From Canberra: Five years after the Brereton Report delivered one of the most damning assessments of Australian military conduct in modern history, the legal machinery tasked with bringing accountability has yet to produce a single criminal charge. For the Returned Services League, Australia's peak veterans' organisation, the silence has become intolerable.
The RSL this week declared the ongoing delays in resolving Afghanistan war crimes allegations to be a failure of justice, according to reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald. In language that stripped away diplomatic restraint, the organisation warned that the prolonged process is corroding morale within the veteran community and, more pointedly, casting a broad shadow of suspicion over thousands of men and women who served with distinction and without blemish.
"Not justice" was the phrase the RSL reached for. It is a blunt indictment, but one carrying the weight of years.
The complaint lands at a pressure point for the Australian Defence Force and the federal government. The Office of the Special Investigator, established specifically to examine potential war crimes committed by Australian personnel in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, has been working alongside the Australian Federal Police since 2021. Yet the path to any courtroom remains distant, and no charges have been laid.
The Brereton Report, released in November 2020, found credible information suggesting 25 current or former Special Forces soldiers may have been involved in the unlawful killing of 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians. It was a confronting document. The government of the day pledged accountability would follow. That pledge is now being measured against the passage of time.
The RSL's intervention is not a demand to shield anyone from justice. The organisation has been clear that genuine war crimes, if proven, require a response consistent with Australia's values and its international obligations. The concern is different in character: prolonged uncertainty, without either charges or clearances, leaves the accused suspended in a legal and reputational limbo. They cannot defend themselves before a court because no court has convened. They cannot clear their names because no finding has been made. That, the RSL argues, is its own form of injustice.
It is a principled position. Legal processes that stall indefinitely can function as punishment without verdict, particularly for individuals whose careers and mental health are left in suspension.
Critics of that view argue the complexity of the investigations justifies the timeline. War crimes inquiries are among the most demanding in the legal system. Evidence gathered in active conflict zones is fragmentary; witnesses are spread across multiple countries; questions about the chain of command are layered and deeply contested. Human rights advocates and representatives of Afghan communities have argued consistently that the primary obligation is to the 39 lives recorded in the Brereton findings, not to the comfort of those under investigation. That argument carries genuine moral force. Parliamentary scrutiny of the process has reflected those competing pressures in equal measure.
The Office of the Special Investigator operates under significant constraints, and it would be unfair to characterise the delays as simple inaction. Complex criminal investigations of this kind, involving conduct in a foreign conflict zone, present evidentiary challenges that domestic criminal proceedings rarely face. The standard of proof required for a criminal conviction is appropriately high, and properly so.
What the RSL is identifying, at its core, is a system under genuine strain. Accountability and fairness are not competing values in this debate; they are meant to reinforce one another. A process so slow that it functions as a reputational smear without a verdict serves neither the cause of justice nor the integrity of the military institutions involved.
The political dimension is also real. With a federal election approaching, the treatment of veterans and the management of the ADF's reputation will become campaign territory. Both major parties face pressure to demonstrate they can handle this with seriousness and care, without either minimising the gravity of the original allegations or abandoning the principle that the accused retain rights until proven guilty.
There is no clean resolution to offer here. Some cases may proceed to charges; others may not. What the Australian public, the veterans' community, and the families of Afghan victims have a right to expect is a process conducted with rigour, transparency, and a timeline that respects the dignity of everyone it touches.