David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

On behalf of the opposition, I want to extend our thanks to Minister Faulkner for his assessment of and elaboration and report on what is occurring with our operation in Afghanistan. This is a very important matter for this parliament and indeed for the Senate. There is absolutely no politics in this issue of public policy at all—there should not be and there will not be. The opposition is very determinedly committed to supporting the government in succeeding in this operation in Afghanistan. There is certainly no suggestion whatsoever that we are undertaking this operation in any way that is adverse to our objectives and our intentions. The McChrystal doctrine is a very good one. It is a turning point and I am very keen for the President of the United States to adopt the recommendations of General McChrystal.

Our contribution of 1,550 troops, which must be multiplied by three to get 4,500, is our most significant contribution since Vietnam. The 23,000 soldiers in the Royal Australian Army are a small contingent relative to the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. This commitment of ours is a very significant one and I want to pause to put it in context. Recently, while coming back from NATO, I had the opportunity to speak to the Dutch parliamentary delegation to the NATO convention. They were a very fine group of people. We paused to thank them for the trust, the contribution and the success that we have had in Oruzgan province under their command. Unfortunately, the political situation in their country is such that, whilst they will continue to make a strong contribution to Afghanistan, it will not be in the same form as it now appears in Tarin Kowt and Oruzgan province. We are very sad about that because they have been a very successful partner in what is the very dangerous and very difficult business of trying to secure this part of the world.

The McChrystal doctrine is about, firstly, engaging and securing the people of Afghanistan and giving them the confidence to go about their business and to see that the rule of law prevails. The second part is to secure them through the enhancement of the Afghan National Police force and the Afghan National Army. Australia is leading the way in training and promoting. Indeed, we are paying $250 million towards getting that contingent to a capacity and a capability that will endure to provide long-term security for the people of this country. Lastly, the operation is to secure Afghanistan in its region geographically.

In closing, I want to acknowledge the sacrifice that has been made by 11 very brave young Australians on the field of battle in Afghanistan. We are thinking of them and their families and their friends at this time of the year. I also want to acknowledge the 90 people who have been seriously wounded, in particular those with eardrum damage from IEDs. I commend the government for undertaking the IED task force and participating with the United States and the United Kingdom, as they have done. This is a particularly difficult mission. Pakistan on one border is also of considerable concern to us. In thanking the minister for his report today, I urge him to keep giving us these reports; they are very valuable. We support the government in every way possible in this very difficult mission.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the minister for his statement on Afghanistan and wish to underscore the importance with which the Australian Greens view this matter. I begin by saying that we totally support the role that Australian defence forces are playing in Afghanistan under the direction of this and the last Australian government, while noting that parliament has never had a full debate on the matter or given a vote of approval for the ongoing deployment of forces from this country to Afghanistan. It is the belief of the Australian Greens—and it is consistent, according to the polls, with the majority of Australians—that our defence forces should be disengaged from Afghanistan in a way which would be prudent and which would, particularly, look after their safety. We too note the awesome toll of dead and wounded Australians. The details that Senator Faulkner has provided to the chamber point to the extraordinary risk and on sad occasions—quite devastating occasions for the individuals and families involved—the loss of life or the loss of physical or mental wherewithal that can come from being engaged in hostilities that our troops are exposed to and sometimes come to grief from.

Our reasons for wanting Australian troops out of this theatre of war in Afghanistan are consistent. We do not believe that Australia should be engaged in a war which was a result of the complete mismanagement of involvement in Afghanistan by the Bush administration. Under the Bush administration, the US went to Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda, then withdrew largely to go to Iraq and then re-engaged in Afghanistan, but after the Taliban had taken advantage of that hiatus to become much better established. That ought not to be a matter for Australian rectification.

But, beyond that, one only had to listen to the testimony of former Marine Captain Matthew Hoh, a highly respected US state department official who resigned from his post in Afghanistan, on ABC TV’s Lateline last night to understand that we are likely to be engaged in this civil war for many years to come, even if there are major new troop commitments from not just the US but other NATO and non-NATO allies. It is a civil war and, as this officer testified, we are simply occupying the land of Afghanis who will fight, through the Taliban or otherwise, to dispossess the occupiers and get back control of their land. It is effectively an ongoing and irremediable civil war that we have picked a side on. We have picked a side with a very corrupt regime, the Karzai regime—and I do not need to go back into that. This is very, very troubling. I have given all parties a copy of the transcript of that interview last night and I seek leave to have it incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

I also commend the courage and the clear-sighted and restrained manner in which Captain Matthew Hoh presented his assessment of the war for our analysis. I recommend that all senators look at that interview by Tony Jones on Lateline last night.

That said, I thank Senator Faulkner for this opportunity and for his commitment. I thank him for keeping this parliament up to date on these extremely important events in Afghanistan and on Australia’s involvement there. We take a different view to the major parties on this. We are very strong about that. We hope the government will listen very carefully to that, but in particular look at that testimony from Matthew Hoh, which in a way summarises the concerns that many Australians have about the ongoing involvement of the Australian defence forces, who we think should be disengaged from Afghanistan.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, there was some misunderstanding about whether you sought leave to table the transcript or incorporate it.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Incorporate.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it was understood at this end that you were tabling it. I will have to put the question again. Is leave granted for Senator Brown to incorporate the transcript in Hansard?

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not until I make a brief statement.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before leave is granted, Senator Parry is seeking leave to make a brief statement. Is leave granted?

Leave granted.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike Senator Brown, and because of the sensitive nature of this issue, I am not going to object to leave being granted. Senator Brown earlier in the day tried to maintain a battle of denying leave, and I understand he has done that informally earlier as well with Senator Fierravanti-Wells. I just want to make the point that we are not going to play the silly games that Senator Brown has been playing and we will grant him leave.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Senator Brown, in accordance with the usual courtesies, indicated to me earlier that he was going to seek leave in relation to the document. He may not recall, but he actually said to me ‘to table the document’. I believe you did say that to me, Senator. That is why I was a little bit startled—

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I’m very clear about it. You may have misheard me.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

but I accept that I may have misunderstood. I have no concerns with the document being incorporated if that is Senator Brown’s wish in this regard.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, the only request I would make, on behalf of the Clerk, is to ask: if this is a transcript of proceedings, how lengthy a document is it to incorporate?

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three pages.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three pages?

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Leave granted.

The document read as follows—

… last month Matthew Hoh, a former marine captain and highly respected US State Department official resigned from his post in Afghanistan and went public, saying he had lost confidence in the reason for forces of the US being there. Matthew Hoh joined us earlier from our Washington studio to discuss the reasons for his resignation. Matthew Hoh, thanks for joining us.

Matthew Hoh: Thank you.

Tony Jones: You’re the first senior US official known to have resigned over the conduct of the Afghan war . Tell us why. Tell us what led to your resignation.

Matthew Hoh: There are a combination of things, but primarily it was the realisation that the presence of our forces in Afghanistan, American forces as well as NATO forces and Australia and New Zealand and other forces from around the world, was not doing anything to make the West safer from al-Qaida. The presence of ground combat troop s in Afghanistan has no effect on al-Qaida. Additionally, the realisation that we really are just taking part in one side of a civil war. And our part in that civil war only inflames it. It’s doing nothing to bring a resolution to the conflict between the two sides in Afghanistan. And finally the fact that our troops are fighting and dying against people who are fighting us really only because we’re occupying their villages, and the fourth one—as I said, there’s multiple things that make up this—and the fourth one is just a moral question or a moral issue I had with our troops, our young men fighting and dying for a corrupt and illegitimate regime like the Karzai regime. I just don’t think that in five, 10 or 15 years we will be able to look back and feel like this was a noble or an honourable effort or something we should have let our young men fight and die for.

Tony Jones: Let’s take some of those issues separately. Do you believe that the US troop presence, indeed the foreign troop presence, actually fuels the insurgency?

Matthew Hoh: Absolutely . Absolutely. Half of Afghanistan want us in Afghanistan and the other half doesn’t. If you split the nation roughly in half, and that’s not perfect but roughly in half, you draw a line from the north-east of the country to the south-west of the country, on the north and west sides of that line you will have Taji, Uzbeks and on the south-west you will have the Pashtuns. Those are the major ethnic groups within Afghanistan. But even with the Pashtuns you have a split between the urban and the rural Pashtuns. The educated, the secular, the progressive, versus the poor, the religious and then the third group that composes the insurgency . What we’re doing is, by occupying them, we’re a foreign presence. It is very simple. I don’t think anyone in the United States or anyone in Australia would be kind to any kind of foreign occupation. So our presence there only fuels insurgency, just like you said.

Tony Jones: In your resignation letter you state that you lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the US presence in Afghanistan. Is this a war that America simply can’t win in your view?

Matthew Hoh: No it’s in a terrible, terrible stalemate right now and with the status quo, if we keep with the status quo it will remain in a stalemate. If we increase troops, as most people expect we will do, I think that will have the same results of the stalemate—it will continue this stalemate with no solution to the end of the civil war. So I don’t think it’s question of whether or not we’re losing. It’s a question of we’re not finding a way to end this. If we don’t find a political resolution to this conflict, this war is going go on indefinitely. If we had more troops to it, the other side will continue to fight us because they don’t want to be occupied. Karzai will have no incentive to negotiate with the other side because the West will continue to prop him up, so there’s no incentive to negotiate with the enemy.

Tony Jones: President Obama now looks likely to give in to Pentagon pressure and commit thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s argument is essentially that the surge in Iraq worked. Why wouldn’t a surge in Afghanistan have the same effect?

Matthew Hoh: I don’t believe so. I was part of two deployments to Iraq. One in 2004-05 and one in 2006-07. You cannot compare Iraq to Afghanistan. Of course there are some similarities and there are some principles of warfare that will always apply. However, Iraq and Afghanistan are astonishingly different countries and cultures. The terrain is different, the people are different, the enemy is different. In Iraq, most people live in built up areas and cities that you can easily control. The enemy is different. In Iraq where I was in Al-Anbar province you could separate the insurgents who were al-Qaida and Iraq from the population. In Afghanistan, it’s not possible among the rural population because the population is the insurgency. How do you separate them from the population when the population is the insurgency? I don’t agree with the assessment that what we did in Iraq will work in Afghanistan.

Tony Jones: So what do you think should actually happen? Do you go so far as to say President Obama should withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan?

Matthew Hoh: No, Tony. One of the problems with this debate a lot of times is you get characterised as you’re all in, or you’re all out. I don’t believe there’s anybody who is reasonable or rational on either side of the debate who is calling for all in, or all out. I would like to suspend combat operations in the villages, in the rural parts of the Pashtun parts of Afghanistan, because all we’re doing is fighting guys who are fighting us because we’re occupying their villages. It’s benefitting nobody. The second part would be to push and get an honest to God political solution. Get both sides to the table there. Bring in all elements of Afghan society, reconvene a grand council and bring it in all parts of Afghan society, and this has to include senior members of the Taliban leadership. Without trying to do something to politically solve this split in Afghanistan, this civil war that’s been going on since the ‘70s, all we’re going to see is indefinite combat. My recommendation is to stop combat operations that are accomplishing nothing and work for a political solution while we gradually withdraw from Afghanistan

Tony Jones: It’s not only US troops; it’s also Australian troops and many other foreign forces as well. And they all seem to follow the same strategy—to clear, secure and hold Afghan territory in the same sorts of valleys that you’re talking about. Are you saying that in every case the Australians included in that strategy is doomed to failure?

Matthew Hoh: I don’t believe it’s going to work. I believe what we’re following is a strategy that is not proven out in history. I don’t believe in this idea of clear, hold and build will work on a population that is fundamentally opposed to the other half of the population in the country. Right now the clear, hold, build strategy relies upon building an Afghan Government that delivers services to the people so that the people trust the Government and turn away from the insurgents. The problem with that is there’s a split between one side of the country and the other. One side completely dominates the Government. So the idea that the people on the other side will trust this Government has no basis. You have to do something to bridge this divide, to bring the rural Pashtun population into the Government, otherwise they’re not going to accept it. And that particularly includes the Afghan Army which is un representative of large parts of the country. It serves as what the rural Afghan population see as an internal occupation force for the Tajiks and the Uzbeks.

Tony Jones: What do you say to the opposing argument that, if the US withdraws from certain provinces and other foreign troops withdraw from other provinces, inevitably the Taliban will return to those provinces and take complete control of them and establish fundamentalist mini states there, and inevitably the Taliban will re-establish their rogue state in which al-Qaida can set up its terrorist camps to train once again?

Matthew Hoh: First, let me address the issue of al-Qaida. Al-Qaida, as an organisation, does not exist in any form that I believe they would require or even want training camps in Afghanistan. Since 2001, particularly since 2001, they have evolved into an organisation that does not require any type of political ties or ties to any geographical boundaries. They exist as this ideological cloud that floats on the Internet, that recruits worldwide from individuals in small autonomous cells, that are independent of one another. Al-Qaida is not, does not need, safe havens or training camps. It would be great if they did, because we could bomb them but we don’t. We have to attack al-Qaida as it exists, not how we want it to exist. So for individuals who are motivated by ideology and not structured like combat troops, structure does not exist. The other part about the Taliban recapturing parts of Afghanistan, in parts of the south, the Taliban would be or are the political dominant force. So they would assume that role. That’s why it’s important to find a structured resolution and some power sharing agreement so the Taliban come into the Government peacefully and not by arms. As long as we’re there, as long as the US and Western forces, Australian forces included, are there, the Taliban will continue to fight it. And they will continue to fight a central Government that is composed of Tajiks, Uzbecks and urban Pashtuns. They will continue to fight them as long as they continue to feel subjected by them.

Tony Jones: Do you feel others in the administration are coming to your side of the argument? Even Richard Holbrook who encouraged you not to re sign, said he did aglee in part with the contents of your resignation letter. Is there a move inseed the administration to start thinking the way you are?

Matthew Hoh: I believe there is. I believe certainly what I wrote in my resignation letter was not novel or unique. Many of my counterparts believe the same thing as well as many military officers I’ve spoken to. I believe in the administration there is a feeling that this idea that we are going to defeat or have victory in Afghanistan based on propping up the Karzai regime and subjugating the rural population of Afghanistan is not going to work. I really hope we’re going to see in addition to a troop increase, which I am against, but what I hope to see is some type of withdrawal, something that ties in removing Western forces from the country with creating some type of political settlement that ends the conflict in Afghanistan.

Tony Jones: The most obvious analogy if things continue to go the way they do is the war in Vietnam because in the same way the US and its allies found itself in cohoots with a corrupt central regime. Do you see it in those terms?

Matthew Hoh: I do. And I referenced that in my resignation letter in September. I see it very clearly. We are doing something that I think can years from now, several years from now, we will look back and say, “This wasn’t right. We will question why we allowed our young men and women to go to Afghanistan and die in order to prop up a corrupt and illegitimate regime. “I’ve said a few times back here if you looked up the term cleptocracs in the dictionary, there would be a photo of Karzai. It’s a Government that serves itself and takes from the people. The idea that this Government is going to extend and represent the people of the rural Pashtun parts of the country is an idea that is unfounded and not rooted in any sense of reality of what things are like in Afghanistan.

Tony Jones: What do you think the United States should do about the fact that Afghanistan does have a corrupt President ruling effectively a corrupt regime, and one that incidentally the West has been forced to recognise in spite of the fact the election was totally corrupted?

Matthew Hoh: We should reduce our aid. Because that’s a source of a lot of corruption is our own aid money. We should begin to—like I said, stop our combat operations, begin to reduce our forces there and tie it into negotiations. Right now, if we continue supporting Karzai with a lot of force that we are now, and if we increase the forces, that’s only going to strengthen his hand and he is not going to negotiate with the other side. He has no incentive to negotiate with the other side. I worked with local Afghan government leaders, government leaders that were appointed by Karzai in the east and the south. These men had no intention of ever reconciling or working with their enemy for a peaceful or a political solution. They’ve got a good thing going because they’re being propped up by Western forces. If you remove that, they have to talk to the other side of the civil war.

Tony Jones: President Obama really did not want to be a war-time President. He inherit ed this war and now he’s caught up in competing arguments of how to prosecute it as he goes forward. He is trying to set an exit strategy. How long does he have to set something like that in place?

Matthew Hoh: I am very afraid what’s going to happen is we will commit more troops. We will have some kind of loosely defined strategy without any firm dates or benchmarks and what is going to happen is it will be 2012-13 and you and I will be having this same conversation about where do we go next. We will put more troops in. It is not going to make Karzai and his regime go to the table. If we put more troops in, it will only make the Taliban fight us harder. It will not weaken them or make them feel like we have to cut our losses. With the Taliban we say we’re applying Western logic and Western reasoning to a group of non-Western group of actors. It is a mistake we continue to seem to make. Particularly as Americans we seem to do that. So I am really afraid that a couple of years from now we will be having the same conversation again and we will be talking about how we have to push for a political negotiation and talk to senior leaders. We could have been doing that right now. That is my big fear.

Tony Jones: Matthew Hoh, it is rare indeed to meet someone who has direct, on-the-ground knowledge of what is going on in this war. We thank you very much for coming to talk to us on Lateline.

Matthew Hoh: Thank you, Tony.

Question agreed to.