I am indebted to the following tweet from the Australian War
Memorial in Canberra for reminding me that today is the 70th anniversary of the
loss with all hands of the corvette HMAS Armidale.
#OnThisDay
1942: HMAS Armidale was sunk by Japanese aircraft. Teddy Sheean fired at
attacking bombers until he was lost with his ship.
HMAS Armidale was one of 60 Bathurst Class corvettes
constructed for the Royal Australian Navy during World War II.
Armidale was laid
down in Sydney on 1 September 1941 and commissioned on 11 June 1942.
HMAS Armidale in Port Moresby, September
1942
HMAS Armidale and SS Tulagi, 7 November
1942
In late November 1942, the RAN was called on to evacuate the
commandos of the 2/2nd Independent Company, a
contingent of Dutch troops, and over 100 Portuguese civilians, while delivering
a relief contingent of Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and Australian
soldiers. Armidale was one of the ships
assigned to the operation, together with her sister ship Castlemaine.
The corvettes sailed from Darwin at midday on 29 November,
leaving just as Japanese aircraft flew over the harbour. At 09:00 on 30 November,
the two ships were located by a Japanese reconnaissance plane, but were unable
to shoot it down. Because of the likelihood of attack during the day and the
distance from the destination, the ships radioed Darwin and suggested that the
mission be aborted, but they were instructed to continue after steering away
from their intended destination for an hour, and promised fighter support. Armidale
and Castlemaine were attacked at midday by 14 Japanese bombers, but
these were driven off by a force of Bristol Beaufighters, which then returned
to Australia. Another attack came at 14:00, but neither side was able to do
damage.
These actions and other events disrupted the operation and
it was attempted again the following day.At 13:00, five approaching Japanese dive-bombers were sighted by Armidale.
Two aircraft were damaged by the corvette's guns, while the other three missed
while attempting to evade fire. A second air attack occurred at 14:00; five Zero
fighters distracted the corvette's weapons while nine torpedo bombers made
attack runs. At 15:10, the ship was hit in the port side by two torpedoes in
quick succession: the first into the mess deck, killing many of the soldiers
there, the second into the engine room.
As the soldiers and sailors began to evacuate into the
water, the Zeroes stopped attacking the sinking corvette and began strafing
runs on those in the water. Ordinary Sailor Edward "Teddy" Sheean,
who had been wounded in the initial attack, strapped himself into one of Armidale's
20 mm Oerlikons and opened fire on the aircraft. Teddy forced one Zero to crash
into the sea and damaged at least two others; continuing to fire until he went
down with Armidale. Low on fuel, the Japanese aircraft headed for home.
The survivors found that the two ship's boats survived the sinking, and were
able to fashion a raft from debris.
Teddy Sheean, after whom the Collins
Class submarine HMAS Sheean is named
–
the only enlisted sailor ever to have a Royal Australian Navy vessel named
after him
The survivors remained together until midday on 2 December,
when one of the boats, with the commanding officer aboard, set out for Darwin
in an effort to find rescuers. At 10:15 on 5 December, they were spotted by a
reconnaissance aircraft, and the 22 aboard were rescued by Kalgoorlie.
On learning that more men were still at sea, an air search was organised, and
the auxiliary patrol boat Vigilant was to stand by off Melville Island.
That same day, the other boat, with 29 aboard, headed for Darwin, leaving the
raft, with 49 aboard, behind. At 16:00 on 8 December, a PBY Catalina flying
boat sighted the raft, now with about 20 aboard, and the second boat. The
aircraft was unable to land to assist either group of survivors because of
rough seas, but directed Kalgoorlie to the boat. The raft could not be
located again, however, and the search effort was called off on 13 December. 40
of Armidale’s crew and 60 embarked
men of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army were killed.
This raft of Armidale survivors were not
seen again
after this photo was taken on 8 December
1942.
The HMAS
Armidale memorial in
Central Park, Armidale
Source: The
principal source for the above was Wikipedia; its account may be read here.
An article in the 10 April 2011 edition of the Los Angeles Times tells step by step the tragic tale of how an American Predator drone crew working out of an air force base in Nevada managed to convince itself that a convoy of three Afghan vehicles and a pickup truck heading along a dirt road in a remote region 200 miles southwest of Kabul was a group of insurgents, deploy Kiowa helicopters onto the convoy, and carry out a lethal assault on the vehicles.
It is a tale of a disastrous lack of cultural awareness: when the convoy stopped at dawn for the participants to disembark for prayer, this was taken as a key indicator that the members were Taliban. It is also, to mind, a tale of a desperate desire for this to be a Taliban convoy, born perhaps of the sheer boredom of driving a surveillance drone day after day, looking for something out of the ordinary that might be a legitimate target.
After some preliminary observations the story begins:
At 6:22 a.m., the drone pilot radioed an update: "All … are finishing up praying and rallying up near all three vehicles at this time."
The camera operator watched the men climb back into the vehicles.
"Oh, sweet target," he said.
---
None of those Afghans was an insurgent. They were men, women and children going about their business, unaware that a unit of U.S. soldiers was just a few miles away, and that teams of U.S. military pilots, camera operators and video screeners had taken them for a group of Taliban fighters.
The Americans were using some of the most sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe.
This is the story of that episode. It is based on hundreds of pages of previously unreleased military documents, including transcripts of cockpit and radio conversations obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the results of two Pentagon investigations and interviews with the officers involved as well as Afghans who were on the ground that day.
The Afghan travelers had set out early on the cold morning of Feb. 21, 2010, from three mountain villages in southern Daikundi province, a remote central region 200 miles southwest of Kabul.
More than two dozen people were wedged into the three vehicles. Many were Hazaras, an ethnic minority that for years has been treated harshly by the Taliban. They included shopkeepers going for supplies, students returning to school, people seeking medical treatment and families with children off to visit relatives. There were several women and as many as four children younger than 6.
They had agreed to meet before dawn for the long drive to Highway 1, the country's main paved road. From there, some planned to go north to Kabul while others were headed south. To reach the highway, they had to drive through Oruzgan province, an insurgent stronghold.
"We traveled together, so that if one vehicle broke down the others would help," said Sayed Qudratullah, 30, who was bound for Kabul in hope of obtaining a license to open a pharmacy.
Another passenger, Nasim, an auto mechanic who like many Afghans uses one name, said that he was going to buy tools and parts.
"We weren't worried when we set out. We were a little scared of the Taliban, but not of government forces," he said referring to the Afghan national army and its U.S. allies. "Why would they attack us?"
Why indeed? The US Air Force and the Army conducted their own investigations into the disaster, in which the US estimates that 16 were killed and 12 wounded, and village elders say 23 were killed, including two boys, Daoud, 3, and Murtaza, 4.
The Army said evidence that the convoy was not a hostile force was "ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," and the A-Team captain's decision to authorize an airstrike was based on a misreading of the threat when, in fact, "there was no urgent need to engage the vehicles."
The Air Force concluded that confusion over whether children were present was a "causal factor" in the decision to attack and, in an internal document last year, said drone crews had not been trained to notice the subtle differences between combatants and suspicious persons who may appear to be combatants.
The episode ended with General Stanley McChrystal, then the top US commander in Afghanistan, apologizing to President Hamid Karzai and issuing letters of reprimand to four senior and two junior officers in Afghanistan, and the Air Force visiting undisclosed punishment on the Predator crew.
None of that brings the dead back to life, of course, and tragedies like this seriously undermine the chances of the US achieving whatever objectives it might have in Afghanistan. Perhaps the key lesson is that over-reliance on technology is counter-productive when success depends upon winning the hearts and minds of the people.
In an April 2011 “Strategic Comment”, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies has a hard-hitting must-read article, War in Libya: Europe’s confused response. It begins:
Although European countries have been prominent in the military operation in Libya, the crisis has exposed sharp disagreements between them. Many of the 26 European members of NATO are not taking part in the operation, while others are contributing to widely differing degrees. As the military conflict moves into what could prove to be a long-running impasse, there is little sign that divisions over how to approach the Libyan uprising are being bridged. The fragmented European responses to the Libyan war show once again how difficult it is for Europe to forge a common foreign policy and to respond as one to crises through multilateral frameworks. In particular, they have exposed the shortcomings of the defence structures that the European Union (EU) has been painstakingly crafting for two decades. They have shown the emptiness of claims that the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 would make the EU better fitted to take action than it was during the crises of the Balkans.
After an analysis of the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, diplomatic and institutional factors, and political and military factors, the article concludes:
The Libyan crisis has thus once again opened wide divisions on foreign policy among European countries. It demonstrates that, 20 years after the Balkan conflicts broke out, the EU remains far from ready to assume a role as a regional power. But it also calls into question the unity and functioning of the Atlantic Alliance, which is looking increasingly like a vehicle for the generation of ad-hoc coalitions of the willing.
Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin, 2006) and The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin 2009, 2010), has had a couple of pungent observations to make about the US approach to Libya in his blog The Best Defense which he writes for Foreign Policy Magazine.
In a 22 March 2011 post, Libya: You want clarity? Here it is he writes:
Everybody's going all wobbly over Libya, except those who never liked the idea in the first place. Tom's advice: Calm down. We have done what we set out to do in Libya. We kicked the door down, and with radars and SAM sites degraded, have made it possible for lesser air forces to patrol the skies over Qaddafi.
...
As for the American military, let's knock off the muttering in the ranks about clear goals and exit strategies... For the last 10 years, our generals have talked about the need to become adaptable, to live with ambiguity. Well, this is it. The international consensus changes every day, so our operations need to change with it. Such is the nature of war, as Clausewitz reminds us.
In How to deal with Libyan ambiguity: Define the problem, not the end state, posted on 1 April 2011, he writes:
Much of the debate over Libya has focused on the end-state, exit strategy, and objectives. Few, however, have taken a step back and defined the Libyan problem itself. There are never operations orders for strategic problems. Thus, planners are rarely blessed with well-defined objectives. So rather than identifying the mission, per se, civil and military leaders might start by identifying the problem.
After identifying the problem (or problems), commanders and their staffs decide what problems are worth solving, how to efficiently solve them, and how to minimize unintended consequences. After putting together a tentative -- and flexible -- plan, commanders can then observe and react to unforeseen circumstances.
...
So, for the moment, let's stop babbling about mission objectives, end states, and withdrawal plans. Instead, let's focus on the more immediate: the problems in Libya, their underlying causes. Next, we need to understand how solving one problem affects other problems? For example, what does action or inaction in Libya mean for regional stability? For the Arab Spring movement? For NATO? These questions are often glossed over in commentary on Libya, and they're debates worth having.
Most importantly, though, we need to ask ourselves: what problems we should attempt to solve in Libya, and how do we best minimize unforeseen consequences?
Professor Juan Cole, R.P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan, has posted on his blog Informed Comment (27 March 20100) an Open Letter to the Left on Libya.
He gives an informative account of how the rising developed, and addresses in turn the principal leftist arguments against the intervention: pacifism (the use of force is always wrong), anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong) and the belief that no social problems can ever be resolved by military force.
Of the latter he says:
The proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces. Those arguing that “Libyans” should settle the issue themselves are wilfully ignoring the overwhelming repressive advantage given Qaddafi by his jets, helicopter gunships, and tanks; the ‘Libyans’ were being crushed inexorably. Such crushing can be effective for decades thereafter.
Many are crying hypocrisy, citing other places an intervention could be staged or worrying that Libya sets a precedent. I don’t find those arguments persuasive. Military intervention is always selective, depending on a constellation of political will, military ability, international legitimacy and practical constraints. The humanitarian situation in Libya was fairly unique. You had a set of tank brigades willing to attack dissidents, and responsible for thousands of casualties and with the prospect of more thousands to come, where aerial intervention by the world community could make a quick and effective difference.
This situation did not obtain in the Sudan’s Darfur, where the terrain and the conflict were such that aerial intervention alone would have been useless and only boots on the ground could have had a hope of being effective. But a whole US occupation of Iraq could not prevent Sunni-Shiite urban faction-fighting that killed tens of thousands, so even boots on the ground in Darfur’s vast expanse might have failed.
He then gives reasons why the other Arab Spring demonstrations are not comparable to the Libyan situation, and deals with the reason why we should not be worried about setting precedents.
In his final paragraph Professor Cole makes this appeal:
I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya...
This is a thoughtful essay, worth reading in full. The original post may be accessed here.
After about a month of protests which escalated into serious fighting, during which Libya’s anti-Gaddafi rebels made some significant gains but were then driven back by Gaddafi’s much better equipped, trained and organised armed forces, on 17 March the United Nations Security Council surprised everyone by passing Security Council Resolution No. 1973 which, as summarised by Wikipedia here:
- demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians
- imposes a no-fly zone over Libya
- authorises all necessary means to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, except for a "foreign occupation force"
- strengthens the earlier arms embargo and particularly action against mercenaries, by allowing for forcible inspections of ships and planes
- imposes a ban on all Libyan-designated flights
- imposes an asset freeze on assets owned by the Libyan authorities, and reaffirms that such assets should be used for the benefit of the Libyan people
- extends the travel ban and assets freeze of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 to a number of additional individuals and Libyan entities
- establishes a panel of experts to monitor and promote sanctions implementation.
The Resolution was passed under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Chapter which authorises the United Nations to make binding resolutions.
It is a messy resolution, as one would have to expect of a resolution which is designed to authorise a major intervention without galvanising the veto powers of China and Russia. It is surprisingly strong, in that it not only authorises the establishment of a no-fly zone, as expected, but it authorises “all necessary means to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas”, short of a foreign occupation force. How events in Libya evolve will be very much a function of how that mandate is interpreted, and the political will that the nations participating in the intervention have to exploit it.
In view of the advances made by pro-Gaddafi forces in the days leading up to the passage of the resolution, and the imminent collapse of resistance before Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, there was palpable relief that the cavalry was coming to the rescue, a period of anxiety as it took time to deploy the necessary armed force, and then further relief as the intervening forces went inot action.
That understandable relief was accompanied by some thoughtful reflections about where this was all taking us.
The diplomatic editor of the Melbourne daily The Age, Daniel Flitton, was one of the first out of the blocks, with a piece in the 19 March edition, West will get to show that might is right. He writes that the mandate is remarkably vague and that there will be disputes in coming weeks about what precisely it intends. He goes on:
Let's be plain: a ''no-fly zone'' equals shooting down Muammar Gaddafi's planes and destroying his air defences. Dropping bombs is never surgical and a civil war cannot be won from the air. For the rebels to prevail, they will need support with arms and training. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said weapons may be sent to the rebels, and already there are reports of guns being trucked in from Egypt. This could be a dirty fight, even with a UN mandate.
Should these rebels carry out atrocities as revenge against Gaddafi's forces, their Western backers could be seen as complicit. And this will be seen very much as a Western war, despite the support of Arab countries.
He notes that the aftermath of the conflict will belong to the West, and with it the costs of rebuilding. He also notes the danger of building false expectations amongst the populace of other countries manifesting mass expressions of dissent. Read Flitton’s article in full here.
Writing in Salon onSaturday 19 March, before US forces had been deployed, blogger Glenn Greenwald focuses on the domestic politics of it in the US: how the war is sold, the contrasts with Iraq, and between the Bush and Obama Administrations, the potential for a heightened terrorist threat. After a round-up of commentary in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and elsewhere, he addresses the question of Congressional approval for any US deployment:
There's one other difference between Iraq and Libya worth noting: at least with the former, there was a sustained, intense P.R. campaign to persuade the public to support it, followed by a cursory Congressional vote (agreed to by the Bush White House only once approval was guaranteed in advance). By contrast, the intervention in Libya was presidentially decreed with virtually no public debate or discussion; it's just amazing how little public opinion or the consent of the citizenry matters when it comes to involving the country in a new war. That objection can and should be obviated if Obama seeks Congressional approval before deploying the U.S. military. On some level, it would be just a formality -- it's hard to imagine the Congress ever impeding a war the President wants to fight -- but at least some pretense of democratic and Constitutional adherence should be maintained.
Writing in 18 March edition of The Guardian, Abdel al-Bari Atwan raises and discusses a number of questions:
- The motives behind the intervention
... as I write, al-Jazeera is broadcasting scenes of carnage from Sanaa, Yemen, where at least 40 protesters have been shot dead. But there will be no UN no-fly zone to protect Pakistani civilians from US attacks, or to protect Yemenis. One cannot help but question the selective involvement of the west in the so-called "Arab spring" series of uprisings.
- The main players in the intervention are Britain and France, with US involvement likely:
If Libya's neighbours, Egypt and Tunisia, were playing the leading role that would be something to celebrate. Democratic countries helping their neighbours would have been in the spirit of the Arab uprisings, and would have strengthened the sense that Arabs can take control of their future.
- Gaddafi is a master strategist and the intervention plays into his hands:
At the moment he has little, if any, public support; his influence is limited to his family and tribe. But he may use this intervention to present himself as the victim of post-colonialist interference in pursuit of oil. He is likely to pose the question that is echoing around the Arab world – why wasn't there a no-fly zone over Gaza when the Israelis were bombarding it in 2008/9?
- The long-term impact of the intervention:
Libya may end up divided into the rebel-held east and a regime stronghold in the rest of the country which would include the oil fields and the oil terminal town al-Brega. There is a strong risk, too, that it will become the region's fourth failed state, joining Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
- There is no guarantee that military intervention will result in Gaddafi's demise.
- The worry that the Arab spring will be derailed by events in Libya.
Professor Juan Cole, R.P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Engaging the Muslim World (New York, Palgrave Macmillan 2009) wrote in his blog Informed Comment on 21 March that the no-fly zone over Libya is risky but can succeed under certain conditions:
- It should not be open-ended, but rather should have an expiration date.
- It should be a no-fly zone, not a war on the Qaddafi regime.
- Once the no-fly zone is in place ... brokers should intervene to negotiate a diplomatic solution.
- Officers who committed war crimes ... must be prosecuted, but not everyone in the Libyan military should be tarred with that brush.
- Amnesty might be offered to pro-Qaddafi officers and politicians provided they break with the dictator and send him into exile.
- Countries opposed to or lukewarm toward the no-fly zone, but which are themselves democracies, such as India, Algeria and Russia, could be enlisted to meet with the officer corps in Tripoli and impress on them the need for a transition to parliamentary elections.
Noting that Kosovo as a state originated in an externally enforced no fly zone, Cole concludes:
NATO military forces flying in response to the UNSC resolution must seek to replicate the successes in Kosovo and not the failures in Iraq.
In a post entitled The Libyan Revolution is Dead: Notes for an Autopsy, on his blog Zero Anthropology, Maximilian Forte, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Concordia University in Canada, begins:
The “Arab Spring” was a short one; what follows, another NATO Summer, will last much longer.
He continues:
If you do not think about it, there is a lot to cheer about the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, against what this time has been a mountain of advice, questions, and critiques from all imaginable political quarters ... This is no longer a Libyan story – that chapter is now closed. My autopsy is divided into several broad categories of actors: the humanitarians, the rebels, the international organizations, the mass media, and the Americans. Finally, what we should be watching in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.
He then goes on to provide a critique of each of these categories of “the criminals responsible for killing the Libyan revolution”. The humanitarians ignore slaughter elsewhere and have validated the military industrial complex; elements of the rebel leadership have stained their own name, and stained their revolution; the five countries that merely “abstained” from voting (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Germany opted for diplomatic wiggle room and plausible deniability, and the Arab League is a club of dictators; Al Jazeera’s coverage has been heavily slanted, in terms of amount of coverage, to the story of Libya, rather than other cases where tyrants were beating and killing peaceful and unarmed protesters at the very same time; and the Americans, having found “another crazy murderous Arab, easy to mock and hold up as the target of mass orchestrated contempt” will be fighting “the perfect war”, with no troops on the ground .
Forte concludes with a list of fourteen things to watch for, many of which are fair questions (“How will the U.S. manage yet another war added to its roster?”), but the last one of which is perhaps indicative of the general tone:
14. If this ends up being a fiasco, or with the need for foreign troops on the ground, will it be the final act that breaks the back of empire?
So, with the possible exception of Professor Forte himself, everyone has got the Libya situation wrong, even if they are “well-intentioned”, that hardy all-purpose put-down. One is left, however, to infer that the intervention, which he sees as an exercise in “humanitarian imperialism”, should not have taken place, because while he is caustic about the approach of all the above-mentioned groups, nowhere does he actually make a forthright statement that the Libyans (all of them) should be left to their fate, whatever that fate might be.
For what it is worth, my views on the Libyan intervention, on the basis of what I know now (I am not an expert on the country, although I did visit it in 1980), are as follows:
(1) My starting point regarding any military intervention anywhere any time is to regard the idea with profound suspicion. It is almost never a good idea. Many innocent people will be killed, there is too much potential for unintended consequences, and once the fog of war closes in the situation almost inevitably develops a life of its own, following a trajectory which no-one intended and no-one wanted.
(2) I have a certain amount of sympathy for those like Professor Forte who point to the inconsistencies in the West’s approaches to humanitarian intervention, but the fact that we failed to intervene in other places on other occasions, or in other places warranting attention at the present time, does not shed much light on how we should have responded to the situation which has confronted us in Libya over the last few weeks. Saying you failed to help A is not in itself an argument for failing to help B. The matters to be decided in relation to Libya were, simply, whether or not to intervene, and what form any possible intervention might most usefully take.
(3) There is an old saying that the opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity and at the time the decision was made the window seemed to be closing very rapidly – indeed I spent the next 24 hour wondering whether it was not too late. Gaddafi’s forces were on the threshold of entering the principal centre of resistance, Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, a city of about 700,000 people, possibly swollen by refugees from other towns. The treatment that Gaddafi’s forces have been meting out to the besieged population of Misratah in the west of the country is a guide to what the population of the main centre of resistance could expect. There is no reason to believe that Gaddafi would not have large-scale indiscriminate killing in Benghazi had his forces been able to enter the town, and once they had entered the urban environment, any military intervention from the air would have been all but impossible without a large number of civilian casualties.
(4) This means that the international community was faced with a choice between intervening and standing back and watching a massacre. Apart from the morality of a choice to do nothing, I think that the sympathetic attention that the plight of the anti-Gaddafi forces was receiving in the world’s mainstream media would have made the “do nothing” option difficult in a number of Western countries.
(5) It is easy to be critical of the West for deciding to intervene in Libya when it had failed to do so in other places equally deserving of humanitarian intervention. In any consideration of intervention, however, there are questions of logistic feasibility to be considered. Libya is a much more straightforward candidate for intervention than, say, Darfur or the eastern region of the Congo. While it is a country larger than Queensland, it has a vast desert or semi-desert inland and the vast bulk of the population is strung out in cities and towns along or within easy reach of the Mediterranean coast. They are connected by a single main road passing through an arid landscape in which there is very little cover from the air. Accordingly, once a no-fly zone has been established, air interdiction of ground forces is relatively straightforward.
(6) There is a strategic reason for intervening as well, in my view, one which is of central importance to the entire “Arab spring”. The upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt occurred with relatively little loss of life, and ended in a peaceful transition with the leader leaving the country or standing aside. If Gaddafi had been able to demonstrate that all that is necessary to retain power is to be ruthless enough in suppressing the dissenters, this may well have had an impact on the decision-making of other leaders facing political turmoil.
(7) The tricky part is that the intervention has been cobbled together in such haste that it is by no means clear what end-state is intended to be achieved. There may be as many different versions of the desired end-state as there are participants. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, it is always worth considering carefully what happens next once the relatively straightforward initial military campaign has been carried out.
(8) One particularly tricky aspect of the intervention will prove in practice to be the fact that the mandate is to employ all necessary means to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, not to help one side or the other to win a civil war. Taken at face value this means that if the anti-Gaddafi forces manage to recover their equilibrium sufficiently and acquire the materiel to go on the offensive, the intervening forces will have a responsibility to protect the cities and towns of the Gaddafi-controlled areas from them.
(9) That all sounds like a recipe for an enforced stalemate, unless Gaddafi can be induced quite soon to leave the country, and some sort of national reconciliation process can be set up before positions become too entrenched and there is too much further killing.
These are my preliminary thoughts, and no doubt there will be much more to say as the situation evolves. The whole exercise will probably end in tears, but it seems that it was bound to do that anyway. About the only thing we can be sure of is that there will be many surprises along the road and things will not turn out as most of us expect.
At last we are to have a Parliamentary debate about what we are doing in Afghanistan. Hopefully this will go to the desired end-state (what we are hoping to achieve), how Australia’s roles (all of them, Special Forces as well as mentoring teams) contribute to the objective, how we will measure success, and the criteria by which we will judge when it is time to withdraw.
Hopefully our Parliamentarians will consider the ethical issues associated with withdrawal of NATO forces including our own. Packing up and leaving the locals to it is vastly different from not having invaded the country in the first place, so deciding that we shouldn’t be there does not absolve anyone of the responsibility to think about the trajectory by which we leave, and the consequences for the locals. I am not just thinking of the consequences for Hamid Karzai and the government he leads. I am thinking also of the village elders who have taken huge risks, for example, in permitting girls’ schools to be opened, the people who teach in those schools, the parents, the girls themselves, and all the other Afghans at the local level who by cooperating with NATO forces have exposed themselves to a charge of having collaborated with the invaders.
This is of course the kind of debate that should have been had before we became involved in military operations in Afghanistan (and indeed in Iraq). On 13 February 2008 Greens Senator Scott Ludlam introduced in the Senate a Private Members’ Bill to limit the prerogative power of the Executive to commit Australian forces to overseas service without the consent of the Parliament (see War Powers Bill). Unfortunately neither side of politics as it was then took the matter seriously and this worthy attempt to involve our Parliament in decisions about war and peace got nowhere (see War Powers Bill crushed by major parties).
In War Powers: what the PM said I commented in detail on a disappointing response from former Prime Minister Rudd’s Foreign Policy Adviser to a letter from Dr Kristine Klugman on behalf of Civil Liberties Australia. In War Powers Bill: Pre-emptive self-defence I outlined the Caroline case, the precedent that established the international law regarding acts of pre-emptive self defence. In War Powers Submission, I noted that my colleagues and I had lodged a submission to the inquiry and provided a link to the relevant page of the Parliament House website.
I think that the time is ripe for Senator Ludlam’s Bill to get another Parliamentary airing.
One of the key differences between the Australian Defence Force and the rag-bag of contractors, mercenaries and private militias that have been involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the ADF is a disciplined force, trained in and subject to the rule of law, including international humanitarian law and the international law of armed conflict.
The requirements of Australian military law and applicable international law are normally embodied in the rules of engagement under which our soldiers enter into military operations.
It is quite typical for our military personnel to be indemnified against local law while they are deployed into the relevant theatre of operations. This is the case with the ADF’s deployment in Afghanistan; the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) indemnifies our soldiers from prosecution under local law. This means that the only law to which our soldiers are subject is Australian military law. If they commit a crime against Afghan citizens those people have no expectation of justice except through the Australian military justice system.
A corollary of the ADF being a disciplined force subject to the rule of law is that when there is reason to suppose that there has been a breach of law or of discipline, that alleged breach must be investigated, and if an investigation by the competent authority finds that there is a case to answer, then that matter must be referred to the Australian Military Prosecutor for consideration as to whether charges should be laid. The Australian Military Prosecutor is an independent prosecutorial authority for the Australian Defence Force, and makes her decisions outside the chain of command in order to remove any suggestion of command influence.
The charges against three Australian soldiers to which Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has referred in recent press commentary arise from a compound clearance undertaken by the Special Operations Task Group in Oruzgan Province on 12 February 2009. The matter, which involved the deaths of six Afghan civilians, including several children, was investigated by the ADF Investigative Service, which referred the matter to the Director of Military Prosecutions for consideration of charges. The Director of Military Prosecutions decided that three ADF members were to be charged in relation to the incident, with offences including failure to comply with a lawful general order, manslaughter and dangerous conduct.
This is of course an acutely sensitive matter – the soldiers concerned were undertaking a dangerous operation on active military service. Nevertheless, the competent military authorities have found that there is a case to be answered, and there is no alternative to the matter being tested before a properly constituted military tribunal – otherwise our soldiers are in effect subject to no law when they are on military operations in Afghanistan.
What the soldiers are entitled to in these circumstances, and have been assured that they will receive, is a presumption of innocence, proper legal representation, and other forms of support. The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, has stated, “Consistent with the presumption of innocence, these members will receive the full support of the Australian Defence Force”. This support will include, but not be limited to, medical, psychological, legal, chaplaincy and welfare support.
The Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, has stated, “I give the members facing these charges a firm, personal undertaking that I will ensure that they are thoroughly supported throughout the legal process”.
Tony Abbott must know, or ought to know, all of the above. It is therefore the height of populist irresponsibility for him to be using inflammatory language like his suggestion to talk-back radio host Alan Jones that our soldiers are being “stabbed in the back by their own government” and that the Government is failing “to provide these soldiers with the defence that they are entitled to”. Jones of course was delighted to go along with this; he was beside himself to assert that the problem was the supposedly untrammelled powers conferred on “this woman” (the DMP) by the Rudd Government, whereas it was in fact the Howard Government in 2006, but Jones is clearly not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Unfortunately this is yet another episode in which Tony Abbott seems neither to know nor to care how key systems in the Australian polity work, or the legal frameworks within which they operate, and is heedless of the potential consequences of his populist comments. His approach to asylum seekers is another obvious example.
For further informed commentary on this issue see opinion piece Soldiers’ work is life or death, but they are not above the law by Gideon Boas, former senior legal officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in today’s edition of The Age (accessible here), and the contribution to today’s edition of Crikey by Angela Priestly, editor of Lawyers Weekly (accessible here).
