Get all Australian troops out of Afghanistan now!

By Pip Hinman
On February 13,2009, Australian troops killed five children and injured at least two other adult civilians in a night-time “operation” in Aghanistan’s southern Oruzgan province. This is not the first time Australian occupation troops have killed civilians. In January 2009, seven women and two children were also killed in a raid involving Australian special forces.
The Australian Defence Forces have announced yet another inquiry into these deaths. But if the February 13 doorstop interview with Lieutenant General Mark Evans (published on the Department of Defence website) is anything to go by, we will never really find out what happened. “Our rules of engagement are strict and we work at all levels to ensure that civilian casualties do not occur.”

"It’s high time to force the Rudd government to explain exactly how, after seven years, this occupation is bringing peace and democracy and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says last year there was the highest civilian death toll since the end of 2001."

More than 1090 Australian troops are in Afghanistan under NATO command and the Rudd government is preparing to send more. After NATO meets in April, and provided European countries are persuaded by US pressure to up their numbers, we can be sure that Canberra will join in a new US-led “surge” in the war-ravaged country.
US President Barak Obama announced on February 18 that 7000 more US troops, and then more, would be sent to this intractable war, underscoring that Obama’s “change you can believe in” maintains the same imperial approach as that of the hated Bush administration.
It’s the same in Australia. Kevin Rudd felt enough pressure to pull 550 troops out of Iraq but remains steadfast in his support for the US war alliance by committing to the “long haul” in Afghanistan. The need to fight “terrorism central” in Afghanistan was how former ALP leader Kim Beazley summed up Labor’s support for the war.
However, according to a 2008 survey conducted by the Lowy Institute, some 55% of Australians are against sending troops there. This high figure is revealing, given that the mainstream media coverage of the war consists of reworks of Defence Department puff pieces about “our” diggers winning local hearts and minds in Oruzgan.
Following the debacle in Iraq and the brutality meted out to Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay in the name of the “war on terror”, the population is not so easily fooled.
It’s high time to force the Rudd government to explain exactly how, after seven years, this occupation is bringing peace and democracy to the people of Afghanistan. The number of civilian causalities is on the rise: 2118 civilians died in 2008, an increase of 40% on 2007 according to the UN Mission in Afghanistan. The annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says this was the highest civilian death toll of any year since the end of 2001.
Obama’s new military surge will only produce a further surge in civilian casualties.
But why, if British and US commanders at the highest level say the war in Afghanistan is “unwinnable” militarily, is Australia considering sending more troops? Clearly, most Afghan people hated the brutal and reactionary Taliban regime. But since 2005 support for the NATO presence has halved from 68% to 32%, according to a February 17 report published by ISN Security Watch. The reason is that the NATO-led “reconstruction” of the country under the corrupt puppet Hamid Karzai has made life worse.
Writer Tariq Ali explained why the US and its friends are persisting in Afghanistan in a March 2008 New Left Review essay: “Washington is not seeking permanent bases in this fraught and inhospitable terrain simply for the sake of ‘democratisation and good governance’…Afghanistan has become a central theatre for reconstituting, and extending, the West’s power-political grip on the world order.”
Afghanistan has resisted occupations for the better half of the 19th and 20th centuries and there is no reason to suggest that this will change in the 21st century—especially as indiscriminate killings of women and children and wedding parties will continue.
Australia has only one decent policy option left in Afghanistan: bring the troops home now.

Pip Hinman is the Anti-War and Civil Liberties Spokesperson for the Socialist Alliance in Australia.