Afghans wait for Australia to right the wrongs of its war

As a human rights worker in Uruzgan, Abdul Ghafar Stanikzai tried to help distraught families seeking answers about their dead sons. He’d given up hope they’d ever get them

Dr Abdul Ghafar Stanikzai’s dusty office in downtown Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan was often a place of misery during the Australian military’s deployment to the province.

A procession of distressed relatives and elders would troop into his tiny room to sit cross-legged on the red carpet and beg the human rights program manager for news of their loved ones.

Their questions often related to young men who had been captured or killed during military operations involving Australian soldiers.

“Why was my only son killed, he has young children, he was not Taliban,” anguished fathers would plead, sometimes ripping their shirts and tearing off their turbans.

As provincial manager for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, he was usually the only avenue for complaints about civilian casualties and detainees in the remote province.

Locals could not approach Australian military bases to ask about missing or killed loved ones, he says, as they were likely to be turned away or worse – shot at on suspicion of being insurgents – while local police or government authorities were unhelpful or uninterested.

From his simple workspace – disguised as a suburban home, so the Taliban and other enemies could not target him – Stanikzai would carefully note down the complaint for filing in the commission’s records, pass on details to the Afghan government, then later raise the allegation with a liaison officer from the Australian forces.

Sometimes he would arrange a meeting between complainants and Australian legal officers.

But getting detailed explanations and insights into why allegedly innocent Afghan men ended up dead during Australian raids usually led to the same depressing response from the Australian officers.

“They would be saying no further action was required because the person was ‘lawfully killed’ and was a ‘direct threat’ to our soldiers,” says Stanikzai, 38.

“That last sentence – ‘lawfully killed’ – despite my advocating, meant that there was no further action and that was the end of the thing.

“Nothing else could be done. They would be saying the matter was closed.”

It was a scenario that would haunt the young doctor in his five years as human rights program manager in the province and years later, even after he obtained protected refugee status in Australia.

His job in Uruzgan was challenging at the best of times, seeking answers for those whose relatives had been kidnapped by corrupt police or were killed in Taliban shootings and IED blasts.

He walked the finest of lines trying to avoid being targeted by authorities while raising complaints about the most powerful entities in the province – everyone from warlords and corrupt politicians to Australian and US special forces and the Taliban.

He often received death threats. The Taliban sent him a letter demanding he stop his work or he would be killed. Once they were suspected of sending a death squad to kidnap him when he snatched a quick game of beloved cricket in the rocky field by the police post next to his office.

But he also had successes, like the times he shut down an Afghan police-run underground torture chamber, convinced Australians to tell locals the names of captured prisoners, and established a women’s refuge to help combat horrendous domestic violence – one young woman’s nose was cut off after she fled a violent husband.

But through all this he never thought the complaints of unlawful killings by Australians would ever be thoroughly investigated and those responsible brought to justice.

“When [the then prime minister] Tony Abbott came to Tarin Kowt to close the mission in 2013, I was sitting there in the next line in the ceremony thinking there was no hope,’’ he said.

“I was thinking of those people who were affected by the Australian operations, what will happen to them. They came to us. They gave us their complaints to our office and nothing has happened. What about these things?

“I was thinking the Australian mission is finished and that was it.”

Today though, in Adelaide, as he works his way to having his medical qualifications recognised in Australia, he has drawn hope from the decision to bring those implicated in alleged war crimes in Afghanistan to justice.

“I’m feeling much better about things now,” he says. “I’m feeling that all our work has not been wasted. It’s very good. The people in Uruzgan can feel that something is still happening. It’s very meaningful and a powerful boost to Afghans that they are not forgotten.

“There is a big assumption in Afghanistan that they, foreign troops, had no responsibility or accountability, and no one has power. It’s very important that people think the government will take responsibility.

“Eight, nine, 10 years, finally something is happening and the Australian government is accepting this. Whether the soldiers will be put on trial, we don’t know, but importantly the Australian government took steps.”

There are still questions, though.

“Australia did many good things and I would see the soldiers sometimes, when they are speaking with some of these people complaining about their dead sons, and I would see their eyes fill with tears.

“But from the other aspect there are some serious issues with the Australian defence system. It’s nearly 10 years before anything happened about this. It’s still a long time for people to wait for justice.”