Former SASR Regimental Sergeant Major Cole Busby, who was on the same deployment, later told the Australian War Memorial: "It’s funny that our whole honours and awards system has been focused on how well people perform under fire, but unfortunately you’ve made a mistake to even be in contact nine times out of 10. "I personally take pride in the fact that I led patrols that went undetected and without contact and we worked with the locals and developed intelligence that was valuable down the track." Andrew Hastie in his army days. Credit:Richard Polden Fast-forward 10 years and a rogue SASR patrol have taken to posting a kill board on their door. According to a range of sources, on one mission a local Afghan man was bound, led to a steep incline, kicked over the edge and executed. Across some rough edges of the regiment, guiding principles were, for a time, abandoned.

A traditional role of applying and gathering intelligence had been displaced by a lust for kill counts. Troop Captain Andrew Hastie, now a Liberal MP, who deployed briefly on a familiarisation exercise for that 2012 rotation, caught a glimpse of blood in the eye of a mission that was "grasping for operational clarity in a fog of strategic ambiguity". Black-ops rockstars Identifying the moment it went wrong is a principal task for the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF), now investigating allegations of a slew of unlawful killings by members of Australia’s Special Forces. Many insiders believe a key reason things may have gone off the rails is "tier 1 envy".

Across the global network of Special Forces units is a spread of skill sets and specialisations. The US ranks units such as the Navy’s Seal Team Six, and the Army’s Delta Force, as "tier 1". While the designation relates to resourcing and tasking rather than status, the black-ops rockstars tend to get the cool missions - such as hunting down Osama bin Laden - and thus the envy. A notch down along the Joint Special Operations Command pecking order, tier 2 operators such as the US Army’s Green Berets are tasked with a role closer to that described in the opening paragraphs. Working closely with locals to improve self-defence capability, they share principles that are also part of SASR’s repertoire. Loading But over time – and there was a lot of it in Afghanistan – operators appeared to show more interest in direct action than in hiding out unobserved, reporting local patterns of life. Because of inter-operability, exchange of personnel and the fact Australia deployed the third-largest Special Operations Task Group to Afghanistan after the Americans and British, Australians were exposed to significant influence from their "cousins".

In terms of personal fitness, training and patrolling nous, the Australians compared well. But in the global special operations pool, we are minnows. The US has more special forces personnel than Australia has men and women in uniform. US tier 1 Special Forces, with its superstructure of command, intelligence, assault boats, helicopters and autonomy, are in a whole other league – one senior defence sources say we might have sensibly avoided. While Seal Team Six got the sexy jobs, they also drew fire and over time it became clear that maximum power with minimum oversight produces moral cost. In 2015, The New York Times published an extensive investigation of the Seals, detailing the evolution in Afghanistan of a "kill fest" in which the victims were too often unarmed civilians. Seals were using customised weapons such as tomahawks and practises such as "canoeing" (splitting open a victim’s skull). There was similar reputational blight in Britain, with their famed SAS (on which Australia’s SASR is modelled) accused of planting weapons and unlawful killing. Taliban fighters in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, in June. Credit:AP

Close observers see a gradual rise among some of a rampant warrior ethos over the 13 years of the Australian mission. Hearts were hardened by a series of factors, not the least their own mounting casualty count. On the battlefield, Afghan militants blended in with local farmers. When Taliban commanders were caught, they frequently bribed their way clear of a dysfunctional and corrupt justice system. Strategic oversight wobbled in the hands of a coalition of 50 nations. Beyond the myriad approaches of different nations, objectives drifted between killing off al-Qaeda, building a democratic Afghanistan and arresting a burgeoning Taliban insurgency. Australian Special Operations commanders also brought different approaches to their four to six-month rotations. In 2009, one leadership group emphasised intelligence and policing strategies to separate the militants from the farmers. The bloodless removal of Taliban commanders from the valleys was deeply appreciated by long-suffering locals, but not so much by many Special Forces soldiers trained and poised for battle. Loading The following year, by contrast, there was fighting aplenty, including the famous Chenartu-Tizak action. As a feat of arms, it was remarkable. Outnumbered Australians confronted an enemy arrayed defensively and in superior numbers, completely destroying them while sustaining minimal casualties.

But "clear, hold, build" was the counterinsurgency mantra and only the first box had been ticked. The Taliban soon seeped back in. The episode also generated dissent within the ranks – and not only between long-term special forces rivals, SASR and the Commandos. While the fighting produced a Victoria Cross and the first Australian Army battle honour since Vietnam, within SASR they don’t really commemorate "Tizak Day". A divide developed among brothers in arms, in part over the dispensation of honours and awards. Another legacy was a growing challenge to the habit of having gunfights in an environment where it was long understood that the shot not fired is more important than the one that is. In the pre-deployment training for a 2011 rotation, one SASR officer took care to demonstrate the importance of killing the enemy rather than those they were sent to protect. The Afghanistan arithmetic was simple – kill one innocent farmer and you generate 10 more Taliban. The officer understood that armed foreigners arriving, sometimes in the dead of night, would be terrifying. He knew a farmer "moving tactically" might just as easily be fleeing to safety. So language training in simple directions was introduced with the objective of limiting confusion and saving lives.

Then in the following year, during more pre-deployment scenario training, an SASR patrol commander was heard ordering a newer soldier to execute manacled detainees. 'Compassionate psychopaths' In jest, Special Forces personnel are sometimes described as compassionate psychopaths. The "Killer Angel" characteristics of being able to apply lethal force without hesitation - but also to know when it is not necessary - are not found in ordinary mortals. Special Forces candidates endure rigorous psychological examination, with the few who gain entry further exposed to millions of dollars' worth of punishing training. In the last years of the war, as the coalition struggled to navigate its way out, Australia’s Special Operations Task Group became able to call on Blackhawks and Apaches from the US’s 101st Aviation "Expect No Mercy" regiment and the 82nd Aviation regiment "Wolfpack". US special forces rush a wounded Afghan soldier to a helicopter of the 101st Aviation brigade in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province in December 2010. Credit:New York Times

The vulnerability of helicopters to ground attack adjusted rules of engagement. An Afghan armed only with a two-way radio could order a grenadier into position to bring down an aircraft, with a single projectile killing 15 men. Landing zones became kill zones, with any fighting-aged males hanging around to be considered combatants. At Australia’s Camp Russell, operators were now turning up having already completed six or eight rotations. T-shirts were commonly stamped with gunslinger, Spartan and "Professional Infidel" iconography. That Australian Special Forces were overused in a conflict that had dragged on for too long now seems undeniable. One Army psychologist told me: "We want them controllable and reintegrate-able. But what happens if they become an attack dog you can’t control?" I don’t want to know all the details of what has gone on. I just want you guys to keep us safe. Sky News host Ross Cameron As Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Hart and Major Tom McDermott note in Armouring Against Atrocity: “Small units within the military are easily seen as primary groups” and “groups are inherently less moral than individuals”.

“When the group is ‘virtuous’ there is often a positive outcome; however, where the group norms

are shifted and the behaviour is atrocious, individuals in the group are often unable to apply the

brake.” So how will the public react if revelations of war crimes are proved? Judging on responses so far, condemnation and forgiveness run neck-and-neck. On Sky TV, former SASR Lieutenant-Colonel Riccardo Bosi began his recent commentary with a quote, which is alternatively attributed to Sir Winston Churchill and George Orwell: "We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men are ready to deliver punishment to those who would do us harm." One of the interviewers, Ross Cameron, added: “I don’t want to know all the details of what has gone on. I just want you guys to keep us safe.” The argument that the public be denied a vote on what our special forces get up to has some formal endorsement. Clandestine operations against terrorist cells remain secret because there is no logic in signalling intentions or capability to the enemy.

But Afghanistan was hardly a secret war. A massive database of intelligence gathered demonstrates many enemies killed were cruel and oppressive, but many others were farmers defending their homeland. In the course of this work, many special forces veterans have given confidential interviews. The overwhelming majority make no excuses for any small teams that went rogue. Soldiers fight principally for one another. Unethical conduct in Afghanistan made a tough job harder. Recklessness with the rules further embittered the Afghan locals and effectively betrayed the Australian mission, its soldiers and their mates. These soldiers also expect no excuses from the public. They hold to a proud heritage which honours toughness and decency. As one decorated SASR veteran put it: “We are not Viking raiders or Genghis Khan’s marauders. We are Australian soldiers.”

Chris Masters has worked with Fairfax Media for many months on this investigation. Masters, the only Australian journalist to be embedded with the SASR, is also the author of No Front Line: Australian special forces at war in Afghanistan, published by Allen & Unwin.