Australian embassy bids Kabul adieu

After two decades of presence in the restive Afghanistan, Australia has announced the closure of its mission. The announcement comes at the heels of the withdrawal of the US troops ordered by President Joe Biden.

Following the September 2001 attacks, Australian Defence Forces had set foot on the Afghan soil in 2001 under Operation SLIPPER to support the Afghanistan government as a part of the NATO Resolute Support Mission. The operations lasted until 2011 after which Operation HIGHROAD rolled out which included the Headquarter Task Group Operations, Headquarters Resolute Support, Kabul Joint Command, Role 2E Medical Facility and Special Operations Advisory Group, NATO Special Operations Component Command — Afghanistan and the Afghan General Command of Police Special Units Special Forces.

Between 2001 and 2012, 38 ADF forces were killed and 240 injured in the security operations.

The Australian decision is triggered by security threats and safety of the diplomatic and support staff following the US troop withdrawal. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the decision to shut the embassy has been taken “in the light of the imminent and international military withdrawal from Afghanistan…[and the US withdrawal] brings with it an increasingly uncertain security environment where the government has been advised that the security arrangements could not be provided to support an ongoing diplomatic presence”.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne in a meeting with the Chair of the High Council for National Reconciliation, HE Abdullah Abdullah tried to assuage the concerns of the Afghan authorities saying, “We will continue our close friendship, and support our shared aspiration of peace, stability and prosperity. We will continue our development assistance program to work to preserve the significant gains made by the Afghan people, in particular advancing the rights of women and girls”.

The Australian decision has unleashed security fears amongst the 103 current and 70 former Afghan staff who were employed by the Australian mission. Fearing for their lives from a potential life-threatening reprisal from the buoyant Taliban, many of these Afghans have applied for an Australian visa on humanitarian grounds, which currently hangs in a limbo. The opposition in Australia has expressed its disappointment saying that it was not consulted before the government took the decision to shut down its mission, and advised Scott Morrison to speedup the visa process to rescue the current and former Afghan staff.

The Australian conundrum is indeed complex, and quite understandably not easy to resolve without serious repercussions for either side. On the one hand the security risk for the remaining 80 ADF troops and the mission staff remains very high, the withdrawal on the other hand exposes the Afghan staff as a target for the Taliban. There are discussions in Canberra going on the feasibility of moving the mission inside the US complex from where the US embassy had operated since 2001. Also, setting up a regional mission in the Middle East is being considered to facilitate a fly-in fly-out type of diplomatic operation, which Australia had in place between 1969 and 2006.

Moving inside the US complex makes Australia an extension of the American schema eroding any trace of autonomy in the Australian decision-making, a tag that Canberra has long struggled to shrug off. Similarly, a fly-in and fly-out mission would not have the same level of effectiveness and control over the local operations and humanitarian support that Australia is providing so far, as a local mission.

But frankly speaking, the blame cannot rest entirely on Canberra, and the Afghans should have been fully aware that sooner or later international troops would withdraw, and therefore, they needed to be prepared to face this day. The Afghan National Security Forces and successive regimes in Kabul should have been anticipating this day and preparing in all earnest to take on all responsibilities postwithdrawal. For the US, NATO and Australian troops their perpetual presence was never on the cards, and therefore, they cannot be blamed for their decisions, having paid a colossal human and financial cost over two decades.

For now when sceptics question whether all the sacrifices made were worth it when the Afghans had to be left in the lurch leaving the job ‘incomplete’, Washington, Canberra and Brussels will struggle to provide a convincing answer.