After almost two decades of the Australian Defence Force’s involvement in Afghanistan, it takes something major for the crisis there to warrant national attention. Streaks of deadly car bombings and rocket strikes rarely register. Most don’t bat an eyelid at the new normalisation of relations with the Taliban and their sinister return to global prominence. Just recently, 22 promising scholars were slain during a shooting at Kabul University, where my own father studied some 40 years ago. Within hours, the news cycle had shifted elsewhere.

However, a damning report alleging that 39 Afghans were slain mercilessly by ADF soldiers was released on Thursday, after a four-year long investigation by Maj Gen Justice Paul Brereton. It found that all of the victims were non-combatants, including farmers, prisoners and children. Junior ADF soldiers were allegedly instructed by their superiors to enact executions in cold blood as part of a ‘blooding’ process to give them their first kill. Weapons and radios were placed on dead bodies to cover up the war crimes. According to the report, there was an air of competitiveness to killing Afghans, as though their murders were akin to sport or a video game.