The soon-to-be-released Brereton Report will shine a light on alleged war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan. It is expected that a culture of impunity within the special forces will be highlighted as a significant factor in perpetuating crimes against Afghan civilians
However, any change that is to occur as a result of this report must not be limited to the troops themselves. It must start at the top – meaning the political decisions to send Australians to war and the impunity with which those decision are made. And it must focus on those who are disproportionately affected and disproportionately ignored when we go to war – civilians.
A decision for war is made all the easier because civilians in the places where we fight our wars – and questions such as how many are likely to be killed, injured, displaced or orphaned, and who will look after them – barely rate a mention.
The Costs of War project at Brown University in the United States estimates that there have been more than 43,000 civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan, and a far higher additional number whose lives have been devastated in multiple ways. Tadamichi Yamamoto, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), says that “almost no civilian in Afghanistan has escaped being personally affected in some way by the ongoing violence”.
For children, the costs of war are particularly severe. Not a single child living in Afghanistan today was born into peace. The UN Secretary-General’s June 2020 report Children and Armed Conflict (reporting on the year 2019) states that, of all the conflicts around the world, the war in Afghanistan remains the deadliest for children, with a 67 per cent increase in suicide and complex attacks affecting children, outweighing a decrease in casualties from aerial attacks.
Millions of Afghans have been displaced from their homes. The Costs of War project estimates that since 2001 at least 2.1 million Afghans have fled the country, and another 3.2 million have been displaced internally. They face any combination of lack of shelter, hunger, unemployment, lack of adequate healthcare, water, electricity, and sanitation. Globally, over half of the world’s refugees are children.
Women also are disproportionately impacted by the conflict. UNAMA reports that it exacerbates inequalities and discriminatory practices against them and increases their exposure to sexual and gender-based violence.
By providing political, military and moral support for the war, Australia has had a hand in creating and perpetuating this 19-year-long human disaster.
Australian governments have managed the war by a combination of misinformation and secrecy. The goalposts have shifted regularly, from President Bush’s “smoking al-Qaeda out of their holes” to “preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a training ground for terrorists” to “stabilising Afghanistan” to “improving the lives of the Afghan people”, each one seeming to represent little more than a media sound bite.
READ MORE:
A string of ministerial statements over many years assured us of “progress” when there was none. The media were very carefully managed to paint an overly positive picture of the war. “Operational sensitivity” was abused to avoid disclosing the real situation.
The reliance on secrecy was taken to a new level by the criminal prosecution of military lawyer David McBride, whose “crime” was to disclose to media the Afghan War files on alleged war crimes in Afghanistan – the very subject of Brereton’s report. McBride believed he had exhausted all other avenues internally, including by raising his concerns with very senior military and political figures and the Australian Federal Police, to no avail. For such acts of honour and courage, he faces the possibility of life in prison. If a culture of impunity is to change, the political intimidation of whistleblowers such as McBride must cease.
When a country goes to war, we know there will be killing, maiming, psychological terror, destruction of infrastructure, waves of refugees and human rights violations, with disproportionate impacts on innocent people. There will be “the fog of war”, in which particularly heinous things can happen. These are not unanticipated consequences, but part and parcel of modern war. The time to weigh up these costs is not after the event, but before a decision is made. We owe it to our troops, and to every civilian who will suffer the consequences of whatever unfolds, to get the decision right. Our current decision-making process fails appallingly on every count.
The apparent culture of impunity in our special forces must change, and the perpetrators of the atrocities reported by Justice Brereton must be held to account. But equally there is a desperate need for the culture of political impunity and secrecy to change.
Only then might we claw back an identity as a nation that values peace, rather than one that is constantly at war.
This article was first published in The Canberra Times.
Dr Sue Wareham OAM has spoken and written widely on peace and disarmament issues, and is President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia). She is a former Canberra GP. FB: @MAPWAustralia, T: @MAPW_Australia
Comments
9 responses to “Let’s face it, Australia goes to war far too easily (Canberra Times Nov 15, 2020)”
Australia has also let down its brave troops, sent to die and kill in foreign lands, now to be blamed for a failure to act responsibly by the Governments that maintained them there.
I wonder how many of the soon to be accused have suicided?
Invading Iraq was regarded as unlawful by Australia. No combat trooops there, officially, but every other assistance.
Not so in Afghanistan.
Who made that distinction?
Australia has to ensure the opium crop is harvested.
The USA says so.
Thank you Dr. Wareham.
If the maturity of a country’s government and governance can be said to rest in how well it resists “outside” influence – which is apparently what our security industry wants, then Australia has not matured in any meaningful sense when you consider, as the author does, just how easily this country “goes to war”.
In this particular sense the very fact that in all cases since the mid ‘60’s the outside influence has been American is regarded as beneficial; indeed the Australian public is routinely expected to accept that it’s safety and welfare depends utterly on what America wants – and somehow that’s translated into “standing up for ourselves” ?
I dread to think of the karmic burden we Australians are accumulating from the violence we have so blithely unleashed upon people who neither did us harm, nor wished to do us harm. Since federation and before, we have glibly visualised ourselves as the whip, the boot and the bayonet of white imperial power to keep the brown races in their places. With breathtaking hypocrisy we have described these acts of aggressive war in the same terms we justified our theft of the stolen generations. Well, now the boot is on the other foot, The fist rarely remembers the nose, but the nose sure as hell remembers the fist.
If the processes and findings during the Nuremberg Trials are any measure, then clearly John Howard is along with GW Bush and Tony Blair, a war criminal. But American exceptionalism ensures their politicians and service personnel safe from prosecution in any war crimes investigation or trials. This also protects Howard and Blair, both professed Christians. Remember Arthur Caldwell made possibly his best ever speech in parliament pleading the case against joining the Americans in the war in Vietnam, but to no avail. So many leaders including our current mob just love to be indentified with uniforms, military hardware and flags at the expense of innocents in far away places as the writer highlights. By jingo…
Thank you Sue. Such clear thoughts so rarely heard. Why is that? Our society and politics are debased to brute force and brute words.
And I agree with the Marxd Cowrd that the chief Australian perpetrator should be held to account. That war was made by governments against the clearly expressed wishes of the people in all countries involved, even the US.
glib political decision making influences all Australians attitudes to war
Johnny Howard and all sorts of other idiots that somehow us Australians vote for
inequality means greedy moneyied classes that destroy what was a more civilised country
I’m glad that we hold our professional forces to high standards. Accountability for the culture of impunity should go all the way through to john hoWard.