From hero to zero in Australia

This week, I am focusing on Australian heroism and how the country's most decorated soldier has fallen from grace. It's got a lot to do with the Australian mission in Afghanistan that lasted about 20 years, one of the longest wars Australia has ever been involved in. It's quite the surprise that this man is behind bars at the moment because he was basically as close to untouchable as it gets in the country. He had billionaires backing him, he was considered "Father of the Year" at some point, and his portrait even hangs in the National War Memorial.

Also this week: Sudan's war is going into its fourth year, there is a civil war among wild chimpanzees, elections in Benin and Djibouti, and a rejuvenated enthusiasm in Namibia to demand more reparations from Germany for the genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama people over a century ago. Plus: Egyptian greeting cards for Coptic Easter that was last weekend, Jamaican beaches and their inaccessibility to Jamaicans, Cuba, spiritual rap from Brazil, and a fake disease that made it into AI. And so much more.

It was a really bad week for Australia's "biggest hero"

Refresher: Australia sent troops to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, as part of the US-led "war on terror." The mission lasted about 20 years. It was one of the longest wars Australia has ever been involved in. Over that time, around 40,000 Australian soldiers served there. By 2013, most had left the main combat zone, and by 2020, nearly all had come home. 47 Australians died during the war, and 263 were wounded.

What happened?
Australia's most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, got arrested last week for his time in Afghanistan. The charges are pretty damning: five counts of murder and war crimes, all allegedly committed during his deployments to the Central Asian country between 2009 and 2012.

Why this matters: Basically: this guy was as close to untouchable as it gets in Australia. Over two metres tall, the government had him on display in the national war museum as the face of Australia's Afghanistan mission. He'd won "Father of the Year," was business partners with one of the country's richest and most powerful person, and was the official story of Australian heroism.

Tell me more
The victims were reportedly unarmed civilians and prisoners (aka people who weren't actively fighting when they were killed). There are some specifics to the allegations: Witnesses from his own unit say he pushed a civilian off a cliff and then ordered him shot. There are also accounts of him personally killing at least one prisoner. And then there's this thing called "blooding", basically a ritual where new soldiers are ordered to kill prisoners as some kind of initiation. That allegedly happened under his watch, too.

How did the truth about Ben Roberts-Smith come out?
Journalists. Two of them specifically, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie, who spent nine years on this. "When I discussed with a senior colleague the prospect of me challenging the reputation of this eminent Victoria Cross recipient, he told me it would be like shooting Bambi," Masters later wrote in his book. It was, wrote McKenzie in his book, "the most difficult undertaking of my 20-year career". Masters had actually been to Afghanistan embedded with the special forces (he was the country's first reporter to do that) and he'd written genuinely admiring stuff about the SAS. But even then, he kept hearing whispers that some of these elite soldiers were operating as if the rules of armed conflict simply didn't apply to them. McKenzie's entry point was different. He went to Kabul and met Bibi Dhorko, the wife of Ali Jan, a civilian who was allegedly kicked off a cliff by Roberts-Smith and then executed on his orders. She wanted one thing from Australia: justice. That became the mission for both of them.

The first real break came in early 2018 when SAS support staff living overseas were suddenly willing to talk. In addition to that, a journalist fixer in Afghanistan traveled deep into Taliban-controlled territory at genuine personal risk. He reached key witnesses in Darwan and confirmed every key detail of the cliff story. By mid-2018, the two journalists had enough to publish. Roberts-Smith has been fighting these journalists the whole time (he actually sued the newspapers for defamation who ran the story). He's still denying everything.

In the meantime, there was another inquiry run by Paul Brereton (now Australia's National Anti-Corruption Commissioner), who was then a senior judge. Brereton was hearing the same things: unarmed victims, some of them handcuffed, and soldiers planting weapons near bodies to cover their tracks.

Zoom out: And it's not just Australia. The British SAS had a nearly identical scandal. The BBC reported in 2022 that soldiers were allegedly competing over kill counts and planting fake weapons on victims. Then just a few months ago, a senior ex-SAS member came out and said people inside the unit had actively tried to cover up possible war crimes against civilians, pointing fingers at two former commanders. Britain had early warning signs back in 2011 and basically ignored them until...