2008 Could Be Casualty Heavy Year For Australian Troops In Afghanistan

How would prime minister Kevin Rudd deal with a somewhat steady flow of killed and injured Australian troops coming home from Afghanistan? Would he pull out Australian troops if local opposition filled the streets of our cities? Would he send in more troops to show the Taliban they cannot win?

Rudd is already preparing to withdraw all 500 or so of our combat troops now stationed in Iraq by mid-2008. But he may increase the number of Australian troops in Afghanistan, where our soldiers are now being specifically targeted and killed by the Taliban.

Experts fear that Afghanistan will become only more bloody next year, and with the Taliban moving in on Afghanistan's cities, and seemingly gaining strength by the month, the risk of greatly increased military casualties will surely rise as troops engage an enemy growing in number and confidence.

From NPR :

Michael Fullilove, head of the Global Studies Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, says that Afghanistan is likely to be the big issue for Australian forces over the next year.

"We haven't tested public opinion as to how Australians would react to larger numbers of casualties than we've suffered to date," Fullilove says.

That test could come sooner than the new prime minister may want, White says. The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and some allies are wavering on their commitment there, he says. White says that Rudd has mentioned sending in more troops to replace departing ally troops.

"Once he looks at what's actually happening on the ground there, in what has, I think, in Afghanistan, been a very grim year, he'll need to think very carefully whether it's sensible to send young Australians on dangerous missions where the chances of success are so low," White says.

The Afghanistan War has not divided Australia in the same way that the Iraq War did. But with three Australian troops killed in only a matter of weeks, and more than a dozen seriously wounded in 2007 alone, the vague disinterest many Australians have towards what is going on in Afghanistan may soon become organised opposition.


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Prime Minister John Howard, foreign minister Alexander Downer and defence minister Brendan Nelson went on a media blitz last week for the announcement that Australia will double its troop commitment to Afghanistan.

They didn't mention, however, that Australia's commitment could double again, to more than 2000, in 2008, as troops dig in for another four or more years of war fighting in the region.

Howard, Downer and Nelson boasted that Australia's special forces won't be targeting "goat herders" on their return to Afghanistan, but will be taking on the upper ranks of the Taliban, and its leadership. At the same time, they repeatedly stated that Australians "must prepare " for casualties.

If Australia's special forces are truly going in hard against the Taliban, and are aiming to decapitate the Taliban leadership, casualties are all but guaranteed.

What hasn't been addressed yet is whether the special forces will be entering the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan where most of the Taliban leadership is believed to be holed up, or whether they will enter Pakistan itself.

Pakistan's president Musharraf insists that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not coming from his country, but are border-region Afghan refugees. The United States, meanwhile, claims that Pakistan is sheltering Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.

With the announcement today that John Howard has told Pakistan president Musharraf that he "has to do more" to deal with the Al Qaeda and Taliban groups and support bases inside his country, it certainly sounds like the prime minister is laying the ground for Austrailan forces to work close to, or inside, Pakistan's border.

An exceptionally good summary of what Australia's special forces will be facing in Afghanistan from Patrick Walters writing in 'The Australian' :

Australia is being slowly yet inexorably being drawn into a novel 21st-century version of the "great game" in Afghanistan as our military prepares for its most sustained fighting since Vietnam.

The upgraded Afghanistan mission promises to be long and hazardous, and Australia's defence chiefs know there is no guarantee of victory. Our overall troop commitment is much likelier to rise than fall in the next two years as the battle intensifies to stabilise Afghanistan.

But, unlike Australia's two most recent wars, in Vietnam and Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is a full bipartisan commitment from the Government and the ALP. When Australian special forces return to the mountain-locked Oruzgan province next month they will face a far more confident Taliban insurgency. A dysfunctional NATO command in Kabul is manifestly failing to subdue the insurgency now gripping south-eastern Afghanistan.

"It is a fundamental test for NATO and NATO will fail it. It (NATO's counter-insurgency strategy) isn't working and it isn't going to work. But there will be some local successes," says one senior Australian government source. "The only people actually doing anything hard are the US, Brits, Canadians and Aussies."

Australia's military is preparing for the possibility of a four-year assignment task in Oruzgan. But planners know successfully stabilising the south in partnership with Afghan security forces will take a decade of sustained effort.

Since the SAS and commandos returned home from Afghanistan in September 2006 things have gone backwards in Oruzgan. Less than 30 per cent of the province, one of Afghanistan's poorest with a population of about 400,000 people, is under the control of the central government.

Areas subdued by the Australians in 2005-06 such as the Chora Valley, just 15km north of their base at Tarin Kowt, have now effectively fallen back under the control of the Taliban.

Nearly six years after the overthrow of the Taliban government in Kabul, Oruzgan remains a Taliban heartland. Its inaccessible mountain valleys are a safe haven for an estimated 300-400 hardened fighters who roam freely across the mountains from neighbouring Helmand and Kandahar.

There are few roads, even fewer government services, and the opium crops are flourishing. Taliban fighters are steadily encroaching on the provincial capital, Tarin Kowt, which lies in a broad valley. They continue to threaten the main road and main supply line south to Kandahar, 120km away.

The Australians know the terrain and know the enemy but, as one senior military source acknowledges, "we will have to start from scratch again and recover lost ground".

Taking responsibility for the province would involve more than doubling the planned 1000-strong commitment, and would include the provision of combat air power and more ground forces.

NATO estimate the number of Taliban fighters in the southern provinces at about 10,000. Many of these are mercenaries and opportunists who will switch sides if they sense the momentum is slipping away from them.

With the Taliban leadership holed up in Quetta, Pakistan, and newly trained fighters crossing freely into Afghanistan, NATO is facing a far more resilient enemy fully prepared to test the resolve of the US and its allies.

In Oruzgan, Australia's SAS, ably supported by commandos, will aim to quickly regain the tactical initiative, limiting the insurgents and freedom of movement and cutting off their support bases and disrupting supply lines.

The aim will be to create fear and uncertainty in the minds of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters, mounting clandestine patrols, all the while trying to gain the confidence of local Afghan elders and villagers.

This time the special forces will stay for at least two years and have the opportunity to really make a difference. But the Australians will need more help to do the job effectively, particularly helicopter support in combat operations. The army's refurbished Chinooks won't return to Oruzgan until early next year, leaving Australian forces totally reliant on NATO aircraft during the next nine months.

Australia's well-meaning efforts in Oruzgan may prove to be only a transitory success in a long painful march out of Afghanistan.

More details and background on the announcement of more troops to Afghanistan here :

Australia's defence deployment to Afghanistan will be doubled, with special forces charged to aggressively hunt down Taliban leadership and disrupt its resurgent terrorist network.

The existing 400 personal working with the Dutch in a Reconstruction Task Force in the Oruzgan province in the troublesome south, will be joined by a Special Operations taskforce made up of Special Air Service soldiers, Commandoes and a "solid intelligence capability", as well as an additional RAAF air surveillance radar group at Kandahar airport.

The present deployment of 120 special protection soldiers, rotated every six months, will be extended for another 18 months.

Two Chinouks helicopters will be returned and joined by an Hercules C-130J aircraft operating broadly across the Middle East.

The announcement means that Australia will have more than 900 personnel deployed by the middle of the year, peaking at over 1000 by the middle of 2008.

Mr Howard indicated he was conscious of the political difficulties Pakistan had in containing the Taliban but was keen for it to do more.

"We would like the Pakistanis to be as active, intense, as committed as zealous as possible in containing it," he said.

"I understand some of the political realities under which (Pakistani President) General (Pervez) Musharraf operates."

Mr Howard said he had made personnel representations to General Musharraf about the matter, as had British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Vice President Dick Cheney.

"We do all understand some of the history and there is a balancing act," he said.

"There's no doubt that overall the Pakistanis have been good allies in the fight against terrorism," he said.

"I guess in relation to Afghanistan we would like them to be even better allies."

This is exactly the kind of talk which is now infuriating Musharraf, who claims :

"We have suffered the maximum and we have contributed the maximum. Therefore, we will not accept that Pakistan is not doing enough in the war against terror...It pains me when people say that Pakistan is not doing enough."

Why Howard continues to pour on the pressure when Musharraf is threatening to "quit" fighting the 'War on Terror' may be more about laying the media ground work for later revelations that Australian forces are operating on, or in, Pakistan's borders.

Though, according to Musharraf, they might end up doing such operations with his permission.


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Government To Bombard Australians With "Patriotic" Recruitment Propaganda

"Conscription" Raised As Way Of Fixing Defence Force Recruitment Crisis

Australia To Double Special Forces Troops In Afghanistan

Prepare yourself, Australia. You are about to get bombarded by an intensive propaganda campaign designed to guilt trip you into joining the Australian military.

Defence minister, Brendan Nelson has announced that igniting patriotism will be "an extremely important part" of a vast new military recruitment campaign. Nelson has long promoted his theory that the Australian soldier, or digger, is the defining iconic image of the Australian identity.

The Australian Defence Force is having enormous trouble finding new recruits in the midst of a booming economy. Young Australians may be thinking about joining the Army, or Navy, but they don't like the pay, the conditions, or the very real likelihood of being deployed into a warzone. Many simply want to go to university instead.

Tens of millions of dollars will be spent in the coming months on the extended series of television, print, internet and radio military recruitment ads that will dispense with trying to interest young people in joining the Army, the Air Force or the Navy because they want to be soldiers, pilots or sailors, and will attempt, instead, to rouse their sense of patriotism and a desire "to make a difference."

Nelson : "...we need to get away from just promoting defence jobs, to promoting the key values of the three service uniforms, and putting those in a contemporary environment so young people especially understand if you want to make a difference, there's no better way to do it than join the navy, army, or air force..."

It'll be interesting to see exactly what the "key values" Nelson mentions will turn out to be, and what exactly he is asking young Australians to "make a difference" to.

At the same time, Nelson has announced that Australians as old as 56 will now be able to join up, and the compulsory retirement age will be raised from 55 to 60 years old.

The ADF will no longer be so fussy when it comes to education qualifications in new recruits. In fact, you won't even have to finish high school if you want to get into the defence forces now.

"...we'll look at their aptitude, work and life experience," Nelson said. "We'll provide them with the necessary education and get them up to that sort of standard...."

Nelson gave a preview of what we can expect to see in the advertising blitz during an interview last Sunday :

"There is no group of Australians that has done more to shape our values, beliefs and identity than those men and women who have worn and today wear the uniform of the navy, army and air force..."

But do the majority of Australians really believe their "values, beliefs and identity" were formed by the Australian military's more than 100 years of international war-fighting? A long and brutal series of campaigns that killed more than 100,000 men and boys , disabled and injured hundreds of thousands more and robbed generations of children of their fathers and grandfathers?

Nelson is going to be treading on mine-filled ground if the coming recruitment ads try to rewrite the shocking fallout that World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War had on Australian society.

ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day are not about celebrating victories in war for the vast majority of Australian, but are instead sombre, extremely sad occasions when we remember just how deeply successive wars have scarred and shattered Australian families and communities, particularly rural communities.

With a focus on "patriotism" and "values", the coming ads will also be in danger of drifting close to the kind of American-style cheesiness, flag-saluting and gung-ho militarism that makes most Australians laugh in dismay, or shake their heads in disbelief.


On a busy Sunday for Brendan Nelson, he also committed Australia to doubling its troop commitment in Afghanistan to almost 1000, most of whom are expected to be special forces.

Nelson, like prime minister, John Howard, refuses to acknowledge that the pullout of most Australian troops from Afghanistan in the second half of 2002, in preparation for the illegal invasion of Iraq, set the scene for a revival of Taliban strength which now has to be dealt with and is likely to result in Australian troops being killed and wounded.

"We believe there is a need (to redeploy)...we think that the Taliban will be mounting a very strong offensive shortly," Nelson said.

The Prescription For Conscription

In an interview with ABC News, influential defence industry expert Neil James, said that while improved wages and conditions will help to increase overall defence forces recruitment, national conscription could prove necessary should a serious conflict erupt in our region :

"It would depend on the likely duration of the problem. You'd have to say that conscription would have to be one of the things that would need to be considered," he said.

Rest assured that if Neil James is saying that, conscription is already being considered.


In a final bit of news related to the Australian Air Force, a new video flight simulator game is to be launched via Windows Live Messenger.

From 'The Australian' :

The game, Supreme Air Combat, developed for defence force recruiting, was launched at the Avalon Airshow by the RAAF's deputy chief, Air Vice Marshal John Blackburn.

The game features multi-player aerial combat, in which each player controls a small flight group and tries to outmanoeuvre an opponent to win.

It is based on fast turns, which its designers say is designed to encourage quick decision-making using a simulated F/A-18 jet fighter.

The game was also intended to emphasise that a career in the Australian Defence Force was "cutting edge", general defence force recruiting chief Brigadier Simon Gould said.

"It's demonstrating to young Australians that the ADF is fresh, innovative and involved in high technology. It will encourage people to join the team and "have a look at all the possible jobs we have to offer", he said.

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Labor Vows To Smash The Opium Industry That Funds The Taliban And Al Qaeda

Cutting Off Australia's Heroin Supply At Its Source

In an announcement that has barely registered with the Australian media, Labor's foreign minister, Robert McClelland, announced last night that if Labor wins the 2007 federal election they intend to do what John Howard and President Bush have so far refused to do in Afghanistan : smash the opium production industry that is buying weapons and recruits for the Taliban and funding international Al Qaeda terrorism.

McClelland claimed on ABC's Lateline that when the British asked the Howard government almost three years ago to commit resources and boots on the ground to eradicating the Afghanistan opium trade, the government took an entire year to get back to the Brits. When they did, the Howard government responded, according to McClellan, "with just four Australian Federal Police officers, two (officers) allocated to fighting the opium trade..."

Two federal police officers to actively fight an opium production industry that is said to be the root source of more than 85% of the world's heroin and a major source of funding for the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

And yet the Howard government will commit dozens of AFP officers and hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-heroin smuggling operations in our region, in conjunction with Indonesia.

Why not simply stop the opium from ever reaching the marketplace in Afghanistan and getting across the border into Pakistan?

McClelland said Howard's unenthusiastic response to Britain, and the Afghan government's, pleas for help was "not nearly good enough. We say that is a real priority. There is absolutely no question that the government has been neglectful in that area."

Labor should back suggestions raised by NGOs in Afghanistan and buy the opium produced by farmers to take it out of the Afghani marketplace, as well as ramping up eradication programs. The opium can then be destroyed or given to drug companies to manufacture morphine for Iraqi hospitals.

This way, the impoverished Afghani farmers still earn a living from growing opium, but the Taliban are unable to get their hands on most of the raw product. This would help to cut off a major source of funding for the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists across the world.

You have to wonder why John Howard and President Bush have all but ignored more than three years worth of calls by Britain and NGOs to seriously tackle eradication of the opium crops and to take the raw ingredient for heroin out of worldwide circulation.

How can you seriously claim to be waging a War on Terror when you refuse to take action to cut off a primary source of funding for Al Qaeda operations, propaganda and recruiting?

Labor will find much support in the Australian community if they fully commit to making such plans a central plank in their Afghanistan war fighting policy for 2008 and 2009. Particularly if they can show that buy-up and eradication programs in Afghanistan will reduce the amount of heroin that makes it onto the streets of Australia's capital cities.

TOP SAS MAJOR SAYS AUSTRALIA'S INVASION OF IRAQ GAVE TERRORISTS "A LIVE TRAINING RANGE" TO PREPARE FOR ATTACKS ON COALITION ALLIES

CLAIMS 'WAR ON IRAQ' "HELPED OUT TERRORISTS"

One of the fiercest, most informed critics of the Howard government's involvement in the 'War On Iraq' has turned out to be the SAS major who helped plan the first insertions of Australian special forces into Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is quietly furious that prime minister John Howard broke a "moral contract" with Australia's defence forces, betraying them in so many words, by pushing the Bush Co. mantra for war on Iraq before proof of the existence of WMDs was fully established.

"I think the reasons that we went to war in Iraq were baseless," said ex-SAS major Peter Tinley.

"The Government sent us there under the idea of looking for weapons of mass destruction and they gave us the impression that there was a clear and imminent danger of them being used. We now know through our own tactical search on the ground in Iraq and certainly from the Iraq Survey Group, that that was not true at all."

Tinley is one of only a few senior key Australian planners of the 'War On Iraq' to now demand the withdrawal of Australian troops from the war zone.

"We've had three years of occupation in Iraq and we've got....an estimated 50,000 Iraqi dead," Tinley said on ABC's Lateline.

"We have some sort of moral connection to those deaths and we really need to take a hard look at ourselves and consider what our strategy should be from here."

Major Tinley dismisses the Howard mantras of "We won't Cut & Run from Iraq", saying the withdrawal of Australian forces should be done so that they can establish comprehensive Army and police and emergency services training bases in countries like Jordan, so Iraqis can complete detailed training regimes free from the threat of suicide bombings and the civil war.

"I don't believe that some approximately 500 troops in the south, under British command, are actually the best type of contribution we can make to Iraq," he said.

"Instead of Iraqis getting blown up in queues, looking for a job to serve their country in things such as the police force and the military, we can provide an outstanding service there. That's a good example for what I'm saying about expanding the way we view it....I’m advocating a change of policy which includes the immediate withdrawal of our troops."

Tinley also criticised the near absolute lack of debate in Australia as to what the long-term strategy is for Australia's involvement in Iraq.

"It was morally bankrupt, the whole notion of us being there, so the pretext is wrong. If that's the case, then we need to take good, hard, courageous decisions now to get out and get out whilst we can. This war will drag us in further and further. It's a civil war and the power vacuum that was created as a result of this invasion is clearly at the feet of this Government."

He also believes that an Australian contribution of only 500 troops, when there are 140,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, is "purely token".

"(500 Australian troops) aren't going to make any difference whatsoever," he said.

Tinley also rejected prime minister John Howard's claims that a withdrawal from Iraq would mean "victory for the terrorists" and would embolden them to attack coalition targets.

"...we created the honey pot, if you like, from which the terrorist organisations from all around that particular region...get their training. We've provided them with a live training range.

"The fact that we have done that, we've in fact helped out the terrorist organisations that would do harm to any of our coalition partners by giving them that opportunity."

But it was on questions regarding the morality of the War On Iraq that Tinley hit the government the hardest, levelling legitimate claims that Australia's defence forces were betrayed by Howard's rush to war, before weapons inspectors had finished their job.

"I think if you set the premise for your pre-emption - and this is what this is, a pre emptive strike on another sovereign nation, regardless of what you think of the despot that led it. If you set that as the premise, then you want to make sure it's conclusive

"In this case I saw no direct actionable intelligence in the areas that we were looking at from Baghdad west all the way through to the Jordanian border and the Syrian and Saudi border. If that was the basis of it then it was wrong."

Major Tinley began planning the insertion of Australian SAS troops into Afghanistan within days of the attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001. But he was then pulled off these duties to begin planning for the 'War On Iraq', before the job was finished in Afghanistan.

He said special forces planners that he worked with from the US and the UK all questioned the sparse intelligence for Iraqi WMDs they were given. Not only was there no verifiable, quality intelligence on WMD programs, but they couldn't even find proof that Saddam Hussein still had a quantity of Scud missiles and Scud missile launching platforms.

"I never saw anything that was newer than 1996 in terms of photographic imagery in relation to Scud missiles...We made the assumption, all the planners did, that there must be something more conclusive and there must be something somebody else knows about that doesn't need to concern us and the rest of country. We know for a fact now that the Iraq Survey Group and our own searches found absolutely nothing throughout the country."

Tinley said he didn't question the lack of intelligence because "as a soldier I was sent to do the planning. Like any good soldier I just did what I was told and I did it enthusiastically."

He described the betrayal of Australia's defence forces by the Howard government as "moral corruption" and said when Australians sign up to the Defence Force, "you put your hand in the air and you make an oath that you will go where your Government sends you. You therefore confer in some way, a moral responsibility for the Government to make sure they send you to a just war."

Tinley said that when SAS troops entered Iraq, there were clear doubts amongst the elite soldiers about the moral case for the war they were about to begin fighting.

"...I did have some quiet conversations in dark corners of tents with young men who were quite unsure about the war they were going into. It was beyond the normal fear that men have when they go into harm's way but we rationalised it. Those men again relied on the moral contract with the Government. They said their moral objection was far outweighed by the fact that they put their hand in the air and they said they would go where they were told to go."

Most members of the Australian Defence Forces now regard Afghanistan as the moral, justifiable war, while viewing the Iraq War as something much less. Even Prime Minister John Howard admitted in Parliment yesterday that "many" in the ADF did not agree with him about the need to first fight the war on Iraq, or to continue it.

"I think we can make a very clear case for Afghanistan," Tinley said.

"If you have a look at it, we did actually leave Afghanistan in undue haste, in my personal view. Evidence of that fact was the fact that we had to reinsert the SAS to help, along with the coalition partners, stabilise the security of the country."

Those comments are key as to why there is growing anger and frustration in Australia's defence forces, and in particular within the special forces.

The Australian SAS is regarded amongst allies as simply the best special forces teams in the world. The swift initial victory in Afghanistan in October-November, 2001, was largely due to the actions of Australian SAS members, who saved the lives of American and British troops on numerous occasions, clocking up hundreds of closely fought battles with Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

But they weren't allowed to stay and finish the job, Key war planners, like Tinley, along with hundreds of highly experienced SAS and Australian Army troops were hauled out of Afghanistan to go to work in Iraq by mid-2002.

The decision to back the United States in the 'War On Iraq', and thereby seeing Australian SAS pulled out of Afghanistan before security and a new government was established, is seen widely in military circles as having tarnished the impecable reputation of the Australian SAS, and the Army in general.

They didn't finish the job, and Afghanistan is now beset by thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, who have re-armed, re-trained and re-grouped when coalition forces pulled out in preparation for the 'War On Iraq'.

"...when you go into a country like that (Afghanistan) and you take out the regime," Tinley said, "you really need to commit yourself to a longer course to actually sustain and get that back on its feet. You don't take on another job like this and expect to be welcomed as the great liberators as they did in Iraq."


Go Here For The Full Interview From Lateline

Earlier Coverage On This Story