The futile, tragic war in Afghanistan achieved nothing

Nicholas Stuart

It's that time of year when we draw a breath and think back to our accomplishments over the past year. Framing our lives in periods of 365 days seems natural. That's unfortunate, because sometimes it's necessary to choose another frame of reference if you want to make sense of the world. So let's change our perspective and see if it makes a difference. 

On this day two years ago, the headlines were full of hope for Afghanistan. Aussie troops had just pulled out of the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt​ and our last commander, Wade Stolhard, was upbeat. He can still be heard, on a defence video, insisting the Afghan soldiers were effective, ready, and in the lead conducting independent operations. Have a listen. You'll see how otherwise sensible, intelligent people can get sucked in by what they want to believe. 

We know he was speaking rubbish because a United States think-tank has now confirmed that rebels effectively control the province. The Institute for the Study of War insists that, with the single exception of the provincial capital, the territory outside the wire is completely dominated by the Taliban. The report suggests not only do the militants "likely exercise de facto control in the vicinity of the provincial capital" but also the central government has no chance of recovering territory. It faces too many internal threats. 

The situation is now so dire that the government is reduced to boasting about its ability to withdraw. It recently trumpeted a "complex operation" by four special forces helicopters flying under cover of darkness to evacuate a beleaguered outpost in Khas Uruzgan​. The mission was successful and reported to sound like a triumph, yet it seems unlikely that the Taliban were fooled. They occupied the village. 

In fact most of the fighting in the province over the past two months has been between rival Taliban factions, one loyal to the movement's new titular commander, Mullah Akhtar Mansour​ and the other reporting to an Islamic State-aligned affiliate. This group's former leader, Mullah Rassoul Akhund​, was killed by the Taliban when he was discovered in a village to the south of Uruzgan in mid-November. Unfortunately his faction lives on and peace is as far away as ever. It's a complex narrative of small, deadly squabbles and missed opportunities. 

The War Memorial received just under $13 million in the last budget to produce an official history of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the intervention in East Timor. Director Brendan Nelson hoped the official history would be of "a standard befitting the service of the men and women whose service it records". 

Nelson thinks the Diggers deserve a history. I do too, but I reckon we owe them the real truth: there have been too many myths. This war has been a futile, tragic, waste. Perhaps there was a time when something could have been salvaged and stability could have been restored, but that would have required a political solution, not a military one. This was never going to happen: George Bush made sure of that. He believed the West would prevail; his team brushed aside the traditional Afghan way of doing things. No shura (councils) or consensus for him. He applied a Western, US framework to a Central Asian situation – why were we surprised it didn't work?

And we Australians made the same mistake in Uruzgan. We backed a corrupt, illiterate hard-man as police chief because we thought it was better to have him on our side than against us. He eliminated his rivals and became indispensable, the most feared (and hated) man in the province. It was, of course, just a matter of time before someone got rid of him and earlier this year he died in a hail of bullets. If the history is written properly, some reputations are going to be badly bruised. This won't be a simple story of mateship and heroism. It's a story of how, a century after Gallipoli, we've now graduated to making our own blunders. 

As recently as December, 2013, the defence video clips were wildly optimistic. The propaganda suggested the deployment was "mission accomplished". Perhaps the fact no independent media was present to report the ceremony should have alerted us to the fragile, transitory nature of the gains. Tony Abbott insisted the terrible cost of the involvement in the Middle East – 40 Australian dead and 261 wounded, together with the "thousands who will carry the psychological injuries for many years to come" – had been worth it.

"That sacrifice has not been in vain", he said, cataloguing a list of accomplishments such as schools built, roads opened and medical facilities operating. "Uruzgan today is a very significantly different and better place than it was a decade ago," he said. You couldn't say that and maintain your credibility today. It's not really possible for a reporter to assert the former PM's wrong. We assume they have more information and expert advice. They do. But they also have their own agenda and sometimes truth gets in the way of whatever yarn it is they're trying to spin. That's why politicians and journalists are both actually in the same business: attempting to make up plausible stories to convince people (voters; readers) that we understand what's going on. But we're still stumbling around in the dark because often the only way you can make sense of what's happening is when you look backwards. 

That's the case with Afghanistan. More than 25,000 Australians served in Afghanistan at a total cost of more than $7.5 billion. There's no body count for the Afghans but thousands must have been killed in our area of operations alone. All for nothing. It's no wonder the government dragged its feet in appointing a war historian for the conflict. The story of a loss is always difficult to explain away. 

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/afghanistan-all-for-nothing-20151220-gls9sb.html#ixzz3uzDcUDCx
Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook