Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

The gravity of the debate about our ongoing commitment to Afghanistan is given added significance by its life or death context for those who wear the Australian defence uniform. At present there are 1,550 Australians serving in Afghanistan, an important contribution to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force. The Australian government and parliament should, and I am sure do, hold each of those lives very precious. Our mission in Afghanistan has already cost 21 precious lives. That loss is keenly felt by everybody in this place, of that I have no doubt.

But to say that the loss of 21 lives means that Australia should withdraw from this mission, that the price is too high, as the Greens have certainly asserted, is to measure only one part of this equation. It is important for us, as elected representatives, to clearly lay out before the Australian people the reasons why we are involved in Afghanistan and, more critically perhaps, why we need to continue to be involved in Afghanistan. We owe it to the families of those who have lost loved ones and to those who are currently deployed to do that.

At the outset I note the coalition’s ongoing and unwavering support for this mission and for our troops in this conflict who have performed admirably in dangerous and challenging circumstances. It is worth remembering that as well as the 21 lost lives, 156 have been wounded in our name. There is no greater sacrifice that a nation can ask of its people, and their bravery will be remembered.

In that context, I would like to address some key issues in this debate: the threat of terrorism, the Australian commitment to Afghanistan and why our commitment is in the national interest, and, finally, the challenges we face in the future.

Since the attacks on the United States in September 2001, Australia and the rest of the world have lived in the shadow of a larger, more ominous terrorism than we had previously seen, perpetrated by the network of extremists who have hijacked Islam for their own ideological and murderous ends. Nine years on, this is not a threat we can take lightly. Countless thousands have been murdered in attacks across the globe, with New York, Madrid, London, Casablanca, Istanbul and Bali amongst them. According to the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, 17,833 separate terrorist attacks globally are thought to have been perpetrated by Islamic extremists since September 2001. The US National Counterterrorism Center’s 2009 report indicates that, in that year alone, 50,000 people were killed or wounded in terrorist attacks, of which, interestingly, half were themselves Muslim. This very real and present threat has resulted in the deaths of 111 Australians and an attack upon our embassy in Indonesia.

But, of course, this begs the question: what is the link between those deaths and Afghanistan? The ideologically extreme Taliban, which took power in Afghanistan, ran what can only be described as a theocratic dictatorship, founded on the most extreme interpretations of Islam, funded by opium and the narcotics trade and ruthlessly enforced by stonings, beheadings and the most horrific human rights abuses. The savage fundamentalism at work here can be seen symbolically in the destruction of the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in 2001, an act of blind ideological purity if ever there were one. It was from this safe haven in Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were able to train terrorists as well as orchestrate and execute attacks upon foreign nationals, culminating in the attacks of September 11. Indeed, the lawless nature of Afghanistan proved a magnet for other extremist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other al-Qaeda affiliates. Whilst these groups were not indigenous to Afghanistan, the safe haven created by the Taliban allowed them to develop the capacity to commit crimes against targets in their respective countries.

The deaths of 88 Australians in 2002, and four more in 2005, in Bali at the hands of those trained in Afghanistan demonstrates, I think, very graphically that we have a real and immediate—a seminal—interest in addressing the activities of terrorists in Afghanistan itself. It is undoubtedly in Australia’s national interest to be involved in that country to prevent it from serving as a safe haven for terrorists into the future.

Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan began in 2001, when the Prime Minister at the time, Mr Howard, invoked article IV of the ANZUS treaty. I believe this was the right action to take in support of our most important ally and friend. It is fanciful to imagine that Australia can protect its national interests, especially when they are under threat at the global level in the form of international terrorism, without extensive and close cooperation with and, support for, other nations sharing a similar need to protect their parallel national interests. The rapid collapse of Taliban and al-Qaeda power in Afghanistan pursuant to a UN mandate demonstrated the tenuous hold that the Taliban had on power and political legitimacy within that country. The swift strike against those organisations crippled both groups in Afghanistan and created breathing space in Kabul and other coalition held towns and villages to begin the process of rebuilding. Indeed, it provided the necessary stability for the recreation of the Afghan state, supported by the international community in the 2001 Bonn agreement, which drafted a new Afghan constitution, adopted in 2004.

I want to quote part of the preamble to that constitution to see what is at stake in that country. The constitution states that its aim is to:

Strengthen national unity, safeguard independence, national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country;

Establish an order based on the peoples’ will and democracy;

Form a civil society void of oppression, atrocity, discrimination as well as violence, based on rule of law, social justice, protecting integrity and human rights, and attaining peoples’ freedoms and fundamental rights;

Strengthen political, social, economic as well as defense institutions;

Attain a prosperous life and sound living environment for all inhabitants of this land;

I ask those who have in effect defended the Taliban regime by virtue of their support for Australia withdrawing from that country to consider the aspirations of the Afghan people in those words. I do not pretend that Afghanistan has attained those goals at this point and I have to say I do not necessarily suggest that we can be certain that it will one day attain those goals. Afghanistan’s democratic institutions are fragile and many of the steps it is taking in the direction of these things might not be completed. Indeed, steps backwards are quite possible in these circumstances. But I think that should be expected. We ought to acknowledge the size of the challenge that country faces, in concert with other nations, to achieve the sorts of goals that it has set itself through its constitution.

Some senators have criticised the deficiencies in the Afghan national institutions; they are right to do so, but not as the basis for suggesting that we abandon this attempt for a better society in that country. What is there is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction, one Australia should defend until it becomes clear that such action is futile. An Afghanistan that is secure enough to pursue these goals—to ensure domestic stability, to secure the rights of women and girls and to assume a place as a responsible actor on the global stage—is absolutely, unquestionably in Australia’s national interest.

The Howard government committed a Reconstruction Task Force in Oruzgan province in coordination with the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team. Since 2008 that mission has focused on a mentoring task force to train the Afghan National Army’s 4th Brigade. That task has continued with the Dutch withdrawal from Oruzgan in August this year. In addition, our Special Forces Task Group continues to operate in the province and neighbouring province of Kandahar to eliminate or capture Taliban elements in coordination with our allies. This important activity provides the necessary environment in which the ANA’s 4th Brigade can be adequately trained and governance and infrastructure in the province can be improved. The calibre and capability of Australian Special Forces is recognised by our alliance partners and, indeed, our foes, and I pay tribute to their ongoing dedication and professionalism.

Australia’s contribution to the rebuilding of a civil society in Afghanistan can be said to be, in one sense, modest. But, like every stone in a bridge, it is a vital contribution to stability and growth in the whole edifice. The goal of training the ANA 4th Brigade to the extent to which they are able to secure and stabilise Oruzgan is important to the broader goal of an Afghanistan that never again serves as a haven for Islamic extremism. It is a challenging goal and the risks are by no means few, but this goal is clearly in our national interest. Australia and its ISAF partners have made significant achievements in this regard. According to a report in 2010 issued by an independent non-government organisation in Afghanistan, since 2006 there has been an increase in the availability and diversity of crops and seeds, reducing the reliability on opium as a cash crop; an increase in health services and health posts from 130 to 300, including a midwifery school; an increase in health facilities from nine to 17; an increase in schools from 34 to 159, including 29 schools for girls—remembering that there were no such things in the past; an increase in media outlets from three to 8; an increase in mobile phone coverage; and an increase in security forces for the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army.

These developments in civil society and governance in Oruzgan reinforce the broader strategic Australian and ISAF goal. The solution in Oruzgan and across Afghanistan was never going to be a purely military one. It is, of course, impossible to simply kill one’s way to victory. Winning hearts and minds in the villages in a counterinsurgency operation is as important as the ability to defeat the Taliban in the field and convince them to give up their arms and embrace the constitution.

What if we were to withdraw tomorrow? If we were to follow the advice of those who say that this is not our problem and not in our national interest to continue risking blood and treasure, we risk a very real possibility of Afghanistan once more being a safe haven for terrorism. It would also pose risks, I think, to Pakistan’s domestic security, which of course has implications for the rest of South Asia. It would very likely increase the flow of asylum seekers to Australia’s shores. It would, I think, have an impact on Australia’s relations with the US and our other alliance partners. Australia has never been a fair-weather friend, and now is not the time to start. Nor would it appear wise or in our strategic interests to give succour to extremists in the Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, Chechnya, Pakistan or, indeed, to those within our own society who might contemplate the value of extremism.

I believe that taking ourselves out of Afghanistan would also betray the commitment and the sacrifice of those who have already made an important contribution to our mission. General Cantwell, the Australian commander in Afghanistan, says the hard work of the ADF in Oruzgan is beginning to yield results. He said recently, ‘We have finally got the thing in our grasp or near our hands to start to exploit the advantages we have won with so much hard effort.’

I want to make reference to the position of the Greens in this debate. I want to say at the outset that I welcome the Greens’ decision to push for this debate to be brought on. I think that it is timely and necessary. It is important for Australians, particularly those in uniform, to hear their elected members’ justification for Australian involvement in this conflict. That however is where I part company with the Australian Greens. I listened carefully to Senator Bob Brown’s speech on Monday. It was a sort of keynote speech in this debate, because it was his party that caused this issue to be brought forward in this way. I thought that speech was a disgrace. It was meandering and it spent most of its allotted time hitting the Left’s favourite hot buttons on this war. Reference to Donald Rumsfeld’s speech about what we know and what we do not know was utterly out of place in a debate as important as this—about Australians and their role in a place like Afghanistan.

This was the speech where Australians ought to have expected to hear the cool, rational, statesmanlike case for Australian withdrawal; instead, they heard a diatribe, a ramble that glossed over the obvious weaknesses in the Greens’ case. I was to refer to some of those weaknesses quite specifically. In his speech, Senator Brown asserted that there was another option to involvement in securing peace in Afghanistan through the use of our military forces. He suggested that we ought to be providing more aid. He said in a speech on 18 March 2010:

We think the best way for that to happen is for Australia to replace its troop involvement with greater civilian aid and for there to be greater effort internationally, to give the Afghani people the increase in standard of living that will enable their nation to prosper into the future.

How do the Greens expect aid workers, in very difficult circumstances, to be kept safe if there are no troops on the ground? How do the Greens expect Afghans to prosper if the country is little more than a narcostate and the plaything of extremists, providing safe haven to those who would threaten not just our but also their sense of security? The naivety of saying that aid money could do the job without the security of arms around that aid exercise simply knocks you over with its lack of realism. The deaths of aid workers recently in parts of Afghanistan—I think in the north of Afghanistan—illustrate how dangerous aid work is in that country. Paul Kelly, in the Australian of 6 October, described the Greens’ policy in this area as:

... a world view, documented point by point, stunning in its isolationist utopian pacifist philosophy, unsuitable for the responsibility of nationhood. Long ignored, it needs to see sunlight.

I expected that we would get something of that in Senator Brown’s speech and the speech of other Greens in the course of this debate this week. But all too often the issues that underpin their argument that we can do without assisting the allied force in Afghanistan were simply not there—they were missing.

Wars are not, of course, without risk. They are not entered into lightly and it would be only the truly naive who enter into them expecting to avoid hardship or knowing exactly how they will end. The 19th century military strategist Clausewitz argued that ‘war is an extension of politics but by other means.’ If this is the case, then war should only be entertained in order to advance the interest of the state. I believe that Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan is, at the present time, right and in the national interest.

I read recently in Tony Blair’s autobiography, A Journey, the following interesting quotes:

But here is the point: if a system is malfunctioning, it does need to change, whether that change be gradual or abrupt.

In some cases of regimes that are oppressive and dictatorial, there is nonetheless a process of evolution that is discernible in the right direction. The reforms may be slow, but there is a direction and it’s benign; or at least it is not threatening.

In other cases, the regime’s very nature lies in its oppression. It has chosen to be what it is. It will not change, not by evolution, not by the exercise of its own will—because that will is directed towards oppression—and for a long time, at least, it will not change by the will of the people who, because they are oppressed, lack the means to overthrow the regime. Its malign nature will deepen.

If those words were to apply to any regime at any time in the lifetime of people in this chamber, surely it would apply to the regime operated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Suggesting that we can somehow deal with the obvious and serious breaches of human rights inherent in the operation of terrorism generally and the Taliban specifically in Afghanistan demonstrates a great lack of historic knowledge. I wonder what the Greens would have said had they been around at the time when Australia entered into the Second World War—what they would have said about Australians going off to fight on distant shores against Hitler. I cannot help but wonder whether they would have echoed the sorts of lines that they are using today with respect to Afghanistan.

I want to finish by quoting Dr Brendan Nelson, former Minister for Defence:

To those Australians who question our deployment to Afghanistan, please understand that our generation is engaged in an epic struggle against resurgent totalitarianism. This is a global insurgency driven by disparate groups. They have hijacked the good name of Islam to build a violent political utopia. More than 100 innocent Australians have already been murdered in Bali, Jakarta and New York at the hands of these people. They were murdered by people whose attitude to religious freedom, the rights of women and the liberating power of education violates everything for which this country has stood in its short history. We cannot leave our children held hostage to a force that they may never control.

I can only concur with those remarks and commend those Australian men and women who are taking forward that vision that he outlined to ensure Australia’s effort continues in Afghanistan.