Australian Defence Force shifts focus to the Pacific after Afghanistan

Twenty years, 38,000 Australian troops deployed, 41 dead and several hundred injured — as the mission in Afghanistan ends, the ADF now looks to the Pacific.

Sometime after landing in Afghanistan during the fighting season of 2009, armoured corps commander Andrew Hastie sent an email home in which he posed a question.

“What the hell are we doing here?” he wrote rhetorically from Tarin Kowt on his first deployment with the 2nd Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force.

It was not the question of a man facing his fears nor one developing a holistic view of conflict, but rather a practical observation of Australia’s deployment to the then eight-year-old conflict with no end in sight.

Some in the Australian Defence Force were still asking themselves the same 12 years later.

Twenty years, 38,000 Australian troops deployed, 41 dead and several hundred injured, with Australia ending its engagement this week.

Australian troops board an RAAF C130 aircraft at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to fly out of Afghanistan for the last time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Then there’s the largely hidden cost soon to go public with a royal commission into the more than 500 serving and veteran personnel who have committed suicide since coming home.

All a high cost for our nation, with many now posing a more vexed question what was actually achieved?

The conflict has left our defence forces scarred and in some instances broken and any gains made are now being rapidly eroded by a resurgent new generation of jihadi Taliban.

It was the 9/11 War on Terror war we had to have but it cost us.

As the ADF now looks to our own strategically challenged region, do we potentially face another conflict we can’t ever hope to win?

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Scenes from Afghanistan this week are tough for the ADF with footage of them and US counterparts departing juxtaposed with footage of heavy fighting returning to towns and villages across the country.

The Taliban is now back in control in five of the six districts of Uruzgan Province where Aussie troops were based for a decade, with capital Tarin Kowt contested and expected to be toppled in coming months.

“We should have been looking to the Pacific,” Hastie, who would return for another Afghan tour this time as an SAS commander, said of his view in 2009 and now.

An Australian Army Special Operations Task Group soldier advances down the road at Multinational Base Tarin Kowt in southern Afghanistan. Picture: Department of Defence

He said what Australia did in Afghanistan was successful but maintains the Pacific should always have been the ADF’s focus.

“We went over there because we were part of an alliance and the alliance is critical to our security. So in the sense that we were a good ally, I think that’s important … it’s an important relationship.”

It is but at what price?

Leading Middle East expert and adjunct professor of social sciences at University of Western Australia Professor Amin Saikal said it was a high one.

“I think the original narrative was we send our troops to Afghanistan to support Australia’s main ally the United States against al-Qaeda and the harbourers of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and stamp out international terrorism,” the Afghanistan-born author and academic said on Friday.

Afghan Taliban militants and villagers attend a gathering in Alingar district of Laghman Province. Picture: AFP

“But the narrative has now changed with people like the former prime minister John Howard a couple of days ago claiming the US and its allies had achieved this major objective of not allowing any further attacks on the United States.

“Well that was a change from the original position … yes it is true there have been no mega attacks on the United States but there have been elsewhere like France for example.

“If it was really to free Afghanistan from the control of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, well that has not been achieved because the Taliban has made a comeback … and as verified by intelligence services the Taliban has not severed its relations with al-Qaeda, which while significantly weaker and losing its leader Osama bin Laden still has a number of operatives in Afghanistan and also on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Australian Army soldiers from Special Operations Task Group prepare to be extracted by a US Army Black Hawk helicopter alongside their Afghan National Security Force partners after completing the clearance of a cave system in Uruzgan province, southern Afghanistan, in 2012. Picture: Defence

Prof Saikal said another objective was to help the perennially embattled Afghanistan achieve a stable, secure, close-to-democratic state but that quest was also now rapidly falling apart, still mired in bloodshed and fighting.

“Most of the good work that Australians had done is now being undone by the Taliban who are on the verge of taking Tarin Kowt the capital of Uruzgan,” he said.

“Yes Australian troops and civilians sent there did make useful contributions into the security, reconstruction particularly in the province of Uruzgan but now they really don’t have much to show for it.”

Professor Amin Saikal, from University of Western Australia. Picture: Kym Smith

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When then-Prime Minister Howard cited Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty in announcing a planned ADF deployment to Afghanistan he could not have imagined we would be there for two decades and spend more than $10 billion.

But it has all not been in vain and Australian expertise remained in demand by the Afghans to “fight the enemy of the world” until the last ADF personnel flew out.

Physically Australia has been involved in numerous nation building projects including the establishment of medical clinics, roads, schools as well as passing on expertise in practical extensive civil governance and military training.

Notable has been the successful ADF contribution to the establishment of the Afghan National Army Officer Academy dubbed “Sandhurst in the Sand” after the famous UK British equivalent.

Officer cadets at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy (ANAOA) undertake instruction in the close training area at Qargha, Afghanistan. Picture: Defence News

Based outside the coalition’s Camp Qargha, the academy graduated more than 5000 Afghan officers, largely trained by the ADF and British and New Zealand counterparts.

The training of this new generation of officers, which includes women for the first time, will be critical in combating the Taliban, as will be the Afghan government whose civil structures were created with Australian help.

“Gains were absolutely made in many areas in Afghanistan, particularly during the reconstruction phase and it was not all for nought,” a senior Defence figure speaking on condition of anonymity said.

“Some people will reflect and now question what has been achieved but won’t have that deeper understanding of what was done and won’t perhaps ask what would things have been like had we not gone in, had it remained a hub for international terrorism.”

Members of Force Protection Element 12, part of the 300 ADF personnel deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Highroad. Picture: Defence

Those in the military also speak about the invaluable experience gained by the ADF in being exposed to conflict theatres, the Brereton inquiry into Special Forces atrocities aside which has left the SAS deeply scarred, and working in with allies.

With a looming menace in China there is discussion now of a “return on investment”; had Australia not joined America in this threat could it expect the US to remain and now re-engage in the Pacific to face down China’s expansionist ambitions?

“Its been a long two decades with an enormous amount of success achieved by those 39,000 and we need to learn the lessons of those conflicts and make sure we understand what's on the horizon,” Defence Minister Peter Dutton said as he said the ADF would return to core business in the Pacific.

“The level of foreign interference in our country, the level of cyber attacks, the militarisation of bases across our region, the heavy influence into near neighbours, I think that all creates question marks and uncertainty which we need to monitor and respond to as we need.”

Originally published as Australian Defence Force shifts focus to the Pacific after Afghanistan