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Australia committed its support to the American-led war efforts in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001, in the hopes of disrupting Taliban control and the presence of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Its military involvement began late that year.

Fast forward to last month, and following a series of harrowing allegations of war crimes committed by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the appointment of a Special Investigator to examine the conduct of elite Australian forces in more than 55 incidents of alleged unlawful killings between 2005 and 2016.

Reports have surfaced of violent incidents involving non-combatants or people who were no longer engaged in conflict, among others. It was also alleged that civilians were used as target practice by some troops.

The latest horrifying example of troops’ misconduct was uncovered by The Guardian after they obtained a number of photographs showing senior Australian special forces soldiers drinking beer out of the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier.

The incident supposedly took place at an unauthorised bar in Afghanistan, called the Fat Lady’s Arms, which was set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt in 2009.

The man in one of the photos, drinking out of the leg is a senior soldier who is still serving.

Some soldiers say the practice was widely tolerated by officers at high levels and even involved some of them.

This was despite the limb potentially being a war trophy – an item Australian soldiers were forbidden to remove from the battlefield, let alone keep.

The leg is said to have belonged to a suspected Taliban fighter killed during an SASR 2 squadron attack on two compounds and a tunnel complex at Kakarak in Uruzgan in April 2009.

It was used a number of times to drink from and later mounted on a wooden plaque under the heading ‘Das Boot’, alongside an Iron Cross.

A former trooper told The Guardian that “wherever the Fat Lady’s Arms was set up, then that’s where the leg was kept and used occasionally for drinking out of”.

These aren’t the first reports of the leg doing the rounds, but the first time that photographic evidence has been brought to light.

The initial report that has arisen out of the inquiry makes mention of the Fat Lady’s Arms but says nothing about the practice of drinking out of the leg, or the fact that it was taken as a war trophy – at least not in the sections that have not been redacted.

The Guardian goes into more detail in the full article.

You can also read that report here, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

[source:guardian]