Peta Credlin: The Taliban’s resurgence is a threat to the world

As the Taliban once again takes control in Afghanistan and tramples over human rights, particularly those of females, we need to strengthen ourselves against the grave perils we now face.

As angry as I am about yet another week of lockdown in Melbourne – which will, by this time next Sunday, overtake London as the world’s most locked-down city due to Covid, the events in Afghanistan have put things into perspective for me and, I’m sure, for many.

We are safe. We have readily available free vaccines. We have income support that can’t fully replace lost wages or business revenue but at least helps make ends meet. We are a first-world country with a world-class health system and our hospitals are coping well despite the Covid strain. For all our gloom about being locked up, there’s still much to be grateful for. As I often remind myself, to live in Australia is to have won the lottery of life.

Not so Afghanistan, particularly if you are a female. The tragedy that we watch unfold each day now matters not just to the millions living through the calamity of the Taliban’s return but to people everywhere who had hoped the threat of terrorism on our streets had been brought under control.

Taliban fighters stand along a road in Kabul the Taliban's military takeover of Afghanistan. Picture: Wakil Kohsar/AFP

It is all very well for US President Joe Biden to say he wants to end the war with the Taliban but who really believes the Taliban wants to end its war with us? Yes, the American people are weary of forever wars in foreign countries, but the way Biden withdrew is fraught for us as well as disastrous for the Afghans.

America and its allies were not in Afghanistan in order to conquer a country and oppress it. We were there because the former Taliban regime had not only monstrously brutalised its own people but had turned the country into a base and training camp for the terrorists who killed almost 3000 people, Australians among them, by flying planes into the World Trade Centre in New York. Along with al-Qaeda, Islamic State and the theocracy in Tehran, the Taliban hold an extreme version of Islam that they’re committed to inflicting on the whole world.

They believe this so strongly that they fought relentlessly against the world’s greatest power and strongest alliance for two decades; and eventually succeeded because the faith they had in their cause was stronger than the faith we had in ours.

Contrary to Biden’s slippery and deceitful statements last week, America and its allies had indeed been trying to nation-build in Afghanistan. Perhaps it was a mistake, trying to turn a feudal society into a democracy almost overnight, but it was certainly not ignoble. In Uruzgan province, as well as kill terrorists, Australian soldiers and officials built schools and clinics, paved roads, educated girls and tried to give local people an economy based on something other than growing opium.

Effectively, we had given up by 2013, because it was too hard to tell friend from foe. Nevertheless, by continuing to train the Afghan army, we had played our part in preserving a government that didn’t practice genocide against its own people or permit terrorism against ours.

Or at least that’s what we did until President Trump insisted on withdrawing all American forces this year; and then Biden turned the retreat into a rout by simply abandoning all the Afghans who had put their trust in the West.

Some say the Taliban have changed. I don’t buy it, and we’re living in a fool’s paradise to think otherwise. While we are obsessing about climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, transgender pronouns and more, the very freedoms that once defined countries such as Australia are being eroded. While we are unsure of who we are, the fighters of the Taliban are more sure than ever, especially after their total victory over the US.

There will now be a humanitarian chorus demanding that Australia now take tens of thousands of Afghan refugees.

The terror threat against the world will escalate with the Taliban back in control. Picture: Javed Tanveer / AFP

Actually, the point of being in Afghanistan in the first place was to stop it from being the sort of country that people were desperate to flee. When it comes to resettling refugees, Australia already more than pulls its weight; we are one of under 30 countries that give refugees a permanent home. Aside from giving sanctuary to the Afghans who worked with us, our task is much more quickly and purposefully to strengthen ourselves against the grave perils we now face.

With Afghanistan once more a terrorist state, with the Taliban shrewder and better armed than before and with Islamists everywhere re-motivated, the terror threat against the West can only escalate. And we can’t expect its next iteration will be limited to using knives and vehicles.

Worse, the world’s predatory dictatorships – Russia and China – will be hugely emboldened at America’s humiliation and will now recalculate their chances for further adventurism while they’re dealing with a defeated, defeatist and, at times, befuddled President Biden. It can hardly be a coincidence that China engaged last week in live fire exercises around democratic Taiwan.

Compared to the struggles ahead, climate change and the pandemic might turn out to be the least of our worries.

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