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Even for Afghans like me, the details of what some of Australia’s SAS soldiers had been accused of in Afghanistan came to light very late. They only began to surface after a handful of journalists chose to listen to Afghans who had been ignored for years and gave space to families who had long been silenced.

For a long time, these claims – of unlawful killings, or war crimes – had lived quietly in Afghan villages. They were shared between families, in grief and disbelief, but rarely went beyond that. People didn’t have the language, the media access or the financial means to make themselves heard. Outside those small, dusty villages, almost no one knew what had really happened. By the time these allegations made headlines in Australia, soldiers had long left Afghanistan. What stayed behind was a pain and a silence that felt endless.

Living in Melbourne, I got a glimpse into this pain while helping translate interviews for an SBS program about alleged war crimes. During this process, I listened to interviews with the people of Uruzgan province that have stayed with me ever since. They spoke about night raids, about loved ones taken away, about children watching things they could not understand. These were not distant or abstract claims – they were personal, human stories, told with hesitation and heartbreak. Women and children living on the edge of poverty and hunger, their bodies visibly worn, their faces thin, their eyes heavy with sadness.

The houses that had been described in military language as “targets” or “sites” were, in truth, ordinary family homes made in the traditional way, with a new layer of mud every time the rainy season cracked it. Places where people ate together, slept, argued, laughed and tried to live normal lives.

When the Brereton report was released in 2020, it confirmed what many of these Afghan families had been saying all along – that there were allegations of unlawful killings of Afghans by Australian forces. But even then, justice didn’t follow quickly. The process moved slowly, and for those waiting, every year added to their pain.

We often hear the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied.” For these families, that was not just an expression, it was their lives.

One moment I remember from watching the interviews has stayed with me. A man, a neighbour of one of the alleged victims, pauses during an interview. He looked tired, overwhelmed under a scorching sun. Then he said, half-joking but clearly frustrated, “These foreigners have messed up my brain since morning. I haven’t even had tea or food, and they keep asking the same questions again and again and don’t seem to understand what I am saying.”

It sounded almost funny at first, but it wasn’t. It showed the exhaustion of repeating painful memories, over and over, without knowing if anything would change. For him, justice wasn’t about legal language or headlines. It was about being heard and believed without having to relive everything endlessly.

When Australia’s most decorate soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, was arrested last week, charged with “five counts of war crime – murder” in relation to three incidents, reactions among Afghans in Australia were mixed. Some welcomed it as a step towards justice. Others felt his prosecution had come far too late. More than a decade had passed since the alleged crimes were said to have occurred. For many, the delay has already taken something away from them.

At the same time, it’s important to recognise something else. In the context of the Afghan war, this kind of accountability is rare. The Brereton inquiry has paved the way for the Australian government to acknowledge potential wrongdoing and it has now led to criminal charges. That doesn’t erase the pain, but it does show a willingness to face uncomfortable truths, something not all countries have done.

Still, the long wait has made it harder for people to feel that justice will be served. And that raises a bigger question: can justice ever really reach the victims of a bloody and reckless war?

War is shaped by the decisions of powerful men far away from the battle lines, and often framed in the cold language of military speak. That’s why moments of accountability matter even more, even if they come late. Not because they fix everything, but because they show that actions still have real consequences for real people.

For the families who lived through these events, nothing can bring back what they lost. But being recognised, being heard and having their stories taken seriously still matters. Because in the end, justice is not only about punishment. It is also about acknowledgment. It is about making sure that what happened is not ignored, not denied and not forgotten.

• Shadi Khan Saif is an editor, producer and journalist who has worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany and Australia