Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As honourable members will recall, on 20 August Afghanistan held the second free presidential elections in its history. President Hamid Karzai was officially reported to have polled 54.6 per cent of the vote, while his nearest rival, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, polled 27.8 per cent. Unfortunately, there are credible allegations that President Karzai’s victory was the result of widespread electoral fraud. The EU Deputy Chief observer, Dimitra Ioannou, has alleged that 1.5 million of the 5.5 million votes cast, or 27 per cent, were suspect. If all the suspect votes were invalidated President Karzai’s vote would drop to 46 per cent, which would force a run-off under Afghan law.

President Karzai is now under great pressure from the US, the UK and, I hope, Australia to agree to a run-off election. I hope he does so because neither he nor his country can afford to have the legitimacy of his position further weakened. The United States is spending between some $55 billion and $70 billion a year fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. More important than the money are the human lives lost. Over 1,300 coalition troops have been killed in Afghanistan, including 11 Australians—I have attended some of their funerals. Support in the US Congress, this parliament and among the public in free societies will fall rapidly if the view takes hold that the war is being fought to prop up an undemocratic regime. That is why the support for the Vietnam War was lost in the 1960s. It would be a tragedy if the same syndrome took hold in relation to Afghanistan.

President Obama, who was elected in part because of the unpopularity of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, now has a difficult decision to make. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, supported by General Petraeus, has recommended that the US send 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. In my opinion, it would be a tragedy if President Obama rejected General McChrystal’s recommendation. But we need to remember why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. It was because the Taliban regime knowingly provided a base for Osama bin Laden from where the September 11 attacks were planned. As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons in question time yesterday:

It is where the groups who carried out Bali, Madrid and the London and Jakarta bombings received funding, trading and inspiration.

If the international security force were to admit defeat in Afghanistan and allow the Taliban and its foreign friends to regain control of the country this would be a betrayal of the people of Afghanistan, particularly of Afghan women, minorities and all those who enjoy freedoms that they would not under Mullah Omar’s version of Islam from the sixth century. It would give a propaganda victory to al-Qaeda and to every anti-Western, antidemocratic terrorist group on earth, including Jemaah Islamiah and Lashkar-e-Taiba. It would once again give all those groups a base in which to plan even bolder terrorist attacks, which would place the lives of Australians directly at risk.

Finally, it would cause another huge exodus of refugees from Afghanistan. During the last period of Taliban rule over seven million people fled Afghanistan, of whom a fairly large number washed up on our shores. Over five million were successfully repatriated, but they will again flee for their lives if the fragile Afghan experiment in democratic government collapses. Even talk of the US downgrading its role would have sent a tremor into the heart of minorities like the Afghan Hazaras. Australia may have to accept part of the burden of taking care of those people, including accepting some of them here as refugees. This is why we have a stake in what takes place in Afghanistan.

I am confident that our cause in Afghanistan is a good one and that we are right to go on making a contribution in support of the NATO and ISAF forces. But the public in the US, Australia and other democracies will not pay the large price in blood and treasure in Afghanistan if they see blatant election rigging from the government we are fighting to support. That is why I hope President Karzai does the right thing and agrees to a run-off. If he is re-elected in this run-off, which should be conducted fairly, cleanly and under international supervision, it would be good if he were to broaden the base of his government as President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, suggested today. A national unity government in Afghanistan would provide a more solid basis from which democratic countries like Australia would be able to continue their support for the people of Afghanistan.