Australia partly releases secret inquiry into SAS culture and command failures in Afghanistan

Australia has partly released the findings of a long-secret military inquiry into the culture and command structure of its Special Air Service regiment during the war in Afghanistan. The executive summary says deep systemic problems inside the SAS, together with failures higher up the chain of command, helped create conditions in which alleged war crimes could occur. The report was completed years ago but has only now been made public in summary form.

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The inquiry found what it described as an "abandonment of curiosity" within the Australian Defence Force leadership and an "inversion of authority" inside SAS units. It said the chain of command had effectively been reversed, with senior commanders missing warning signs that should have prompted intervention. Among those warning signs, the report pointed to a growing number of enemy casualties and an extreme limitation in the flow of information from SAS units to higher command levels.

The inquiry was commissioned after the 2020 Inspector-General of the ADF Afghanistan Inquiry, which found credible evidence of dozens of unlawful killings. Its purpose was to examine the culture within special forces deployed to Afghanistan and whether there was a causal link between that culture and the alleged killings and other wrongdoing. It also looked at whether more senior commanders should have identified indicators of misconduct earlier.

The findings matter because they go beyond individual allegations and raise questions about institutional oversight inside one of Australia's most elite military units. The report says the lack of intervention reflected an absence of effective leadership at several levels. That places renewed attention on how military accountability is supposed to work when operational secrecy, unit loyalty and command responsibility collide.

The report was handed to the former Chief of the Defence Force, Mark Binskin, in 2022, but only the executive summary has now been published online. The full report will not be released because it contains sensitive evidence from the original Afghanistan Inquiry. That decision means the public can see the broad conclusions, but not the underlying material that led to them.

The Afghanistan allegations have already been one of the most serious accountability crises in recent Australian military history. The earlier inquiry's finding of credible evidence of unlawful killings prompted further scrutiny of how special forces operated in theatre and how much senior officers knew. This latest summary adds a separate line of criticism by focusing on culture, information flow and command failure rather than only on the conduct of individual soldiers.

The summary also suggests that the problems were not confined to isolated incidents. By describing deep and systemic cultural issues, it implies that the unit environment itself may have made misconduct harder to detect and correct. That is significant for any future reforms because it points to leadership, supervision and reporting structures as part of the problem.

What remains unclear is how much of the full report's evidence will ever be seen publicly, and whether the summary will lead to further institutional changes or accountability measures. It is also not clear what additional findings were withheld because of sensitivity concerns. The next developments to watch are any official response from the Defence Force and whether the summary prompts renewed debate over command responsibility in the Afghanistan war.

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