Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In my comments I would also like to join in thanking Senators Smith and Ludwig for the constructive and respectful way in which they have conducted the debate. Given its difficult nature and these difficult times, these are hard arguments to have, but it important that we have them.

On 17 September this year the then defence minister, Kevin Andrews, tabled his first and, as it turned out, only ministerial statement on Australia's military deployments into Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. That document is what passes for parliamentary consideration of one of the most important decisions that any government can make. The document was anodyne, devoid of detail and entirely lacked any analysis of the political or humanitarian consequences of opening a new front in our endless wars in the Middle East.

But it did not particularly matter. That document was tabled at the tail end of a week consumed by the overdue removal of the Prime Minister who was himself responsible for the deployment. The document was only given four minutes of debating time before the chamber clocks signalled that it was time to talk about motor sports instead.

This statement, now consigned to the irrelevance that it deserves, is chiefly valuable for what it does not contain. Australia even today has no overarching plan or political strategy to bring peace to Syria or Iraq. We have outsourced it, as we have the larger fraction of our foreign aid and defence policy, to a conflicted and exhausted superpower that seems increasingly helpless as ghosts of past decisions have proliferated into nightmares.

Tonight's debate takes place in the shadow of violent attacks on innocent people all over the world. We grieve with those families and friends who lost loved ones in the horrifying attacks on the people of Paris nearly two weeks ago tonight. Some 130 people lost their lives and 368 people were injured, some of them very seriously. We offer our condolences to the families of those 43 people who lost their lives in twin bombings in a busy residential and commercial district in Beirut, Lebanon; the 27 who died when gunmen opened fire at the Radisson Hotel in Bamako in Mali; the 34 innocent people dead at a farmers market bombed in Yola, Nigeria; the 224 innocent victims of the bombing of the Russian Metrojet flight 9268 over the Sinai Peninsula; and the more than 100 who died when suicide bombers attacked a peace rally in Ankara in Turkey.

These high-profile attacks seized the attention of the world's news organisations for a period of time, but others barely break the surface tension. In October this year, 714 Iraqis died in acts of violent terror. Our parliament is unlikely to take the time to pause in condolence for these innocent lives lost, because perhaps we think this is the new normal in Iraq.

What unites these horrific attacks is that they are carried out against civilian targets—people going about their ordinary lives. Whether claimed by al-Qaeda affiliates, Boko Haram or Islamic State itself, these are not military targets. They are ordinary people in markets, live music venues or their own homes. What could possibly motivate these atrocities has long bewildered Western defence and security planners. Most commonly they are described as senseless or simply incomprehensible.

There is, however, a cold logic at work. These attacks are not senseless—they are calculated. It is the same strategy that al-Qaeda in Iraq—AQI—used to ignite a horrific sectarian war in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. Their attacks on Shiah civilians were designed to provoke an escalation of violence against the Sunni, who would then, it was reasoned, turn to al-Qaeda for leadership.

David Kilcullen's brilliant and provocative Quarterly Essay article 'Blood Year' describes it in this way:

… AQI's campaign was driven by a brutal political logic: in provoking the Shi'a, Zarqawi hoped to back the Sunni community into a corner, so that his group would be all that stood between Sunnis and the Shi'a death squads, giving people no choice but to support AQI, whatever they thought of its ideology. This cynical strategy—founded on a tacit recognition that AQI's beliefs were so alien to most Iraqis that they'd never find many takers unless backed by trickery and force—meant that Shi'a killing Sunni was actually good for AQI, and so they'd go out of their way to provoke the most horrific violence against their own people.

AQI—al-Qaeda in Iraq—was one of the progenitor organisations that went on to form the core of Islamic State. It may seem hard to accept that, but the long-range targets in the attacks on Paris are ordinary Muslims, who Islamic State are desperately hoping will be now subjected to increased surveillance, harassment and violence at the hands of Western governments. That is how Islamic State is attempting to claw its way from the extremist margins to a kind of twisted legitimacy as the most viable protector of Islam.

Quite recently a group of US Air Force service members with more than 20 years experience between them of operating military drones wrote an impassioned plea to the Obama administration calling for a rethink of the military tactic that they say 'has fuelled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay'. These are the drone operators—the individual men who fly these devices. They argue that the killing of so many innocent people, unreported by most Western media organisations, has acted as one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilisation around the world. Waleed Aly must have hit something of a nerve last week when he called Islamic State out on this hideous strategy, because millions of people have shared his plea to focus our response rather than engaging in precisely the kind of indiscriminate backlash that these violent criminals are trying to provoke.

To his credit, in his national security speech in the other place a few days ago, Prime Minister Turnbull largely refused to take the bait. His contribution, which I thought was quite measured, focused largely on unity, social cohesion and targeted intelligence gathering and disruption of the violent extremist networks active here in Australia rather than, for example, calling for more mass surveillance or new police powers over ordinary people. But the measure of the value of such a statement lies not just in the tone in which it is delivered but the actions that underlie it. The government's so called Allegiance to Australia Bill, for example, seems almost deliberately counterproductive and is perhaps a relic of the old Abbott approach. Boasting, as the Prime Minister did, about the scale of our military involvement in Syria also seems almost deliberately counterproductive. In 2015, 13 countries engaged in bombing a country smaller than the state of Victoria. And the situation on the ground is more complex still as nuclear armed superpowers and regional actors are drawn into an increasingly violent regional conflict.

Rodger Shanahan, an associate professor at the Lowy Institute, said Australia's announcement to bomb Syria was 'long on rhetoric but short on detail and lacked any semblance of strategic vision or acknowledgment of the potential impact on the situation inside Syria'. Defence Minister Andrews himself conceded that he could not estimate how long the deployment would last and he had no idea how the Syria conflict would end. He acknowledged that the West needs 'a clearer strategy' for the Middle East. To revisit the last time the West had a clear strategy for the Middle East, we could sample a quote attributed to the then US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1991. Speaking to General Wesley Clark on the subject of regime change in Iraq, Syria and Iran, Mr Wolfowitz said: 'We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes'—Syria, Iran, Iraq—'before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.'

Of course, the consequence of attempting to bomb—or otherwise implant—liberal democracy and Western priorities into the ancient rivalries and allegiances of the modern Middle East now speaks for itself. Iraq is balanced on the edge of apocalypse, Libya is the world's newest failed state and Syria is emptying into Europe as millions of refugees overwhelm its immediate neighbours. This is the edge of the abyss into which the Bush-Howard-Blair war on terror has taken us by taking the bait of a global war of civilisations that was offered by a tiny handful of al-Qaeda extremists. By responding to violence with more escalated violence, this is where we now stand. Tony Abbott, who sat in the cabinet when John Howard signed Australia up for the catastrophically misconceived and illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, now demands a ground invasion of Syria from the backbench—from where, it is hoped, he will never return.

Our military actions undermine the potential of our diplomatic role as an engaged and activist middle power. Australia has good diplomatic standing with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and, more recently, thanks to recent interventions by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Iran. Australia has proved that we can be constructive diplomatic players in difficult and protracted conflicts. We have had successes at the United Nations Security Council under foreign ministers of both political stripes—most recently Ms Bishop, who last year was able to co-author a unanimous Security Council resolution allowing access for cross-border humanitarian aid into Syria without the consent of the Assad regime. The recent Iran nuclear agreement shows how progress on intractable problems can be made where coercion and threats of force have failed. This has opened new diplomatic space between Iran, Russia and the United States—the three countries that could arguably do the most from the outside to support expanded ceasefire zones inside Syria—enabling humanitarian assistance to be delivered, cutting off the supply of weapons and ultimately isolating Islamic State.

The single most urgent priority of the international community needs to be a political solution to the crisis in Syria and Iraq, because every military solution proposed thus far has simply made the situation worse. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey need to be the key players in urgent deliberations facilitated by a neutral party that can bring these nations together to expand the narrow common ground and restart the failed Geneva process of negotiations. Our place as a US proxy probably means Australia cannot be that neutral moderator, but we can still play an active part in encouraging these powers to come to the table. Ironically, the bitter evacuation of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe and the premeditated attacks in Paris have breathed life into the so-called Vienna talks toward a peace settlement in Syria. On 1 January 2016 these negotiations will be restarted. But this time regional players, including Iran, will be at the table and the intention is to have regime figures and opposition leaders in the room. We understand how formidable the hurdles are which lie in the way of such a process toward a ceasefire and political settlement in Syria, but it is equally obvious to all that there is no military solution to the violence in this tragic part of the world. The criminals who are clearly attempting to provoke the world to greater violence in their own lands may instead have moved the world closer to a peace settlement in Syria. Any such progress will be unspeakably fragile, but this is where Australia should play its part.

This space for resolution also needs to be created on the ground. Political negotiations will only bear fruit if and when the fighting stops. Localised truces offer a starting point for de-escalation and, when successful, they allow much needed humanitarian aid to get to those in the midst of the conflict. Syrian civil society leader and astrophysicist Rim Turkmani has highlighted that a truce in Barzeh led by civilians resulted in tens of thousands of internally displaced people returning to their homeland. He said: 'Many people went back to their areas after [the ceasefire]. They settled back in their houses. They're not internally displaced persons anymore. There was a revival of modest economic activities. There was some progress.' It is obvious, however, that groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State will remain outside such ceasefire processes and are likely to attempt to undermine any attempts at a peace settlement in Syria that might unite presently fractured parties against them. Islamic State has exploited the disintegration of Syria and the foreign boots on the ground in Iraq to stake its claim over a huge swathe of territory. The last thing it wants is for these warring factions to adopt a more singular focus on the territory it holds.

Unlike al-Qaeda's distributed franchise structure, Islamic State exists to hold territory; it is given life through a war economy heavily focused on oil revenues and other illicit financial flows. In February 2015 the Financial Action Task Force, based in the United States, reported on the financing of the terrorist organisation ISIL. They analysed how Islamic State acquits the monthly payroll of thousands of foreign fighters and how it generates funds, and proposed important measures for the international community to choke off the money supply. The FATF propose a number of strategies for doing this, but they also point out that 'a number of the funding tactics that ISIL employs have not yet been assessed'. This is essential research which remains incomplete, and the strategies they outline have thus far been subordinated to reflexive demands for increasingly futile military escalation. The Financial Action Task Force annual budget, in financial year 2013-14, of around US$3.5 million represents about 120 hours of flying time for a single Global Hawk UAV. Where are our priorities?

Australia can play a powerful role in ensuring that governments around the world follow through on UNSC resolutions—that we helped draft—making the financing of terrorist groups a crime, freezing the assets of those in the supply chain and ending illegal oil sales by identifying customers and how it is being traded. The time for debating Australian deployments in theatres of war is before the deployment, not after, so that the parliament and the public can weigh the benefits of military action against other actions which seek to de-escalate conflict.

No coalition speaker will come into this parliament and admit that they were wrong to carry us into war in Iraq—that tearing down an inconvenient regime and leaving chaos in its wake provided the proving ground in which Islamic State gestated. The war on terror has been a failure; we are less safe now than we were before President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared, 'Mission accomplished.' The Liberal-National coalition, having played their part in this vast escalation of violence around the world, now assure us that yet more violence is the only way to prevail.

Australia can be a key actor in moves to demilitarise this horrific conflict, but we need to put the needs of the immediate region first. Rather than adding more fuel to the fire, we must encourage our allies and our friends to, once and for all, cease the reflexive lunge to further militarise this conflict—actions for which ordinary Syrians and Iraqis continue to pay an unimaginable price.