Australia entered Afghanistan as bullies and left as cowards, but we, the people, can do better
Force Preparation is a week-long course that every Australian Defence Force (ADF) member, as well as journalists, completed before heading to Afghanistan.
The men and women of the ADF were put through their paces, disarming AK47s, learning how to survive kidnap scenarios and being medically tested.
In back-to-back presentations and lectures they learned about Afghan customs – about the food, language and history of the ancient country they were about to go to war in. Afghan presenters described uncomfortable differences between gender and sexual roles and rights of Afghan people compared to Australian norms.
At the end of the week, a highly decorated officer talked calmly about the incredible danger all of the men and women would face over the next nine months on deployment in the theatre of war.
And most powerfully, he tells the silent audience that, after everything they have heard and witnessed over the last week, they are heading to Afghanistan to change not one detail of what they have learnt, “you are there to liberate the people” he said. “You are there to win hearts and minds and you will lose if you challenge ancient customs.”
One of the first actions of the Americans setting foot in Afghanistan was from the air. Some of their biggest planes showered millions upon millions of acres of poppy fields with foliar poison. In an act of brazen domestic policy activism, the Americans took out a massive part of the opium trade heading into that first winter of their occupation.
There had been a boom in the opium trade under Taliban rule and several provinces of Afghanistan have a 4,000 year history of opium trade. That first bitter winter, having lost an entire crop, many Afghans starved. The delicate social fabric of Afghanistan frayed severely before one Australian foot touched the soil. Hearts and minds were challenged from day one.
Blaine Flower Diddams was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. He was a handsome man with a glowing smile. His two children and his wife were swept into the media glare when their beloved husband and father was brought home
in a C-130 Hercules transport plane.
Blaine’s daughter, Elle-Lou told me that, in hindsight, her little family wished they’d refused the very public nature of her dad’s funeral. It was the first time she’d met the then prime minister, Julia Gillard. It must be a distinctly difficulty way to grieve, with dignitaries that you have never met before, in front of a country’s media.
Last week Elle-Lou called me. From nowhere an Afghan man, who I cannot name, had sent her a plea for help. He had sent her the details of his service to the SASR as a fixer and translator and he attached a photo of himself, with Elle-Lou’s dad, arms around each other, beaming at the camera next to a spectacular river in the Uruzgan valley. Several men who have served with Blaine before he died, and with the Afghan translator, have also written glowing reports of the man’s support and relationship to the ADF and to the Australian action in Afghanistan.
One veteran of the group told me that this interpreter had saved his life twice. He was with Blaine one fine morning when the translator talked their way out of a Taliban roadblock. He said that he would do anything to save the man who’d saved his life.
Just as John Howard followed the Americans into Afghanistan, Scott Morrison has followed them out, without question or strategy. Our politicians seem completely incapable of standing up to America, to even simply voicing their concern at America’s alarming policy decisions. Many Afghans flourished over the last twenty years. In Kabul a film industry has flourished. Artists and musicians began to make work, many exhibiting in Australia and internationally.
As Blaine’s interpreter messaged me, why would all the Afghan people have visas in place for countries like Australia when the allies had promised peace, democracy and stability? We entered Afghanistan as bullies and we left as cowards. My hopes for Blaine’s interpreter are not high.
His family include his two, young, unmarried sisters, his wife and his own two baby children. All are dependent on him. He risked his life for Australians and he may lose his life because of us.
If we are to have any hope of leading the world away from the callous social systems of extremists then we have to start thinking much more carefully about people’s hearts and people’s minds. Making enemies by refusing shelter and refuge, by torturing prisoners and executing bystanders in the heat of war, by ignoring cultural norms and by abandoning our friends, is surely the most expedient way of losing their hearts and their minds.
I witnessed the mass exodus of Syria with Richard Flanagan in 2016 and World Vision. There were many Afghans amongst the desperate river of refugees.
My trusted and dear friends from the charity and NGO sector have told me that right now the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) have the most pressing mandate to help, on the ground in Kabul and through Afghanistan. We have abandoned Afghanistan.
The UNHCR will not. My country has done terrible things, but we the people, need not. More people marched against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan than have marched in the history of the human race. We the people were right. It’s up to us now to stand by our friends, the artists, the musicians, the academics and the women of Afghanistan.
Ben Quilty is a multi-award winning Australian artist
Ben Quilty is raising money for UNCHR here. Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes has agreed to match every $1 of donation up to $1 million.