Australia’s final act in two decades of engagement in Afghanistan is taking place at what’s termed KAIA – Kabul International Airport – from where RAAF aircraft are evacuating some 130 Australian nationals, plus an unspecified number of Afghans and their family members, who are at risk of reprisal from the Taliban.
Defence hasn’t been at all clear how it is conducting this final mission, citing operational security.
At least three aircraft will be deployed, a KC-30A tanker transport aircraft supporting wider US-led operations, plus a pair of C-17 Globemasters and at least one C-130J-30 Hercules for the actual lifting.
They are operating through Australia’s Middle East base at Al-Minhad Air Base (AMAB) outside Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Deploying with them will be some 250 personnel. Defence has released no breakdown but they would certainly include a security and medical element and likely civil officials to process returnees.
KAIA – officially named Hamid Karzai International Airport - is very familiar territory. Australia’s Afghanistan HQ was located on KAIA for much of the last 20 years.
And Australia isn’t doing this alone – several other countries are conducting evacuations, with the US deploying some 3000 troops to ensure it proceeds without hindrance.
Complicating all this is the speed with which Taliban forces seized the capital. The US, Australia, and everyone else may have anticipated more time - maybe another three months - but it was not to be and Kabul fell to the Taliban earlier this week with minimal fighting.
Should the Taliban, or undisciplined elements, decide to make a point, the evacuation could turn very ugly, very quickly.
Though the US says it’s fully committed to withdrawal, nothing could make it reconsider its timetable than TV imagery of an airliner full of embassy officials and refugees swatted from the sky by the Taliban.
Yet it would appear to be in the Taliban’s interests to allow this evacuation to proceed so it can get on with the job of running the country, which certainly won’t be easy.
Afghanistan is a very different nation to when the Taliban last ran the show. Further, the Taliban’s accession has more to do with collapse of government forces than battlefield success. Like post-invasion Iraq, Afghanistan would appear to have all the markers for a broad-based insurgency.
During peace negotiations, the Taliban claimed to have moved on from the medieval instincts which so characterised their last rule of Afghanistan – but running an insurgency is very different from running a nation.
US private sector intelligence group Stratfor makes the fair point that for international recognition, a functioning government will need a functioning bureaucracy, requiring additional political compromises.
And for the international legitimacy needed to attract trade and development assistance, it may well have to contain militant groups under its umbrella, among them al-Qaeda and Islamic State and Uyghur militants of concern to China.
If the Taliban revert to form, the consequence will likely be a humanitarian emergency as a significant component of the population seeks to exit. Australia could then expect an influx of asylum seeker arrivals.
As with the fall of Saigon, these final days won’t be edifying and there’ll be a long debate as to whether it was worth it.
Australia’s principal area of operations was Oruzgan (Uruzgan) province, Taliban heartland, though in the early days, special forces operated just about everywhere. The mission morphed from reconstruction to training and mentoring of Afghan forces.
In Australia’s mission, there was always warfighting, and at peak, Australian forces were highly successful at suppressing insurgent activities.
Infrastructure built during the reconstruction phase will surely endure as a lasting legacy of Australia’s engagement in Afghanistan.
Note: Journalist Max Blenkin, a former Australian Associated Press Defence Correspondent, made numerous trips into Afghanistan as an embedded correspondent with the Australian Defence Force.
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