FIGHTING FOR WHAT?

The people of Afghanistan go to the polls this week to elect a new president. Or, as seems likely, re-elect President Karzai, the only leader they have known since the dreaded Taliban were overthrown in 2001. He was head of the transitional government and then elected President in 2004. After 9/11 Australian soldiers joined the United States and many other countries in the war on terror which concentrated on Afghanistan – the home of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. They didn’t catch him.

Attention then turned to Saddam Hussein and his so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction and as Iraq became the deadly center of world attention Afghanistan became ‘the forgotten war’. Australia’s commitment to Iraq increased. Our presence in Afghanistan dropped to two soldiers.  And the Taliban flourished. There was even a suicide bomber in the middle of Kabul this week.

There are now 100,000 coalition troops back in Afghanistan including 1500 Aussies and our casualties are rising. Australia has lost 11 men –mostly in the past two years. Britain lost its 200th soldier on Saturday.

We’ve been there nearly a decade. How long must we stay? The truth is: no one knows. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has admitted he has no idea how long Western forces will have to be there. He estimates that defeating theTaliban and al-Qaeda would take ‘a few years’. Others estimate Australians will be there for at least five more years. ‘Forging a new nation’ as Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith puts it.

But what sort of a new nation are they fighting for? Afghanistan is still the world’s heroin factory. Corrupt war lords are embedded in Karzai’s government and will have more powers in a new one.

The Taliban took away all women’s rights. New laws which President Obama calls ‘abhorrent’ have just been slipped in to give Shia males legal rights to treat women like chattels. They can be punished for withholding sex. Cannot get a job without a husband’s permission. And fathers and grandfathers get exclusive custody of children.

Is that what western troops are fighting to defend? Can such denials of basic human rights be excused as culture?  Does the war on terror and the extremists grip in Afghanistan and Pakistan override everything else?  Should Australia still be there?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009