So we are going to send another 450 young Australians to fight in Afghanistan. Some of these young men will die. Others will be fearfully injured. We’d better be very sure it is worth putting our people in harm’s way.
Kevin Rudd gave only two reasons: to prevent Australians dying from terrorism and to comply with our ANZUS treaty obligations.
Sending soldiers to occupy a foreign country far from our shores is no way to repress terrorism. If anything, the resentments created are apt to nourish terrorism and make us more of a target. The Taliban gain their traction from fighting foreign invaders and the al-Qaeda training camps are long gone anyway. The PM’s first reason makes no sense: getting Australians killed is no way to protect Australians.
As for his second reason, the ANZUS treaty imposes no obligation on Australia relevant to the Afghan conflict. The operative article provides:
The Parties will consult together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened in the Pacific.
The requirement is for consultation, not the sending of troops, and relates to threats in the Pacific — a theatre which on no view includes Afghanistan. Of course, the US no longer respects any obligation to our neighbour New Zealand under this treaty anyway.
Why are we in Afghanistan at all? What really are the aims of this war? How will we even know when we’ve won it? Unless there are clear answers to these questions, our involvement is immoral.
Nine days after the 9/11 attack, President George W Bush demanded that Afghanistan “deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al-Qaeda who hide in your land.” The demand was an ultimatum. President Bush said in his address to Congress “They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate.”
The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan asked for evidence to demonstrate Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the September 11 attacks. If such evidence warranted a trial, they offered to handle the trial in Afghanistan.
The US refused to offer any evidence. They made no request for extradition. There was no pretence of legal process. Like the leader of a Southern lynch mob, Dubya was sending in his boys to do rough justice on Osama bin Laden and wasn’t going to let legalities get in the way.
On 7 October 2001 the invasion began with a large-scale bombardment. The stated purpose was to capture Bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda, and remove the Taliban regime for harbouring them. For thousands of years, conquering armies had come to Afghanistan because of its strategic position at the crossroads of empires. Now it was invaded because it was a dead end backwater where a fugitive was hiding.
The US and its allies missed Osama bin Laden, so the rhetoric for the war changed. It was really, we were told, all about restoring democracy (often coupled with restoring the rights of women).
If this is the reason Australia sent troops to Afghanistan, it hasn’t worked. Sure, there now is a vote in Afghanistan for those where Kabul’s writ runs and that is something. But without more it does not amount to democracy. It is the essence of democracy to respect the rule of law and to listen to different voices. To go to war rather than go to law, to use force rather than negotiation, is the antithesis of the democratic ideal. Far from spreading democracy, the invasion has undermined it. At the same time, the new regime in Afghanistan has proved almost as oppressive to women as the Taliban.
More than seven years after the invasion, the Taliban remains a growing force precisely because of the western military presence. Tension with Pakistan and throughout the region has spread. There is no official record of civilian casualties, but the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan lists 2,118 Afghan civilians killed by armed conflict in 2008 alone. The civilians killed in Afghanistan now far outnumber those killed in the US on 9/11.
Afghanistan has been a sorry place for invaders. In 1839 the British amassed their huge Army of the Indus, which stretched for 30 miles when it marched. They invaded Afghanistan, engaged in regime change, but an insurgency slowly built up around them. When they finally retreated in 1842, only one man made it out to the British garrison at Jallalabad. More recently the Soviets, with far larger forces than those currently occupying the country, were eventually driven out.
Sending more troops to Afghanistan only exacerbates the folly of our involvement in the first place. Far from sending more troops, it’s time to bring our young men and women home.
Oh, how I loathe the fair-weather hawks who gleefully recapture 1839 and the British Army. Doesn’t that just prove how right we have all been all this time?
Yeah, right. Look, once the Taliban staked its future with al Qaida, that was it for the Alliance: no more of either could be allowed to rule Afghanistan.
The whole problem has been the excursis into Iraq and the one to two trillion dollars that could have transformed Afghanistan getting lost in Iraq and thousands and thousands of US casualties.
While it is five years too late, there is still time to fight the Afghan war properly and let freedom and justice reign where it can. The Afghanis often talk of being left to the Taliban after the US used them to drive out the Soviet Union. While things might get tough, this is the one site in the world where the Koran is being literally enacted in a brutopia that can be fought. Those who want to walk away betray the regular Afghanis with their peverse reasoning. It’s time we finished more ethically what we started less well.
But surely Walters’ piece was dovish, not that of a fairweather hawk. Afghanistan’s underlying problem is its very weak economy, so you should start by fixing that if you want to meddle in other peoples’ affairs.
I liked the article very much. The warlords and remnants of the Northern Alliance who control much of Afghanistan are certainly no better than the Taliban, and in many ways a lot worse, eg It appears that they are the ones responsible for the return to pre-Taliban levels of opium production. The real point is here though, what are we doing there and do we have any justification for being there. The answer to 1/ is: because the US wants us there, and 2/ NO. It is time perhaps that we learned the lessons that Cuba learned after Angola, that exporting doctors and teachers will win you lot more friends than exporting cluster bombs and hate.
Mike Crook
There are important issues touched on in Mr Walters’ article that really need more detailed analysis. For example, the Afghan’s had a secular nationalist government which came to power in 1978. Almost immediately the CIA, asssited by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs and opium traffickers. In September 1979 CIA asset Amin seized power in a coup. He attempted to reverse the reforms of the Tariki government. Within 2 months he was overthrown. All this happened befoere the Soviet intervention which occured at the request of the government. Carter’s national security adviser Brzeninski admitted that the US government was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the Afghan government. One of the mujihideen leaders financed and supported by the US was Osama bin Laden.
After the events of September 11 2001 as Mr Walters says, the Americans demanded that bin Laden be handed over. The ostensible reason for the demand was bin Laden’s alleged masterminding of the 9/11 attacks. We now know that the attacks had been decided on in July 2001 and were linked to the refusal of the Taliban government to agree to Unical’s pipeline plans. Two major executives of Unical were Condi Rice and Hamid Khazai. The Taliban not unreasonably demanded evidence of OBL’s involvement. The Americans refused.
It is important to note that the FBI’s website does not list OBL as wanted for the 9/11 attacks. When they were questioned about this they replied that they had “no hard evidence” linking OBL to 9/11.
Colin Powell promised a White Paper on the evidence of OBL’s involvement in 9/11 and had to withdraw that promise very soon after. The British duly stepped in and produced a document that even they admitted would not stand up in a court of law. Good enough to wage war on apparently, but not good enough for a court. There is plenty of evidence as to the true source of the 9/11 attacks, not that you will find any of that in the Australian media.
The UN Charter provides a limited legal basis for countries to attack another. Neither of the conditions permitted by the Charter pertain here.
In short the involvement of Australia in Afghanistan has no foundation in international law and is therefore illegal. The ostensible reasons are manifestly false and significantly have changed over the 7+ years we have been engaged in this futile and illegal exercise.
The time is long past when the involvement of Australia in Afghanistan is subject to critical scrutiny and Mr Walters’ article is to be commended on that basis. Much however remains to be said and done.