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July 07, 2005
Separate issues
It looks like the Aussies are being called back to another front in the "war on terror:"
The Afghan government had asked Australia, a close US ally, to send troops and the cabinet would most likely make a decision next week, Howard told a commercial radio station Thursday.
"There's been a standing request from the government of Afghanistan over quite a period of time to a lot of countries including Australia to send troops," he said.
"Now we are going to look at it. I don't want to pre-empt what cabinet might decide. But we are going to look at it and if we do take a decision it will be announced next week."
I would argue that a given military commitment to Afghanistan would do much more to mitigate violent Islamic extremism than a similar commitment to Iraq. Though the occupation of Iraq has caused a blossoming of Islamic terrorism in that country, Afghanistan was always the hub of al Qaeda's operations. Even today, it remains nothing more than a fragile success, still hosting and falling victim to Taliban and al Qaeda perturbations. Of course, this is all complicated by the fact that Iraq -- as a hub and training center for mujahideen, both local and foreign -- has become the new Afghanistan. Both places are a mess, but on principle, Afghanistan represents the struggle against Islamic terrorism in a purer and more effective sense.
Howard strives to make the distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan, especially with regard to possible troop deployments:
Australia already has about 900 troops with the US-led coalition in Iraq, and Howard indicated that any decision on Afghanistan would not affect this commitment.
"The two issues are quite separate and if we were to decide on Afghanistan it would be taken in isolation to our commitment to Iraq, and that commitment will remain until the job is finished," he said. [emphasis mine]
I suppose that's better than rejecting the Afghan request out of hand, but it misses a great opportunity to send a symbolic and practical message that Iraq represents a colossal miscalculation in the West's post-9/11 response. Interestingly, and refreshingly, Labor is making the same distinction that Howard is ("the two issues are quite separate") but from a much more logical basis:
"At the moment Australia is caught in the Iraq quagmire," [Labor leader Kim] Beazley said. "Australia needs to get out of Iraq so that we can begin to prepare for involvement in Afghanistan to tackle terrorism."
Indeed, Iraq and Afghanistan are quite separate issues. Howard thinks they are separate because they represent different battlefields in the same war, while Beazley thinks they're separate because Iraq and Afghanistan represent different wars altogether. In this instance, I think Beazley's closer to the truth.
Posted by Daniel Widome at 05:16 PM to Australia/NZ, Middle East
