Afghanistan: Australia is minor player in a much larger tragedy

The speed with which the Taliban has been able to subdue the whole of Afghanistan has taken many (including the Taliban itself) by surprise.   Within days rather than months, the Taliban has translated victory in the provinces into unopposed entry into Kabul, the national capital and Government stronghold.

Indeed, the Taliban’s early success clearly caught the US, Australia and a host of other countries off balance.   Rushed attempts to withdraw our nationals, and the locally engaged staff who supported them, led directly to the tragic and now iconic images of Afghanis clinging to (and subsequently falling from) US military aircraft in a desperate attempt to escape the new Taliban regime. 

Comparisons with Saigon in 1975 are inevitable and not entirely misplaced.

Could the US have done more to prevent this? Perhaps by leaving a modest military commitment in Afghanistan, to maintain discipline and morale among the Afghan military forces, and to provide the critical enablers – particularly air and intelligence support – they so clearly needed.  But polling undertaken by the independent Pew Research Center shows that around 60% of Americans (and the same number of veterans) think that the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting, so the decision to leave was probably welcomed by a majority. 

It is, however, the manner in which the US is leaving that will likely draw strong criticism.  Whatever the intelligence assessments indicated (and there is still a way to go before we can be sure exactly who was told what and when) this has been a tactical debacle, a failure to develop and execute an effective exit plan.  Such a plan had to give due weight to the likelihood of a rapid (even if not quite this rapid) entry of the Taliban into Kabul, and the consequent need to provide safe haven for US citizens and Afghan locally engaged staff and visa holders.

While the reasons for the sudden collapse of resistance centre on the Afghan military ‘giving up’, it should be remembered that in fact elements of the Afghan security forces fought hard over the past decade, and suffered horrendous casualties in the process (perhaps as many as 40,000 dead).  But corruption in national and provincial leadership often meant that troops were not paid regularly, had limited ammunition, and no prospect of air support or reinforcement when under sustained attack.

Military success isn’t built on numbers, whether of troops or vehicles or weapons. It is built on the back of hard training, discipline, effective leadership, morale and the will to fight.  Unfortunately, it looks as if those all left on the last flight carrying Coalition forces out of Afghanistan.

As for Australia, well too many should-know-better commentators continue to overhype the extent, or even possibility, or of Australia influencing events in Afghanistan.  We were a very minor player (roughly 1,000 out of 150,000 Coalition forces on the ground), and the whole expeditionary force was built on the size and scope of the US contribution.

The Australian Government closed its Embassy in Kabul in May precisely because it wanted to avoid a mad scramble for the lifeboats as the security situation began its final downward spiral.  In fact, since 2012 Australia has had a program of quietly relocating local engaged staff and interpreters who provided such invaluable support to the Australian civilian and military effort there.  Thousands of Afghani support staff and their family members have been brought to Australia and resettled – including hundreds brought to Australia on charter flights in the last few months.

For now, US troops have secured the airport in Kabul and the Taliban leadership is allowing foreign passport and visa holders to leave.  But Afghanistan is a very different, a more volatile, a more dangerous place now.  Some current claims for resettlement in Australia include individuals who worked for contractors on aid projects 10 years ago.  Australian troops left Uruzgan province in 2013 – eight years ago.  Confirming the identity and bona fides of Afghanis who are entitled to resettlement has simultaneously become much more urgent, and much more difficult.