Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to express my condolences for those Australian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. There have been 32 killed since 2001 and most recently three over the course of the weekend, with seven others wounded and an Afghan interpreter also killed. When I was looking at what Captain Bryce Duffy, Corporal Ashley Birt and Lance Corporal Luke Gavin had been involved in in Afghanistan and indeed in their lives in the Australian Defence Force, I looked at their dates of birth. Two of them were born in 1984. That is the year when my eldest son was born, so I feel very strongly a sense of connection to those families and those mothers. I look to my own son and I think: two young Australians in the prime of their lives who were born in 1984 have died. One had a wife and three children. There was another young Australian, Corporal Birt, who was only 22.

It is precisely when you look at those figures and you feel for those families and you know the enormity of what they are suffering that you ask the question again: why are we there? Indeed, there is a letter to the papers today from Major-General Alan Stretton, retired. He says:

THE main objective of our intervention in Afghanistan was to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and destroy al-Qa'ida. With the death of bin Laden this has now been achieved. The US president has already announced a date for the withdrawal of American forces.

With three more Australian deaths over the weekend and another seven wounded, how long will it be before both our political parties realise they are sacrificing the lives of young Australians for no purpose?

The spectacle of politicians from both parties agreeing to send our finest Australians to their deaths and then appearing on television offering their condolences to grieving widows and relatives is sickening.

The policy that we can train the Afghan army to take over security in Afghanistan is laughable. The Afghan government is corrupt, and its army has been penetrated by Taliban forces whose main activity is killing allied forces operating in their country.

Elements of the Australian Defence Force have now been in Afghanistan for over 10 years—surely this is long enough.

That is the tenor of comment being made by people who have spent a lifetime in the defence forces.

I have twice now heard in this debate—once from Senator Faulkner and once from Senator Johnston—that we are in Afghanistan to 'stay the course' and to 'see this mission through'. The question has to be asked: what course and what mission? We as parliamentarians have to be able to answer those questions for the troops still in Afghanistan and for the families who have lost treasured family members—we have responsibility for our troops being in Afghanistan. This question ought to have been debated in our parliament many times. It has not been but it must be now. Why are we in Afghanistan?

Is it true that fighting in Afghanistan will protect Australia from terrorism? The answer is no. Afghanistan was the source of past terrorist threats to Australia, but we know that al-Qaeda no longer needs Afghanistan. It has found other bases in Yemen, in Somalia and in Pakistan. It makes no sense to keep insisting that fighting in Afghanistan will protect Australia from terrorism.

What about the second reason: 'staying the course'? We have heard this afternoon that training the Afghan army in Oruzgan province will help build a stable, pro-Western defence force in Afghanistan. But the question is: who will that army, which we are working so hard to train and build, take its orders from? What guarantee do we have that that army will support a government in Kabul? As Hugh White has said:

An iron law of politics is that no army is ever better than the government it serves. It is an illusion to think that we can build a strong army in Afghanistan and then trust it to support the legitimate government. Even if we succeed in building an effective force in Oruzgan—and that is itself a long shot—we will still be as far as ever from the kind of government we would like to see in Afghanistan.

So the question is: why are we there? Why are we still in Afghanistan?

What about the argument that we have a global responsibility? Yes, we do—we have global responsibilities, but they can be fulfilled in other ways than armed intervention. Historically, as has been clearly noted, the more military pressure is put on a fragmented society such as Afghanistan the more a coalition against the invader becomes the likely outcome. That is what happened in the 1980s with the Soviet occupation and that is what happened with the British in the 19th century.

What about the international effort? Everybody else has withdrawal dates. In June 2011, President Obama announced:

Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer … our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace … By 2014, this process of transition will be complete …

Canada has withdrawn its 2,800 combat troops over the course of 2011, although it has committed up to 950 personnel to take part in the NATO training mission with the Afghan National Army. The Netherlands ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in August 2010, withdrawing 2,000 combat troops. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has said that UK forces will withdraw from combat roles by the end of 2014 and that about 400 troops would be withdrawn in the year to February 2012. On 24 June 2011, France announced plans for a phased withdrawal of its 4,000 soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Spain's Prime Minister has said that his country would start withdrawing some of its 1,500 troops from Afghanistan in 2012 and that it would complete the pullout in 2014. Belgium is due to commence its drawdown at the end of 2011. Poland is due to commence its drawdown of 2,560 troops in 2012. Every other country has set out a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops.

If you are serious about, as you say, 'staying the course' and 'fulfilling the mission', it is about time you explained how you are going to stay the course or fulfil the mission as troops are being withdrawn right through Afghanistan. You either, as has been put very strongly by the military personnel, provide the resources you need to complete the job or you withdraw. Do not pretend that you can stay the course and achieve the objective of the mission without the necessary resources.

I think it is pretty hard to ignore the fact that we are, as Hugh White has suggested, in Afghanistan simply because we are fulfilling an obligation of the US alliance. I think it is time that this parliament sat down and asked itself the question: is our engagement in Afghanistan now likely to achieve the objective which has been stated by various people from time to time or is it just a commitment to the US alliance? My view and the Greens view is that we need a date—as all of those other countries have for their forces—for the withdrawal of our troops. We need to have that debate and set that date as quickly as possible if we are to achieve what we all agree on—that is, that we want to save young Australian lives and that we do not want to lose any more Australian troops in Afghanistan.

I conclude by again expressing to the families of those who have lost their loved ones that this parliament is genuine in its condolence to those families—that we do feel the pain of those losses. But I would urge everyone in this Senate to recognise that every other country has set a date for the withdrawal of its troops, that we are not going to achieve the objectives which were set for our armed intervention in Afghanistan and that the longer we stay the more lives are going to be lost.