Correspondent's Notebook

Afghanistan: talk of the town

25 September 2009

Radio Australia’s Linda Mottram takes a look at what was said about Afghanistan at the United Nations General Assembly.

Canberra has been a relatively quiet town this week, as the most senior Australian politician jetted off to New York for the United Nations General Assembly and various attendant meetings. It was a big agenda, that matched Mr Rudd’s .. global economic and financial report, climate change, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. And who’ll forget Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi — his tent pitching location in flux — bidding to upstage Nikita Kruschev for most memorable outburst, and delaying Mr Rudd’s major presentation at the famous UN podium.

For Kevin Rudd, it was an opportunity to advance his now well-developed views on those same big global issues.

Also pressing though was the big international war of the day — Afghanistan. The world’s leaders arrived in New York as President Obama grappled with the stark warning from his top general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, that failure was a possibility, if more troops weren’t deployed and a more coherent strategy to help build Afghan society and its politics wasn’t constructed. Failure. With a hijacked Afghan Presidential election eroding faith in the attempt to build a credible Afghan political structure, and with a good proportion of the county in the grip of the Taliban’s shadow government structures, the question of where that conflict is going is making governments involved very uncomfortable.

 With 1,500 Australian troops included in that mire, Kevin Rudd was asked about the issue during the week in an interview with CNN. And the reading of those proverbial tea leaves led to a conclusion in Afghanistan that Mr Rudd might not yet be ready to affirm. He recalled that the reason for being in Afghanistan was New York, September eleven, eight years ago. But shutting down the capacity for terrorists to train again in Afghanistan, should not mean a dewy eyed vision of a Jeffersonian Afghan democracy … a reference to one of the founding fathers of US democracy. Mr Rudd went on to talk about Afghanistan’s feudal past and to outline his vision of success in Afghanistan as including political stability, effective security forces and prospects for development through reasonable governance.

For the editors of the Afghan official newsagency, Bakhtar, it was nothing less than a ringing endorsement of their man, Hamid Karzai. Bakhtar ran a headline in Persian that said the Australian Prime Minister’s position on the Afghan election was very realistic.

For Bakhtar, Mr Rudd had signalled Australia will accept a win for Mr Karzai, despite everything. Mr Rudd’s justification — if I may paraphrase — is that Afghanistan’s always been dysfunctional and won’t change that much, and that just some level of normality will be acceptable, towards completing allotted tasks and getting out.

Though President Obama’s now being pressed to find a lot more soldiers for the war, Mr Rudd has shown no inclination to send any from Australia. His foreign minister says more might be done on other civilian fronts. But if Bakhtar’s take on Mr Rudd’s comments are an indication, it will be a relatively empty gesture. A corrupt Karzai government will be entrenched, doing more deals with more undesirable unelected figures who’ll shore up their power and wealth, while poverty remains the norm for the rest. It could well be the most realistic option, leaving only the question of whether it’ll be with honour or embarrassment that the world eventually gets out of Afghanistan.

 And for all their meetings, photo calls and media briefings, the UN’s members didn’t answer that question.