WASHINGTON (ABC News) – The 2nd Commando Regiment, a special forces unit of the Australian Army, has been captured in several videos showing them discussing killing unarmed civilians in cold blood in Afghanistan during their nine years of operations.
The elite forces can be heard discussing a “quota of 10” for each one to kill during the “War on Terror”, which was announced by the U.S. following the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.
The video obtained by ABC shows an entire unit happily discussing their “kill quota” ahead of an operation.
“We’ve got a quota of 10. The quota is 10,” one soldier tells the cameraman, while the second soldier replies, saying he will meet the “quota”.
They use the word “quota” at least a dozen times in the 90-second film captured by an Australian soldier in 2012.
Another video shows a soldier opening fire from his assault rifle from combat helicopter at what appear to be unarmed civilians.
The third video, also telecasted on ABC news, shows two Australian commandos detaining a “farmer”, later, they watched while an Afghan soldier beat the civilian.
The ABC news said that some of these elite commandos are now under investigation by Australia’s war crimes agency.
Australian Defence Force has clarified, saying it does not use “enemy casualty numbers as a measure of performance, success or effectiveness, including during operations in Afghanistan”.
“The publicly released version of the Afghanistan Inquiry report briefly mentions ‘catch and release, and the kill count’ as one of the factors the presence of which may have contributed to an environment in which deviant behavior [in the SAS] could take place and not be recognized,” a spokesperson said.
U.S.-led NATO forces pulled out from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of occupation.