Faqir, a boy arrived and urged Ali Jan's brother, Ghulab Shah, to come to Darwan.

"When I came [to Darwan], they said, they said [foreign soldiers] have martyred your brother. So I covered my brother's body and the next day I went back to the mountains," says Gulab Shah.

The ABC is aware that events at Darwan are a subject of significant interest to a closed-doors inquiry currently being carried out into the conduct of Australia's special forces in Afghanistan.

The inquiry, headed by NSW Supreme Court judge and Army Reserve Major General Paul Brereton, is expected to report before the end of the year.

A few months after Ali Jan Faqir was killed, his wife gave birth to a daughter.

With no father to provide for the family, she, her mother and her siblings face an uncertain future.

A man who went to their village in the hills outside Darwan on the ABC's behalf braved fighting between government forces and the Taliban, and the threat of roadside bombs, to meet with Ali Jan Faqir's family.

He described Ali Jan Faqir's mother as elderly and frail, and psychologically broken since the death of her son.

They said he toiled hard to provide for his family, collecting firewood in the mountains and tending his sheep and goats.

It was his misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they say.

Defence responds

The crucial issue in what happened at Darwan is whether the three men — Ali Jan, Haji Nazar Gul and Yaro Mama — were unarmed and under detention at the time they were killed.

The Geneva Conventions govern how military forces must behave during armed conflicts.

Enemy combatants who are unarmed and under detention have to be treated humanely.

Specifically, it is prohibited to kill them.

The ABC put detailed questions to Defence about the issues raised in this story. Its response, in full, is reproduced here.

"The ADF conducts its operations under strict rules of engagement and promotes a culture of ethical and lawful behaviour.

"These rules and cultural norms are designed to ensure that the actions of Australian forces are ethical and consistent with Australia's obligations under domestic and international law.

"Defence takes all allegations about Australian Forces seriously and has mechanisms in place to investigate such allegations.

"The IGADF Afghanistan Inquiry was established for that reason, and is empowered to make recommendations to [Chief of the Defence Force] on what should be done in respect of any allegations that it considers are substantiated.

"The IGADF Afghanistan Inquiry has, for some time, been aware of allegations of significant issues involving the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan, which are within the scope of the Inquiry.

"However, in order to protect the integrity and independence of the Inquiry, and the reputations of individuals who might otherwise be unfairly affected, it is inappropriate to comment further on whether any particular incident or individual is under inquiry."

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Topics: defence-industry, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, army, afghanistan, australia

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