Photo Shows Australian Troop Drinking Out of Taliban Soldier's Prosthetic Leg
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Shocking pictures showing senior Australian special forces soldier drinking beer out of the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier in Afghanistan have gone viral.
One of several photographs obtained by The Guardian newspaper showed a senior soldier drinking from the prosthetic leg at a bar set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan Province, in 2009.
Another image appeared to show some soldiers performing a dance with the leg, which is believed to have belonged to a Taliban militant killed during an operation by foreign forces in Uruzgan in April 2009.
According to media reports, the leg was then taken from the battlefield and kept in the bar, where visitors would sometimes use it to drink from. It was later mounted on a wooden plaque under the heading Das Boot, alongside an Iron Cross — a military decoration used in Nazi Germany.
Some soldiers say the practice was widely tolerated by high-level officers and even involved some of them. They revealed that senior commanders would occasionally visit the bar and would have seen the leg and, potentially, the practice of drinking from it.
The publication of the sculling pictures confirmed previous reports of the practice of using the leg as a drinking vessel at headquarters in Perth, after it was brought back as a souvenir in 2009.
A spokesman for Australia’s department of defense issued a statement in response to the pictures, saying that all credible allegations of wrongdoing would be investigated.
The findings of an investigation published this month revealed that Australian soldiers “unlawfully” killed at least 39 Afghan civilians and inmates between 2005 and 2016.
The heavily-redacted 465-page report, released by Inspector-General of the Australian Defense Force (IGADF), found that senior commandos forced junior soldiers to kill defenseless captives in order to “blood” the troops for combat.
The latest images raise serious questions about the conduct of Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Australia, which is not a member of NATO, has had an active role in Afghanistan since the US, along with a number of its allies, invaded the country in 2001. That war and the subsequent occupation continue to this day, even as Australian combat troops have reportedly been pulled out.
The war has failed to stop militant activity in the country and restore security. The ongoing chaos has also paved the way for the Takfiri Daesh terror group to gain a foothold in eastern Afghanistan.
Australia still has about 1,500 troops remaining in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
More than 100,000 Afghans have been killed or injured since 2009, when the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began documenting casualties.
The United States has imposed sanctions on the top prosecutor of The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) probing whether American forces and their allies committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
