THE AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT AND AUSTRALIA’S ROLE .
Edited by Amin Saikal.
Melbourne University Press. 210pp.
Reviewed: 30 July 2011
Why are Australians fighting, killing and dying in Afghanistan? Surveys of Australian opinion suggest a confusion that crosses party lines, just as the official explanations from politicians of both major parties sound increasingly ritualistic.
Are we there to “defeat” an enemy that is barely distinguishable from the majority of the Afghan population, or to force a predominantly feudal, illiterate and isolated population to accept Western social and political values that took us centuries of bloodshed to hammer out? Or are we there to prove that the Western political/economic hegemony can still defeat any challenge from an upstart, politicized Islam? Or just to prove, to the USA, that we are a loyal ally?
It would be hard to beat the qualifications of the contributors to a conference on this topic at the Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (also covering Central Asia) in October 2009. Sadly, their contributions are, if anything, more urgently relevant today than two years ago. The critiques of Australia’s involvement are today more evidently true, the rationales for current policy more challenged, and our politicians apparently further out of step with their international peers within the general Western alliance.
It’s not clear how the live symposium was structured, in this book the official government and military positions are presented well after their claims and rationales have already been shredded in earlier chapters. This makes it tough going for Colonel Mike Kelly (PhD), former Army Legal officer now Parliamentary Secretary, and Lt-General Mark Evans, then Chief of Joint Operations and formerly responsible for Australia’s Iraq and Afghanistan engagements. Whatever Kelly’s personal views, his presentation appears heavily vetted by the political and military PR machinery that is itself scathingly attacked by other contributors.
General Evans’ contribution shows signs of similar political discretion except for a couple of significant lines of strategic reserve. Noting other demands on Australia’s defence forces, Evans states that Australia must “balance its commitment [in Afghanistan] against the correct and prospective tasks the ADF may be called upon to perform in Australia’s nearer region”. Even if this is a typesetting error for “current and prospective tasks” (there are quite a few uncorrected typos in this book), we register the query over Afghanistan’s military priority for Australia, from a most responsible officer.
Ten years ago, the Western alliance invaded Afghanistan on a specific mission to catch bin Laden, destroy al Qaeda, and punish the Taliban regime for hosting them. With the Taliban chased from Kabul by superior firepower, the US and its allies found themselves landed with every social, economic and political problem that Afghanistan had thrown up over the centuries, with few of these problems usefully soluble with either guns or money.
Prof Amin Saikal, head of the centre and chair of the conference, opens the book with his survey of Afghanistan as a country that has no real sense of nationhood, but a mosaic of ethnic, historical and religious polities left by centuries of empires, personal fiefdoms, and tribal migrations. Islam, while a common point of identity for most Afghans, does not itself foster national identity, though it reinforces resistance to intervention by non-Muslims. The Bush regime’s ham-fisted attempts to impose democracy in America’s image, by military means, have produced an Afghan government that has no legitimacy or respect among most Afghans, and is infested with nepotistic kleptocrats feasting on the inflow of misdirected Western money.
Saikal suggests the only practical way forward involves abandoning the US-style presidential centralized government for something that is more recognizably an “Islamic democracy”, even if this disappoints those impatient for the full range of liberal social change. It also involves rigorously curbing Pakistan’s fostering of Pashtun actors for its own strategic objectives.
Prof Nazif Sharrani chairs America’s pre-eminent Central Asian study centre at the University of Indiana. He is even more trenchant in identifying Afghanistan’s woes as the inheritance of meddling by imperial and colonial powers, past and present. He sees a radically decentralized Afghanistan as the necessary first step to building any effective longer-term sense of nationality above tribe.
Hugh White’s dissects the failure of Western strategy at every level from conception to execution. Centrally, he disputes that Western (and Australian) military involvement can be effective in any “hearts and minds” campaign or civil reconstruction, because every civil initiative becomes tainted by the organized violence that is the overt purpose of any military presence. He also warns of the trap, so often exploited by politicians, of claiming that a retreat or admission of strategic failure would “dishonour” those soldiers who have already made personal sacrifices on the ground. Similarly, he notes how US (and Australian) policy and was too often manipulated by military claims that “victory” could be assured with more guns and men. He believes the Obama administration has already rejected that mirage of military victory, bringing some hope for more practicable and humane policy over time.
Prof William Maley’s contribution on civil reconstruction applies similar principles, noting the chaotic and uncoordinated efforts of multiple international, national and non-government agencies pushing projects that, whilst worthy in motivation, stand little chance of long-term viability so long as there is no stable Afghan state to support them, no legal framework, no sustainable economy, and no social consensus on national objectives or priorities.
In that context the Karzai government’s plans, presented by Mahmoud Saikal, for rebuilding the infrastructure of Kabul with $500million of foreign money, look worthy, but with what chance of surviving Western military withdrawal? Could a modern Kabul, foreign-funded but beset by literally millions of rural refugees, float long above a sea of schismatic and feudal provinces?
Virginia Hausegger’s account of women’s rights activism again identifies worthy efforts and objectives that appear doomed, in the medium term, for lack of secure legal and political foundations upon which to graft aspirational social change.
Beth Eggleston, of Oxfam, makes the telling point that the engagement of military forces in civil and social reconstruction efforts (of which the Australian military are so proud) has the unintended consequence of tainting all reconstruction efforts by association with the invaders, and hence exposing even NGOs to hostile labeling as accessories to those military invaders.
Contributions by Tom Hyland (The Age) and Kevin Foster (Monash University) are both highly critical of the extent of information control and manipulation practised by the Defence and political PR machines with regard to Australia’s engagement. They claim this far exceeds the degree of control imposed even by Australia’s allies in the field, and blame it for reducing debate in Australia down to the level of supporting the home team.
So if our sacrifices are misplaced, our international allies are planning or implementing their exits, and even our own experts doubt the “strategy” of being there, what keeps us in Afghanistan? Do both major parties fear being called chicken if they withdraw or refocus on civilian assistance? Perhaps we need to question the quality of our own democracy before insisting that others copy us.
This is a valuable collection of authoritative and provocative views, easily readable, and should be read by anyone interested in Australia’s role in the world.
Richard Thwaites has been a foreign correspondent and a bureaucrat engaged with international affairs, and has family links to Central Asia.