Earlier this month, the Dutch newspaper of record NRC broke the story that Dutch soldiers stationed in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province reported war crimes to allies 28 times during their deployment. Australian soldiers are patrolling side by side with Dutch soldiers in Uruzgan.
The Geneva Convention states that when a war crime is suspected, a country must either investigate or pressure the country concerned to investigate. It appears that despite these 28 reports, the Dutch chain of command did not. In fact, the available reports were provided to allies last month.
Reports of war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan emerged in late 2020. At least 39 non-combatants were reportedly killed by armed Australian soldiers.
Reports reaching Australian media in 2020 were largely denied. However, one of the killings has been described by a Dutch whistleblower.
Reportedly, after the killing of two Dutch soldiers, Dutch intelligence detained a man and interrogated him for 96 hours. They became convinced that the suspect was not involved in the attack, believing that he had been denounced to special forces by jealous neighbors, who wanted to take him out so they could seize his land.
Australian troops took the man into custody three weeks later anyway. They allegedly tortured and killed him. The Dutch whistleblower says that he reported the incident and that it was widely known among the Dutch soldiers and officers stationed at Uruzgan.
In 2020, when news of war crimes broke out in Australia, Dutch politicians assured that the report would be investigated. That report is still missing.
The revelations have created a scandal for the center-right VVD, the party that was in government in 2020.
28 The Dutch reports concerned not only the Australian forces. According to the NRC report, there were 14 reports of war crimes from two coalition partners (one of which was Australia). Britain has had its own scandal with the execution of Afghan prisoners by special forces. Dutch intelligence had 13 reports of war crimes committed by Afghan government troops.
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