David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

It is appropriate that as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence I make some comments in this very important debate. This morning the Prime Minister made a very forthright statement about our commitment in Afghanistan in the House of Representatives. She set out very clearly our mission in that country and why it is necessary that we complete that mission before we withdraw our forces. She also spoke frankly about the high price that we as a nation are paying as part of that commitment, of the 32 members of our defence forces who have given their lives in Afghanistan and of the now over 200 personnel who have been wounded there. She said with great feeling—and that is, of course, a feeling that all of us in this place share—it is a grave thing for a government to ask the young men and women of a nation's armed forces to put their lives at risk and no government should do so without a just objective, a clear objective and an attainable objective.

Those of us who hold government office need to examine our consciences before we make any such commitment. War is evil, but sometimes war is the lesser of two evils. A war that meets certain conditions can perhaps be regarded as a just war. To my mind, on reflecting on this, I think these conditions are: firstly, that the damage inflicted by the aggressor is lasting, grave and certain; secondly, that all other means of putting an end to aggression have been ineffective; thirdly, that there are serious prospects of success; and, fourthly, that the use of arms will not produce evils worse than the evil that is to be eliminated. I believe that our commitment in Afghanistan meets all four of these conditions.

The war in Afghanistan results from the complicity of the Taliban regime with the terrorist attacks of September 11 in 2001. The damage caused by the Taliban and al-Qaeda both to the international community and to the people of Afghanistan certainly has been lasting, grave and certain. The decision of the US and its allies to intervene in Afghanistan was taken only after the refusal of the Taliban, under the regime of Mullah Omar, to hand over those responsible for those attacks. They were, of course, being harboured in Afghanistan. We have heard from Senator Faulkner about how it is that this conflict in Afghanistan as a consequence of those beginnings has been a UN mandated activity.

The prospects for success in Afghanistan are, in my opinion, very good, although the government has never pretended that achieving success would be quick or easy. We need to ask ourselves what we mean by success. I would define success not in the simple military sense of defeating the enemy but as the creation of a situation in which the people of Afghanistan can defend themselves against attempts by the Taliban to regain power. That means that there must, in the end, be a political settlement. But a settlement is a very different thing to a surrender. Whilst the use of arms always produces evils, such as death, injury and destruction, I have no doubt that even greater evils would result if we were to withdraw now and expose the people of Afghanistan to the heightened risk of the Taliban returning to power and Afghanistan once again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.

While the task of achieving our mission in Afghanistan is certainly an arduous one and fraught with moral hazards, I have a clear conscience about advocating that we stick to the task we have set ourselves, which is working with our allies and the people of Oruzgan province to create a situation where they can live in peace and provide for their own security in a reasonable period of time. But I do wonder about how some other members of the Senate square their consciences with the positions they have taken in this debate and in similar debates in this place over the past few years. I think that those who have advocated our immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan either have failed to fully appreciate what the consequences of that would be for the people of Afghanistan or have somehow decided that their own political righteousness and their persistent hostility to the United States are more important than the fate of 29 million Afghans.

I noticed that in his remarks only a few moments ago Senator Ludlam again alluded to US conspiracy theories and the eternal search of US multinationals for greater resources. But of course Senator Bob Brown regularly points out to this Senate—and rightly so—that gay men are oppressed and victimised in various countries. Let us remember what is the fate of gay men in Afghanistan. I quote from a news story from 1998:

Two men were executed for sodomy in the western Afghanistan province of Herat, the Taleban-controlled Voice of Sharia announced March 23. Bismellah, age 22, and Abdul Sami, 18, had a wall bulldozed onto them in a traditional Islamic method of executions used only for sodomy convictions.

Those are the people who will return to power in Afghanistan if the Greens have their wish that we withdraw from there prematurely.

Senator Milne and Senator Hanson-Young both have strong views on the rights of women in various countries—again, rightly so. But have they really given thought to what would happen to the women and girls of Afghanistan if the Taliban were to return to power? Let me give them some idea. Under the Taliban, women were forced to wear the burqa in public, were not allowed to work and were not allowed to be educated after the age of eight. Women were not allowed to be treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a chaperone, which of course led to many illnesses remaining untreated or being inadequately treated. They faced public flogging and execution for violations of the Taliban's laws. The Taliban encouraged child marriage and forced marriage: Amnesty International has reported that 80 per cent of Afghan marriages were considered to be by force. Women were forbidden to ride bicycles or to ride in a taxi without a chaperone. Do Senator Milne and Senator Hanson-Young really want to return 10 million Afghan women and girls to such a regime? I recommend to them Time magazine of 29 July 2010, which featured on its cover a shocking photo of Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman, who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws, a consequence of one of the forced marriages which the Taliban mandate.

Senator Ludlam frequently brings cases of human rights violations in various countries to the attention of the Senate—and a good thing too. Perhaps he is not aware that under the Taliban advocating any religion other than Islam, even in a private conversation, was punishable by death, that Islamic prayer was compulsory and that those found not praying at appointed times or who were late attending prayer were punished by severe beatings. Perhaps he does not know that the Taliban outlawed music of all kinds, secular publishing of any kind, television sets, video cassettes, audio cassettes, satellite dishes and movies.

I do not pretend that all of these evils have been eradicated from Afghanistan in the 10 years since the Taliban were removed. As I said in my last remarks on this subject, in October, no-one ever said that Afghanistan would become a second Switzerland. Afghanistan is a poor country with a long and enduring history of violence and arbitrary government. (Quorum formed) There are of course wide cultural differences between Afghanistan and the Western world, and no doubt there always will be, but it is completely false to assert, as Senator Ludlam did in a speech here just last month, that there has been no progress in Afghanistan since the Taliban was removed from power.

Let me once again list some of the examples of that progress; I hope that those senators who think we should abandon the people of Afghanistan to their fate will take note. GDP growth has averaged 11 per cent since 2002 and was 22 per cent in 2009. This is the longest period of sustained economic growth in Afghanistan's modern history. Afghanistan of course is still a poor country, but it now has a functioning economy and good prospects for future development. Afghanistan had no effective financial system in 1991; today there are 14 banks in operation. As a result, Afghan expatriates can safely send money back to their families. In 2007 Afghanistan received some $3.3 billion in remissions income. School enrolment is at its highest in Afghanistan's history. Currently, there are approximately six million students in school, including two million girls. By contrast, under the Taliban there were 900,000 students enrolled in school, none of whom were girls. Basic health services, which were available to less than 10 per cent of the population under the Taliban, are now extended to around 85 per cent of Afghanistan's people. There has been a 22 per cent drop in infant mortality, which means that there are now 40,000 fewer infants dying than there were in the Taliban era. Ninety per cent of children were not inoculated against polio; today, that has changed. Almost 10,000 kilometres of rural roads have been rehabilitated, supporting the employment of hundreds of thousands of local workers. Under the Taliban there were virtually no private telephones in Afghanistan; today over two million people have mobile phones and that number is growing by an extraordinary 150,000 a month.

All of these things have brought real, concrete, measurable improvements to the lives of the ordinary people of Afghanistan. They did not happen by magic. They happened because the new government of Afghanistan, for all its many and very obvious failings, has worked with its international partners and donors to make them happen. These gains were made possible only by the continuing presence of the ISAF forces, including our own forces in Oruzgan province, and future gains are dependent on that presence to maintain security. That is why I do not think we should take the advice of Brigadier General Mohammad Zafar Khan and depart now, leaving our equipment behind. Putting aside the various questions that arise about maintenance, technical capacity and sustainment of such equipment, we must also remember that Australian forces in Afghanistan comprise less than one per cent of the total ISAF forces in the country. At 1,550 personnel, the Australian commitment is a small one. When we withdraw it will be in agreement with the Afghan government and with our ISAF partners. We do not need to understand that the Taliban have not changed their policies or their priorities. If they return to power they would reimpose the same barbaric reign of ignorance and fear that they imposed when they were in power from 1996 to 2001—a period that ended with the bombing of the World Trade towers in New York and the unleashing of a global conflict.

I would like to think that it is not senators who argue we should withdraw from Afghanistan and then have to ask, 'Now what?' But I have to say that I have not heard any of them utter a word of concern for what would happen to the people of Afghanistan, and particularly the women of Afghanistan, if they had their way. All their considerable capacity for moral outrage seems to be focused on the US and its allies with none on the forces of reaction that we are fighting against. For them it seems the war in Afghanistan is 'a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing'. That is a quote from Neville Chamberlain and, yes, I do compare those who seek to appease the Taliban and al-Qaeda now to those who sought to appease fascism in the 1930s. I do not claim to understand this mentality, but I do understand its moral bankruptcy.