Wednesday 8th of May 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

a monstrous buffoon ....

a monstrous buffoon ....

A great week for huffin'-'n'-puffin', what? First, Alexander Downer takes an airbrush to history. And then, more gobsmackery by our top soldier, on what he ''always knew'' was a raw deal for the people of Afghanistan's Oruzgan province.

With the announcement that a line will be drawn under the failure of Canberra's mission in Afghanistan in 2013, Australian Defence Force chief David Hurley got snappy, telling a news conference about the failure of Canberra's mission in Afghanistan.

''For journalists to come into Afghanistan and tell me there's corruption, disreputable characters, tribal interplays and whatever - I don't need to be told that. We've lived there for 10 years, nearly. These issues are rife,'' he said, prompting some in his audience to conclude he was having a go at my recent reporting from Oruzgan - the province his men failed to tame.

There was never any doubt Hurley knew how bad things are in Afghanistan. What cut across the niceties of our democracy was the ADF's persistent efforts to keep the rest of us in the dark - witness the zeal with which they fought to keep me and photographer Kate Geraghty out of Oruzgan in January. I mean, never let it be said the ADF would allow a war to distract it from the real enemy.

The British, the Dutch and even the Americans, at times, were game to stare down the Kabul kleptocrats - they refused to deploy unless the worst of Karzai's cronies were barred from office. But not Canberra. The brutish former provincial governor Jan Mohammad Khan, or JMK, could do as he pleased. And when JMK was assassinated, his second cousin Matiullah Khan stepped in and that was just fine, too.

There is an argument that in the absence of real democracy, Matiullah Khan is something of a modern warlord. But to have that debate requires Canberra to acknowledge the total failure of the democracy thing.

Now to Downer and Iraq. Such was Alexander's robust resort to the vertical pronoun, some would be forgiven for thinking a certain John Howard had little to do with foreign policy in the period.

Instead, stand back and look upon the qualities Downer claimed for himself to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the invasion of Iraq.

There is his humanity. This crusader for human rights just had to go strike while the iron was hot - all of 12 years after the worst of Saddam Hussein's murder of thousands of Shiites in the south; 15 years after his chemical attacks on the city of Halabja.

Then there is Downer's acute understanding of geopolitics. He knew so much about what was not happening - Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - that he needed to invade in the interests of stability and security.

But he knew so little about what was happening - the dirty deal with Saddam by which the Australian Wheat Board creamed off $300 million under the oil-for-food program - that he had to do, well, he had to do nothing. Remarkable, wasn't it?

And when Australian troops got to Iraq, they deployed in the far south-west corner of the country, where their key task was protecting risk-averse Japanese troops from nothing, really. These were soldiers with a reputation for courage and professionalism in combat, so what were they doing so far from the real fight? Was there an understanding between Australia and the US, that Canberra would sign on when Washington desperately needed amigos for its ''coalition of the willing'' - but only if our boys were kept out of harm's way?

Downer trumpets ''our own small part in the destruction of the [Iraqi] regime'' as proof that the Howard government ''stood for something''. Others are more likely to see the only Australian service death in Iraq as a metaphor to understand the war.

With the utmost respect to the family of Private Jake Kovco, he died by a shot from his own weapon in his barracks inside Baghdad's Green Zone; his body was misplaced in transit; and that of a Bosnian contractor was delivered to Australia.

And when the Australian military attempted to investigate the bungling, it bungled again - one of the investigating officers left a disc containing a draft of her report in an airport lounge. It was leaked - to broadcaster Derryn Hinch.

Alexander Leaves Us On A Downer

 

from orderly exit to disorderly route ....

Thousands of recruits are quitting the newly formed Afghan police and armed forces every month, raising fears over their ability to protect the emerging democracy when coalition troops leave the country in less than two years' time. For every 10 new soldiers recruited to the Afghan National Army (ANA), at least three are lost because they have been sacked, captured or killed in action, new figures have revealed. British officials admit that current "attrition rates", with more than 5,000 soldiers quitting every month, threaten the force's long-term effectiveness.

The Afghan National Security Forces' (ANSF) failure to hit recruitment and retention targets is particularly troubling for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), as the army and the police are seen as vital to preventing the return of the Taliban.

The latest British Government assessments of Afghanistan's progress towards the goals of stability and democracy confirm that the rate of recruits leaving is far worse than targets set by coalition leaders, amounting to 63,000 every year, or more than a third of the current size of the army.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has warned that the ANA's attrition rates "continue to represent a risk to the sustainability of the future force". The figures raise huge questions over the ability of the ANSF to reach the size regarded as necessary to take the reins before thousands of international troops leave Afghanistan by the end of next year.

The Foreign Office (FCO) has also admitted that the number of recruits exiting the ANA, the border police and the national civil order police has caused "a drain on skills".

The dispiriting details of the failure to develop a "critical mass" of ANSF recruits who can lead the fight against the Taliban come three months after The Independent on Sunday revealed that FCO officials feared the police were still "endemically corrupt" and riven with nepotism and drug abuse.

A series of internal FCO papers laid bare official concerns about the fate of Afghanistan and its chances of holding the Taliban at bay if its leaders fail to "root out corruption" throughout the ranks of the Afghan National Police (ANP).

Critics last night said they feared Isaf was heading for a "face-saving exit" from Afghanistan, leaving an army and police forces that were not yet ready to take over the security of their own country.

Shashank Joshi, of the Royal United Services Institute, said: "There is a long-term problem with attrition that has not been resolved, and I suspect the [coalition's] priority now is to salvage the mission and leave as quickly as they can. Even where the Foreign Office suggests there is an improvement in the ANSF, they can't guarantee this will continue after withdrawal because Afghan forces will no longer be able to rely on massive support from the coalition such as intelligence and airlift."

Coalition governments have spent billions developing the ANSF in an effort to create the fully staffed and trained national security forces seen as crucial if Afghanistan is to thrive as a democratic state.

But the FCO's monthly progress reports on Afghanistan revealed that the ANA and ANP missed their monthly recruiting targets in both January and February. The strength of the army stands at 175,000 – 12,000 below its projected size – while the ANP is 7,000 short of the 157,000 target set by coalition leaders.

However, the continued leaking away of soldiers and police officers who had already been tempted into the forces was another cause for alarm.

In January, the ANA's monthly attrition rate was 4.1 per cent, almost three times the target figure, although the Foreign Office maintained it was "artificially high". The rate of recruits leaving was 2.9 per cent – more than double the target – in February.

"High attrition rates within the ANA continue to represent a risk to the sustainability of the future force," the January update declared. "High levels of recruitment mean that this is not enough to endanger overall growth targets, [but] it does cause a drain on skills. Isaf, Nato Training Mission-Afghanistan and the Afghan MoD recognise this and are working hard to address it."

Nato Alarm Over Afghan Army Crisis: Loss Of Recruits Threatens Security As Handover Looms