IT WAS the unwelcome phone call Lieutenant-General David Hurley knew would come eventually.
In the evening of his first day as the Chief of the Defence Force, came the news that a 28th Australian soldier had been killed in Afghanistan, shot dead in a firefight with insurgents in the south of the country.
Sergeant Todd Langley, 35, from the Sydney-based 2nd Commando Regiment, was shot in the head on Monday afternoon. During the same battle, a second soldier was seriously injured and is being treated in the coalition military hospital in Kandahar.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Sergeant Todd Langley. The deaths of Sergeant Langley and Sapper Robinson are the fourth and fifth during the Afghan summer fighting season, when the Taliban leaders return from wintering in Pakistan and attempt to re-capture ground lost to coalition forces during the winter. Nine Australians were killed last year in roughly the same period.
This year is different, though, with the coalition forces and their Afghan allies having launched a concerted push over winter to expand their influence throughout the four main valleys that radiate outwards from Oruzgan's capital of Tarin Kowt.
A special ops taskforce soldier pictured during the Shah Wali Kot offensive. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer''Since the Dutch left, the number of combat outposts and patrol bases has almost doubled,'' said Afghanistan analyst Raspal Khosa of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
''The area controlled by the Afghan National Police has quadrupled in that period, which goes to show how different the approach is from when the Dutch were there.''
As well as exerting control over more territory, their aim has been to root out high-ranking Taliban leaders in the province and to destroy insurgent arms dumps. On body-count alone, they have achieved the former aim, with dozens of senior insurgents captured or killed in recent months.
Only yesterday, the NATO-led coalition announced that American and Afghan special forces troops had undertaken a ''clearing operation'' in Oruzgan's far-flung Char Chineh valley, aimed at chasing out insurgents and securing allied military bases in the area.
An Afghan Commando team leader was quoted in the coalition press release as saying that as long as the local citizens are willing to co-operate with security forces, progress will be made in creating a safer environment for them.
"I care about this place. I come here willing to risk my life for the people of this village. I want them to be willing to fight for their village as well," an Afghan Commando was quoted as saying. "I want to help the Afghan people and show them that the Afghan government is here to help them as well."
Australian soldiers on the ground say the areas nominally under their control have become more peaceful. With this initial gain of the expansion, the federal government's definition of success has changed subtly, from the training of Afghan security forces to the actual taking and holding of territory.
The network of Australian-built patrol bases has crept outwards along the Mirabad, Chora, Tangi and Baluchi valleys, as the insurgents have watched and waited, biding their time. As movement through the mountain passes becomes easier in the warm weather, greenery begins sprouting in the valleys, providing better cover for attacks on Australian and allied patrols.
Any perceived improvement in relations with the locals will be put to the test as insurgent leaders move back into the area. While there are die-hard Taliban adherents in the province, many of the locals will work for whoever pays them best and can guarantee their security.
The situation has been complicated in the past fortnight, with US President Barack Obama's declaration that he will withdraw 33,000 American troops from Afghanistan in the next 12 months, as public appetite for the war wanes and the amount spent on the decade-long conflict ticks towards a staggering $US1 trillion.
Analysts and defence insiders have differed as to what effect the announcement will have on the Taliban's willingness to fight. Some say insurgents will ramp up their attacks in order to take credit when the US troops leave, while others say the Taliban will sit back and shoulder arms until the allies leave.
''We haven't seen any significant increases in activity levels at the present time that you could actually definitely relate to that,'' General Hurley said yesterday in response to a question about the US draw-down.
''The data at the moment frankly says [improvised explosive device] activity rates are falling and the number of complex attacks is not as high as we thought they might be this year.
''So we need to just watch that work through another month or so to see how that data holds, but it's not as strong as we might have expected. We'll just need to see how that plays out.''
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was quick to say in the wake of President Obama's announcement that the US withdrawal would have no effect on Australia's Afghan mission. US troop numbers in Oruzgan will not fall and Australia's deadline for the withdrawal of most of its troops, 2014, has been calibrated to match that of the United States.
In a shift in policy foreshadowed by The Age earlier this year, the latest batch of Australian troops to arrive in Oruzgan will switch their focus from partnering Afghan troops on the ground to mentoring Afghan officers.
THIS, and the likelihood that the next rotation of troops due to arrive early next year will be smaller than the current force might lessen Australian troops' exposure to insurgent action.
Away from the relative backwater of Oruzgan, soldiers from Australia's special operations task group - including commandos, special air service soldiers and specialists attached to them - range across neighbouring southern provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar.
Among their tasks is interrupting the movement by insurgents of weapons and men from Pakistan through the so-called ''rat lines'' in the south of the country to other areas in Afghanistan, such as Oruzgan, and to disrupt Taliban havens in the southern provinces.
Australia already has the third biggest contingent of special forces troops in the country. Long after the bulk of the regular troops have been withdrawn from Oruzgan, they are likely to be operating in the barren mountains of the south.
In April, a Pentagon report said the Taliban's main effort in the coming months "will be to reclaim safe havens in southern Afghanistan in order to regain influence and dominance … they will likely focus on Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan as these areas are economically, socially and psychologically important to the Taliban''.
The report went on to say "the insurgency is also attempting to re-establish a more effective presence in Oruzgan. Taliban senior leaders are focused on undermining local defence initiatives."
It was in Helmand that Sapper Robinson and commando Sergeant Brett Wood were killed.
Although details of the latest death have been withheld by Defence on the grounds that the operation in question is ongoing, it is also possible that was where Sergeant Langley was killed.
Three years ago, whenever Australia's special forces wanted to venture into Kandahar and Helmand, they needed special permission from Canberra, even if the objective was a mere 100 kilometres away. Now they have unilateral access to US Black Hawk helicopters and much greater promise of air support from the US.
The Age has also previously reported that the SAS asked repeatedly to be allowed to broaden its scope of operations in Afghanistan but was knocked back. It asked to be detached from Australia's command structure in Afghanistan and instead to operate under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) alongside British and American special forces.
However, it is believed the requests were rejected - at least partly because the area of operations would be significantly larger than the current footprint and could even lead to Australian special forces fighting in Pakistan.
Australian special forces have operated in Afghanistan since 2001, with many of them racking up four, five or six deployments in the harsh, unyielding terrain. Sergeant Langley was on his fifth tour of Afghanistan, having been deployed twice to East Timor, while Sergeant Wood was on his third tour.
Special forces soldiers have accounted for more than half of Australia's dead in the decade-long war and concerns are emerging about the effects of the heavy burden the special forces soldiers have been asked to shoulder.
One source told The Age yesterday that although the soldiers themselves would not complain about their workload, their families are starting to feel the strain of long separations from fathers, sons and husbands.
''I think as the war gets closer to the end, it gets harder to justify being away. They ask, 'What's it all about?' '' the source said.
Other sources have said the Defence Force faces serious challenges in the years ahead, as special forces troops begin to process their experiences in the bloody struggle for control of the south of Afghanistan.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/counting-the-cost-of-our-afghanistan-mission-20110705-1h0jo.html#ixzz1RJPefwOG
No comments:
Post a Comment