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Osama is dead but Afghanistan's war endures
Sydney Morning Herald - May 8, 2011
The Australians at risk are among the 1500 troops in Afghanistan. This time last year, 11 had been killed in a conflict Australia first entered in late 2001. In three savage months between June and August last year, another 10 were killed. Two more were killed in February this year, bringing the total to 23.
The troops are bracing for another bad year as the northern spring heralds the start of what's known as Afghanistan's fighting season. By the end of the year Afghanistan will have eclipsed our longest war, Vietnam.
Yet we claimed victory eight years ago. Since then explanations for being in the war have shifted, along with our on-again, off-again commitment.
Now, the death of Osama bin Laden is prompting questions about whether the al-Qaeda leader's demise changes the game in Afghanistan and heralds the war's end. And there's the wider question: Why are we in Afghanistan?
The federal government clings to a rationale that even some supporters of the commitment dispute: that we are there to fight al-Qaeda and protect Australia from terrorism.
According to a range of experts, the government is reluctant to stress the key strategic justification for our commitment. That crucial reason – support for the US alliance – remains hidden in plain sight, like bin Laden in a conspicuous compound in a Pakistan garrison town.
"Australia's engagement in Afghanistan was always, from the very start, to pay the premium for the alliance with the United States," said Benjamin Schreer, a senior lecturer in strategy and defence at ANU.
"But you can't go into the operation only on the grounds of supporting your ally," he said. "You have to have a broader cause of why your soldiers are dying and why you are spending considerable resources on the conflict. So saying: 'We want to make sure Afghanistan can govern itself and not become a haven for terrorists in the future', that's a rationale people can subscribe to."
It's not that governments have denied the alliance dimension. John Howard first sent troops after invoking the ANZUS Treaty after the September 11 attacks.
Since then, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have both cited the alliance as justification for our engagement. But their rhetoric stresses the primary aim – removing terrorists from Afghanistan and preventing their return.
Ms Gillard last week quashed any expectation that bin Laden's removal would hasten Australia's withdrawal. Instead, her message was: bin Laden might be dead, but al-Qaeda remains the enemy in Afghanistan.
"Al-Qaeda will continue," she told reporters, "so circumstances in Afghanistan continue to be difficult for our soldiers who work there." So the enemy is not primarily the indigenous Afghan Taliban, but al-Qaeda terrorists with a global agenda.
Foreign Minister Rudd also argued last week that Australian troops were "doing the hard-edged stuff, which is working against Taliban operatives on the ground and al-Qaeda operatives".
Yet in response to The Sunday Age's questions, neither Mr Rudd, nor Defence Minister Stephen Smith nor the ADF would say when or where Australian troops had encountered al-Qaeda fighters. Nor does there appear to be any reference in the ADF's public statements to Australians fighting al-Qaeda since 2002.
Australia's allies in the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, reported 25 al-Qaeda fighters were killed last month. If true, the deaths reduce al-Qaeda numbers in Afghanistan to fewer than 100, based on statements by US officers. The US and its allies have 130,000 troops there.
A senior ISAF officer has told The Sunday Age there is no evidence of an al-Qaeda presence in the south of Afghanistan, including Oruzgan province where Australians are based.
In late 2002, then special forces commander Brigadier Duncan Lewis asserted al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had been either destroyed or driven from the country. And the then defence minister Robert Hill said al-Qaeda had suffered a "shattering psychological blow".
By 2005, however, with the Taliban resurgent, Mr Howard sent special forces back. A year later he sent more troops on a reconstruction mission.
Since 2008, the rhetoric has been about building the capacity of Afghan forces. The allies hope this task can be achieved by 2014.
In all of this, we have followed the US, yet Canberra and Washington are in Afghanistan for fundamentally different reasons, says strategic analyst Hugh White. Australia's reason is to support the US. Washington's is to destroy al-Qaeda. "But it's not enough that we turn up. We have to turn up for the same reasons that America turns up," says Professor White, a former senior defence official and now head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU.
"If we say we're just there to support the US, that doesn't help the US government sell the message at home or internationally, that fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is a good idea. Therefore, in order to achieve the strategic objectives we've set ourselves, we have to somewhat misrepresent what those objectives are."
Unlike Professor White, his ANU colleague William Maley sees a compelling argument for Australia and the West to remain, yet it's an argument our government doesn't promote. Instead, it uses the "nonsense argument" that "we are fighting terrorists over there, so we won't have to fight them here", says Professor Maley, director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at ANU.
Yet abandoning an unstable Afghanistan would boost extremist groups there and in Pakistan, with the risk of a terrorist attack on India and the inevitable response. This scenario – a conflict between nuclear powers – is probably the strongest reason for staying in Afghanistan, Professor Maley says. "But that's not the kind of argument that political leaders advance to market a deployment of forces overseas to the general public."
On Friday US Defence Secretary Robert Gates described bin Laden's death as a "game changer" in the war, but cautioned it could be six months for its impact to be apparent.
Which means any change will come only after this year's fighting season. If coming months bring heavier Australian and allied casualties, allied countries will "encourage" ISAF to meet its 2014 handover date, regardless of conditions on the ground, says analyst Christopher Snedden.
In a commentary written before bin Laden's killing, Dr Snedden, a former defence intelligence analyst, said it was unlikely the Taliban would be defeated by 2014. He wrote: "Almost certainly... ISAF will leave an unstable, weak and insecure Afghanistan. (For this nation to become otherwise will require decades.) Post-ISAF, a new conundrum will then be: after 13 years, what did we actually achieve in Afghanistan? War is an awful thing. A futile war is even more awful. I hope I am wrong."
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