'The Kill Team' Follows American Troops Intentionally Murdering Innocent Afghans. It's Based On a True Story.
A24’s latest film, The Kill Team, stars Big Little Lies’s Alexander Skarsgard as an American soldier who leads some of his fellow troops in committing a string of atrocities in Afghanistan. But if the title sounds familiar, that’s because it was also given to a 2013 documentary from the same filmmaker, Dan Krauss.
Though character names are changed in the narrative film, it’s still based on the shocking true story Krauss originally told in his documentary—and here’s what you need to know.
What crimes are the men accused of?
In 2010, news broke that soldiers from a Washington-based Army brigade were being accused with murdering civilians in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, posing with their corpses, and taking their body parts as trophies.
According to most involved in the killings, one man was the mastermind of the murders: squad leader Calvin Gibbs. At the time, Gibbs was a 25-year-old year old from Billings, Montana. He struggled before joining the army, and the New York Times reported that he acquired only one of the 20 credits required to graduate his high school before being sent to alternative school where he earned a G.E.D. By the time he earned the degree, he had already enlisted.
Gibbs joined Bravo Company as a squad leader in late 2009. Later, the men he served with would report that he told them that they could get away with murdering Afghans by killing innocent people and planting weapons near their bodies. Here’s how Mark Boal described the killing of 15-year-old Gul Mudin by Bravo Company soldiers Jeremy Morlock and Andrew Holmes in a 2011 article for Rolling Stone:
He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. “He was not a threat,” Morlock later confessed.
Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still.
The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun.
After the murder, the soldiers told Army authorities that Mudin had attacked them with the grenade, and that the killing was justified. Staff Sergent Gibbs reportedly cut off one of the boys fingers and gave it to Holmes. “He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out,” one of his friends told Rolling Stone. “He was proud of his finger.”
Over the next four months, soldiers from the same platoon went onto kill at least two more innocent men.
How were the murders discovered?
Not all the soldiers felt comfortable with the killing. Krauss’s Kill Team films focus on one young man, then-20-year-old Adam Winfield, who was disturbed by the actions of his fellow soldiers. In the narrative film, his character is given the name Andrew Briggman and played by Nat Wolff. “There are people in my platoon that have gotten away with murder,” he told his father via Facebook message. "They all don’t care."
Winfield’s father, himself a veteran, raised his son’s reports with military authorities, who he said dismissed his concerns. The Army later told ABC that while the Winfields had called their son’s base, they had "failed to leave a message with the criminal investigations unit."
When Gibbs became aware of Winfield’s feelings, he reportedly threatened him into silence. "Gibbs made threats to Spc. Winfield about taking his life," Morlock would later tell authorities. "The first scenario was Ssg. Gibbs was going to take him to the gym and drop a weight on his neck. The second scenario was Ssg. Gibbs was going to take him to the motor pool and drop a tow bar on him."
In the Kill Team documentary, Winfield describes being terrified of his fellow soldiers—so terrified that he later took part in the murder of clergyman Mullah Allah Dad out of fear of attracting Gibbs’ wrath. He said that he never wanted to kill the 45-year-old father, and that he aimed his gun away from the man.
In the end, it was another soldier who directly complained to his superiors—though not about the killings, but about the fact that his company members had made a habit of smoking hashish in his room. Word of this complaint by Private Justin Stoner made it back to Gibbs, who, alongside six other soldiers, retaliated by beating Stoner up, and threatening to kill him should he report on them again. At the end, Gibbs reportedly tossed two decayed human fingers at Stoner’s feet, warning him of what he was capable of.
Stoner later spoke to investigators after a medic spotted his injuries. He told them everything, including that Gibbs had obtained the fingers by murdering innocents.
Where are the soldiers now?
Eleven soldiers were eventually convicted of misconduct ranging from drug abuse to murder. Five were accused by the Army of being part of the “kill team,” and though one man’s charges were eventually dropped, Gibbs was convicted of murder and Morlock, Holmes, and Winfield plead guilty to murder or manslaughter charges. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from a life sentence for Gibbs to three years for Winfield. Holmes and Winfield have since been released, though Gibbs’ appeal was denied in 2018.
"War is dirty," says Winfield at the end of the Kill Team documentary. "It’s not how they portray it in movies, where there’s just a bunch of honorable men with unshakeable patriotism. It’s just a bunch of guys with guns."
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