Diggers’ Web

Australian soldiers serving in Iraq as part of Operation Catalyst have become accustomed to bad news and unwanted publicity. The mysterious death of sniper Private Jake Kovco in his room in a Baghdad barracks in April—and a bungle over the repatriation of his body—was a private tragedy that escalated into a public-relations disaster for the Australian Defence Force and the Howard government. Now the ADF’s image is under assault again. Last month, a man claiming to have served eight years in the Australian Army published on Youtube.com pictures and videos that appear to feature serious wrongdoing by Diggers during 2004 and 2005 operations in Baghdad.

Along with images of the charred corpses of individuals killed in explosions, some from an initial batch of 14 videos seem to show Iraqis fraternizing with Australian troops—potentially jeopardizing the locals’ safety. Others show soldiers exposing themselves and wielding pistols in apparent breach of safety protocols. In one image, a soldier points a pistol at the head of a kneeling man, possibly another Australian soldier, dressed in Arab robes and headdress. A former Military Police officer who reviewed the videos for Time described their content as not only disgusting but in breach of military procedure and operational security. “To post that kind of stuff on the Internet is quite derogatory to the uniform,” says the man, who asked not to be named for security reasons.

To cope with the monotony of downtime in Baghdad, Australian troops reportedly held an unofficial video-making competition. According to two former soldiers who served in Iraq, the troops produced what may have amounted to thousands of videos, many of them edited in an Army-provided computer room. Most of the videos on the website feature soldiers from a unit of the Darwin-based 2 Cavalry regiment which provided security for Australian diplomats in Baghdad until 2005. Someone referred to as Sean, who goes by the Internet nickname of pomstar, takes credit on the website for posting the videos. Sean writes that he spent “eight years in the Australian army, serving in a few places … But my best one was Iraq, hope you enjoy some of my videos, most are mine that I’ve put together, but a few have been sent to me from mat (sic).” Last week, a video premiered on Youtube posted by “Gruntss”. From another secdet, the clip showed Australians skylarking with their Browning pistols.

Most of the videos posted on Youtube, whose authenticity Time spent several weeks verifying, feature images from Australian security detachment (secdet) operations around the Baghdad headquarters known as the Flats during 2004 and 2005, and at Al Muthanna in southern Iraq. One of the videos, titled Rip It Up—a 4-min. montage of still and moving images set to rock music—is credited to “3 Troop B Squad 2 Cav” and is followed by the letters V-23, a possible reference to the squad’s call sign.

While Rip It Up includes images from U.S. military operations, it chiefly shows Australians on operations and in their barracks—and includes the image of the soldier aiming at a crouching man in Arab dress. Another video, 3 Troop, shows images of a soldier apparently practicing quick-draw techniques with his pistol; the sequence ends with him pointing the gun directly at the camera. While evidence of lax weapons-handling practices emerged at the current military inquiry into Kovco’s death, questions remain over whether the commission conducting the inquiry was aware of all relevant soldier-made videos. As well as images of charred bodies, some of the clips show Iraqis socializing with Australians inside the barracks. The airing of their images raises concerns for their safety—locals who work with Coalition forces are regularly targeted by insurgents.

Gordon Traill, a former warrant officer who served in secdet 4 in Baghdad in early 2004, says he was not aware that any videos of his fellow troops had been posted on the Web. But he confirmed that photography by soldiers is tolerated. “The only time you could not take cameras was when you went to Abu Ghraib [prison],” he says. Dr. Ben Wadham, a former Military Police member who is now a lecturer at Adelaide’s Flinders University specializing in army culture, described some of the posted images as “trophy shots.” He said soldiers would be admonished if they were found to have photographed corpses or for behavior that might bring the ADF into disrepute. In Wadham’s view, the image of the soldier aiming at the crouching man’s head is incendiary. “That shot would be absolutely volatile to the Army at the moment,” he says, because of the Kovco inquiry.

After being alerted to the existence of the videos on Sept. 15, an ADF spokesman told Time that the force would investigate the matter. By late next afternoon, the military had tracked down the men responsible for posting the images. Time then began publishing stories about the trove of videos on our websites. Late on Saturday, Sept. 16, the images were removed from Youtube. The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, confirmed that the man who posted 14 of the videos had left the Army but said he could still face official action. The ADF will now investigate whether any others involved in videos will be disciplined or dismissed from the force. “I’m very disappointed at the inappropriateness of some of the images when you trawl through all the stuff,” Houston told Time. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said he found the behavior depicted in the videos “offensive and unacceptable” and had asked for a full report on the ADF investigation. As to whether the Iraqis who appeared in the soldiers’ videos had been warned that their safety might have been compromised, Houston says, “We will be having a close look…Where we feel the security of an individual is at risk we will be doing everything we can to make sure they feel safe.”

The writer can be contacted via Rory_Callinan@timeinc.com.au