No complacency over jihadism

Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s presence in Kabul in the aftermath of Saturday’s barbaric terrorist attack on a school is a grim reminder of what is at stake as Western forces withdraw from Afghanistan. More than 60 schoolgirls, most aged between 11 and 15, were torn apart when bomb blasts devastated the school in the neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, home to Shia Muslims from the Hazara ethnic minority. Cruelly, after setting off an initial bomb in front of the building, the terrorists detonated others timed precisely to kill or maim as many girls as possible as they fled their classrooms.

Senator Payne, in Kabul to meet President Ashraf Ghani, expressed Australia’s “deepest condolences” for “a cowardly terrorist attack”. She assured Mr Ghani that despite the withdrawal of Australia’s 80 remaining troops by the September 11 deadline set by the US for its own and other NATO forces, Australia “will continue our close friendship” with Afghanistan. “We will continue our development assistance program to work to preserve the significant gains made by the Afghan people, in particular advancing the rights of women and girls,” Senator Payne added. She was right to do so. But Saturday’s appalling brutality shows just how difficult that is going to be once Western forces have departed and Afghanistan is left even more vulnerable to the savagery of the Taliban and Islamic State, which has become an increasing presence.

As ASIO boss Mike Burgess said last month in warning “there is likely to be a terrorist attack in the next 12 months”, Sunni-based violent extremism remains the biggest concern for Australia’s security agencies. The imminent Western withdrawal from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden’s base to launch the 9/11 attacks, adds significantly to such apprehensions. Another reminder of our turbulent times was the return of Mohamed Zuhbi — an Australian who claims to have gone to Syria as an aid worker in 2013 — to Melbourne from Turkey under heavy guard last Saturday. He is accused of being a frontline Islamic State fighter. Mr Zuhbi, who faces terrorism charges, claimed Islamic State supporters were “simply freedom fighters fighting for the state of Islam”. There can be no complacency about domestic terror threats and their global linkages. Mr Burgess is right to keep reminding us of this. Many Australians, understandably, are preoccupied with the rapid decline in our relations with China, but we must not lose sight of the longstanding and serious challenge represented by jihadism, or the dangers overshadowing Afghanistan and the potential for the return of Islamist terrorism based in the country.

After 20 years in Afghanistan, there are good reasons the US and its allies, including Australia, want to get out of the “forever war”. But Saturday’s attack on the girls school and the wave of similar horrifying attacks across Afghanistan in recent months should leave no doubt about the risks implicit in the drawdown of Western forces.

Mr Ghani blamed the school attack on the Taliban, seeing it as part of the terrorists’ drive to regain power and reimpose the same Islamist rule that, among other human rights atrocities, denied girls education and burned down their schools. The Taliban, as it invariably does after such attacks, denied any involvement. Hardline Sunni Islamic State, which has been carrying out assassinations and bombings in Kabul and Jalalabad, is also seen as likely to have been responsible for the attack on the Shia school. They regard Shias as heretics.

Also waiting in the wings is al-Qa’ida, the Taliban’s closest ally at the time of 9/11. Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is believed to be in the remote mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With a band of jihadists, he has defied two decades of Western attempts to capture him. Doubtless he will seek to take advantage of whatever changes follow the departure of Western forces. These are dark and unstable times, calling for strategic realism and constant vigilance.