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Subject:
Out of our depth
Volkodav
5/3/2008 7:30:37 AM
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from The Australian
Patrick Walters, National security editor | May 03, 2008
JUST before dusk last Sunday a company of Australian commandos readied themselves for an assault on a suspected Taliban position in a rugged mountain valley 25km south of their base at Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan.
It was a typical clearance mission for the special forces task group. The Australians, consisting of a 100-strong company-sized force from the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, fanned out along the edge of a broad river valley surrounded by rugged hill country perfectly suited for guerilla warfare. The commandos were preparing to take on a group of Taliban fighters concealed on higher ground further along the valley.
Equipped with long-range patrol vehicles, the lead assault platoon gingerly edged its way forward along the exposed dusty tracks below, wary of the ever-present threat posed by roadside bombs. Suddenly they came under sustained fire from Taliban insurgents positioned above them more than 500m away.
Operating in small groups, Taliban fighters had carefully manoeuvred around the flank of the Australian force and opened up with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
The firefight, which killed 4RAR commando Jason Marks and wounded four of his comrades, went on for more than three hours before the Taliban broke off the contact. The incident once again exemplified the fighting prowess of the Taliban, regarded by the Australians as some of the toughest opponents they have encountered.
"The whole action is testament to the professional confidence of the Taliban. They are extremely hard, professional fighters. They closed on us without hesitation, without waiting to be attacked," observes one military source of Sunday's encounter. Adds another senior Australian Defence Force source: "They are learning and adapting faster than us. They gather intelligence on us and then they disappear into local communities."
This latest action further underlines the challenge that confronts Australia's 1000-strong military in Afghanistan. How to defeat a hardy, mobile and resourceful foe that melts in and out of the local population and just keeps coming back even after suffering heavy casualties?
The hard-headed assessment of some of our best military minds is that Australia will have to exert a great deal more will and determination to prevail in Oruzgan province.
From a military perspective, we are not gaining ground, tactically or strategically. It's time for our military leaders and the Rudd Government to fundamentally reassess the mission entrusted to our Diggers.
For years the rhetoric from the Australian government about the vital strategic importance of the struggle in Afghanistan has not been matched by a commensurate physical commitment of military and civil resources.
"In Oruzgan we are hanging on with barely enough resources to maintain the status quo. It's not enough to be decisive. At best we are holding our ground. We are not doing the heavy lifting or doing the strategic planning," one senior military source tellsInquirer.
An Australian government source with first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan agrees with his view: "It is the case that we need more troops," he acknowledges. "At the moment we have a capacity to clear and not hold, let alone provide a shield for civil operations to work."
But our defence force has a strict cap on the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan. This ceiling has meant that the recent decision to provide an operational mentoring and liaison team to train an Afghan national army battalion has reduced the number of our army engineers just as they have started to achieve a positive effect in building and reconstruction work around Tarin Kowt.
The ADF needs to reassess how we manage the Afghanistan war from the military perspective, including command arrangements.
With the Dutch widely expected to phase down their force levels in Oruzgan from 2010, the expectation of Australia's closest allies led by the US is that we will take over responsibility for the province. The Dutch have more than 1700 military in Afghanistan including a ready reaction force headquartered in Tarin Kowt.
Australia's commanders in Afghanistan should be given the planning staff and military hardware they need, not just to conduct offensive operations but to co-ordinate reconstruction with agencies such as AusAID and the Australian Federal Police.
Mike Hindmarsh, the commander of the Australian forces in the Middle East area of operations, which includes Afghanistan, is fighting the war with one hand tied behind his back.
Headquartered in Baghdad, the Australian theatre command should be converted to a fully operational command and relocated as Afghanistan becomes our main military endeavour. With the pullout of Australian ground forces in southern Iraq and a likely drawdown in East Timor during the next year, the ADF could plan on inserting a fully equipped battle group into Oruzgan in addition to the existing special forces tasks group and our engineers.
But Kevin Rudd and his chief military advisers remain extremely wary of being strategically trapped in Afghanistan and held hostage to a dysfunctional NATO-led command in Kabul charged with overseeing the stabilisation of Afghanistan.
Our defence leaders have cautioned the Government against any larger Australian military effort.
Rudd and Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon argue that Australia will consider lifting its troop commitment only if NATO members first lift their own military presence.
"This is not a blank cheque and it (Australia's military commitment) will be subject to rolling annual review," Rudd told reporters this week.
Fitzgibbon tells Inquirer the Government cannot predict how Oruzgan will progress in coming months "and therefore how long it is necessary for Australia to remain involved". He will not be drawn on what will happen in Oruzgan should the Dutch withdraw their ground forces.
"But given we are a non-NATO country and given our size I am very keen that Australia should not take lead responsibility in Oruzgan province," he stresses.
As with its predecessor, the Rudd Government has presented a distorted picture of the role of Australian troops relative to the efforts of other allied forces in Afghanistan.
The overwhelming impression is that only we and our traditional allies are doing the real heavy lifting. The fact is the Americans, British, Canadians, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian and Romanians have all suffered more deaths in their military operations in Afghanistan than Australia has.
Australia has lost just five soldiers in its on-again, off-again deployments to Afghanistan since late 2001.
By contrast, tiny Denmark has lost 15 soldiers in combat operations. It has recently doubled its combat forces in troubled Helmand province to 700 troops. As casualties mount, political and public support at home for the Danish deployment has hardened.
This week Rudd outlined the strategic rationale for Australia's military commitment to Afghanistan, reiterating our formal obligation to help Washington under the ANZUS treaty.
"We are there because a failed state was giving open succour and support to a global terrorist organisation, al-Qa'ida, which then attacked our ally the US on September 11, 2001, and in the process murdered 3000 people. We, as a consequence of our alliance with the US, embarked upon a combined military action with them. Nothing has changed since then."
It is a message Rudd needs to hammer home to an Australian electorate still transfixed by the US-led disaster in Iraq.
Afghanistan matters and we must make Oruzgan work.
CIA boss Michael Hayden on Thursday observed that the US viewed Islamist terrorism as an "overwhelming international challenge", which required as a precondition for winning that "we take the fight to the enemy".
Not long ago a US commander in Afghanistan observed to a senior Australian army officer that a "dog without much bark should have more bite". It was a none too subtle message from our old ally that more is expected from our military in the grim struggle that lies ahead in Afghanistan.
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