AR MY
Australian Army profoundly changed by two decades of war in Afghanistan The war in Afghanistan has profoundly changed the Australian Army and had a significant impact on the whole defence force. Around 30,000 ADF personnel served in Afghanistan and 41 died there. The vast majority of them fought and worked with great courage and decency, many living in small, isolated patrol bases in remote valleys with the Afghan soldiers they mentored. They did not just teach the Afghans to shoot and then send them on their way; they fought, and some of them died, with those Afghan soldiers. Even when trust was broken with ‘insider’ killings of Australian and other allied soldiers by Afghan personnel who were traitors or disaffected, the Diggers persevered.
Soldiers who ran technical training programs teaching Afghans were immensely proud of the tradesmen they turned out. Those who built schools and clinics took the same pride in introducing visitors to young Afghan doctors who worked there, tending long lines of sick and injured. I’ll never forget an ill-judged comment I made to one doctor when I noted that while there was so much physical injury around, his clinic had a mental health room. The doctor looked at me sadly and said: ‘We’ve been at war for decades. Nearly everyone has lost someone. Everyone is traumatised.’ Sometimes, in quiet moments, his words, and his face, come back to me and I wonder if he has survived thus far, if he’s still
A Special Operations Task Group bearer party walks alongside Sergeant Brett Wood's casket as he is carried to an awaiting C-130 aircraft at Tarin Kot airfield. Defence images.
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AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPER
working, and whether his devotion to his patients will keep him there if the Taliban take over, or if they’ll simply murder him. Diggers who built or repaired schools were proud that local kids, especially girls, were being educated there. There were hope-filled periods when the region around Kabul was calm enough for journalists and other visitors to go to local markets, to roam through shops full of stunning carpets, shawls and cloaks without an armed escort. That was an echo of Afghanistan of the days before the Russian invasion when it was a fascinating, romantic and historical, and surprisingly secular, sojourn on the global hippy trail. But at the same time, there was
