New York Times Magazine, 30 September 2025
A smashing five-part series by Matt Aikins about US military atrocities committed in Afghanistan, many of them by instrumentalising “proxy-force” programs.
Here one scene from part 1:
He told his men to release the detainee from the main gate; he and another Special Forces operator, meanwhile, slipped out and waited on Rasoul’s path down the road. Golsteyn watched him come closer; when his target was 15 yards away, he stepped out and raised his rifle. For a moment, the two men looked at each other. Then Golsteyn pulled the trigger.
Goldstein’s explanation:
“I believe I did the right thing.” (…) To Golsteyn, it was simply an error to apply domestic values abroad. “I’m not in America.
Many people agreed. Foremost among them was a Fox News host named Pete Hegseth…
This name that is familiar by now, it belongs to the US’s current ‘minister of war.’
However, Aikins’s conclusions are almost more worrying than the detail:
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (…) a pattern of rule-breaking and outright criminality arose within America’s elite forces (…). … this outlaw ethos emerged from the murky terrain of irregular warfare.
And the described atrocities, “far from being aberrations, were a product of [this] irregular war full of moral and legal contradictions.”
Aikins writes about one episode which, he believes, “was most likely one of the largest known cases of unlawful killing by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan”, in Nerkh, Wardak province.
They were part of a methodical campaign carried out over months by an elite, experienced force, one that grew out of rule-breaking practices that were long tolerated by Special Forces commanders. What happened at Nerkh might have been exceptional, but it was not isolated. And like the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the critical lesson of Nerkh is that similar crimes of lesser magnitude could have been committed without the American public ever knowing.
In not dealing with those atrocities, but practically condoning them, he sees a “systemic failures in military accountability.” And adds: “The true extent of such practices by Special Operations forces is most likely unknowable.”
The victims of those atrocities are another, unreported gropu of victims in the wars and rule of oppressive regimes in Afghanistan. There also needs to be an international tribunal for them. In Aikins’s articles, you can look some of them into the eyes.
And one more chilling thing:
Today the vigilante figure of the operator, whose battle against evil requires him to act outside the law, has become a model for unrestrained force both abroad and at home [my emphasis].
It is used by the Trump administration to suppress protests such as against the ICE sweeps against immigrants and dissidents.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 5 Nov 2025
