FED:Hard year ahead for Aust troops in Oruzgan

AAP General News (Australia)
12-09-2010
FED:Hard year ahead for Aust troops in Oruzgan

Eds: Reissuing to remove date in dateline.



By Max Blenkin, AAP Defence Correspondent

CANBERRA, AAP - Afghanistan's Oruzgan province, where Australian soldiers are fighting
and dying, covers an area a third the size of Tasmania of which most is arid desert inhabited
by bacteria which, according to Australia's commander, is welcome to it.

It's the rest, the fertile river valleys and green zone where people actually live,
which is the important bit.

In those areas, some rife with insurgents, Australian troops will be increasingly operating
as they seek to bring the Afghan National Army (ANA) up to a standard whereby Australia
can withdraw most forces in 2014.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Jennings, commander of Mentoring Task Force One which spent
eight months in Oruzgan this year, tips that the next summer fighting season will be much
the same as the last.

And that was the worst yet, claiming the lives of 10 of the 21 Australian soldiers
to have died in Afghanistan.

"It really depends on the severity of the winter," he said. "We really haven't seen
a severe winter in the south for the last three winters. What that means is that the insurgents
are still able to move around and conduct activities."

Afghanistan's climate traditionally sets the tempo of fighting, with winter snow limiting
movements of insurgents to warmer months.

For Oruzgan, the geography sets the pattern of counter-insurgency activities.

Australia's Middle East Commander Major General John Cantwell dismisses much of Oruzgan
as harsh desert, quite peripheral to the main effort.

"There's nothing more than bacteria living out there and they are welcomes to it," he said.

It's really all about the valleys which radiate from what's called the Tarin Kowt bowl
in the southern part of Oruzgan, he said.

"That's where the vegetation is, that's where the water is, most importantly, and for
those reasons, that's where the people are," he said.

"And in any counter-insurgency operations or campaign, it's about the people.

"We need to separate the insurgents from the people.

"We need to give the people confidence in their own government to deliver services
and to look after them and keep them safe, give confidence to the people that their security
forces can do what they are paid to do."

In contrast to some US commanders who see the Taliban as close to a spent force, Australian
commanders are more cautious.

General Cantwell sees progress in small steps in an overall campaign of astonishing complexity.

"It's a campaign of dealing with tiny disparate security and human and economy and
agricultural challenges," he said.

"In one valley, it's very fertile and in the very next re-entrant it's only partly
fertile and they are starved of water and so the tribes fight over water. And we are trying
to impose law and order over this."

Military maps of Oruzgan underscore this complexity, with green areas, indicating reasonable
security, interspersed with red areas where insurgents remain active.

For example, Tarin Kowt town is not regarded as too bad by Afghanistan standards, as
is Deh Rawood, an area where Dutch forces performed extensive reconstruction and development
work.

Yet a short distance from Deh Rawood is the Tangi Valley, a virtual insurgent safe
haven, where Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney was shot dead in a major firefight in August.

Soldiers refer to other red areas as "shitholes". That includes Sorkh Les, where engineers
Jacob Moerland and Darren Smith died in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in
June, and parts of the Chora and Mirabad Valleys.

The Dutch-funded 40-kilometre Tarin Kowt to Chora road link, a key development project,
is now about to enter its most difficult phase as the route takes it through the heart
of insurgent turf.

"This is all red space. Taking the road through here is going to be a very interesting
journey," said Lieutenant Colonel Jennings.

Insurgents dislike road projects for a range of reasons. They open previously inaccessible
areas to speedy security force access and greater government influence in the form of
police, education and health services. As well, it's much more difficult to emplace an
IED in bitumen.

Convincing the conservative Pashtun tribesmen living in these remote areas that their
future lies with Kabul remains a fundamental challenge.

Counter-insurgency expert Dr David Kilcullen said Kabul was not so much being out-fought
by the Taliban as being out-governed in such areas.

"It's that when people are given a choice between oppressive but effective administration
and anarchy and corruption, they tend to go to effective administration," he said.

Oruzgan's problem is that it is at best a backwater for central government activities.

It's not that services such as justice, education, health and public works need to
be rebuilt after decades of fighting. It's that they only barely existed in the first
place.

Oruzgan ranks as one of the least developed provinces in Afghanistan with, according
to defence figures, a zero female literacy rate and only 10 per cent for males. Nationally
the figures are 12.6 and 43 per cent respectively.

Trying to fix some of this in Oruzgan is the now Australian-led multinational Provincial
Reconstruction Team (PRT), responsible for coordinating all ISAF civilian development
and activities in the province.

Members are candid about the challenges. One former education director was illiterate
while another former government official was termed "shady even by Oruzgan standards."

So far from Kabul, Oruzgan's judicial system is at best a work in progress. None of
the five provincial judges has a formal university education and there is no fully staffed
courtroom.

Australia has increasingly invested in development and governance aid and that's likely
to escalate as 2014 approaches. Aid exceeded $740 million over the last decade and was
delivered at national and provincial level.

In five years in Oruzgan, Australia's focus has shifted from predominantly reconstruction
to reconstruction and training and now to training the ANA 4th Brigade to a standard where
it can assume overall security responsibility.

Both the government and defence say that will take 2-4 years - more likely four - which
will take Australia's military commitment out to 2014, tying neatly with the 2014 deadline
set at the Lisbon conference for handing all security responsibility over to the Afghan
government.

But that won't be the end, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard declaring the task was
expected to continue in some form for a decade.

There will be a reduced Australian military presence, most likely some special forces
in a security overwatch role, plus significant ongoing development aid.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith said 2011 would be a most influential year.

"When the fighting season resumes after the winter, everyone will be watching very
carefully for how strongly the Taliban return and whether the International Security Assistance
Force has been able to consolidate its gains," he said.

"But on the training front, we've been pleased with the progress, both on the army
front, to a lesser extent the police front."

General Cantwell said there was room for optimism, although it was easy to be pessimistic
as flaws were everywhere.

"The government of Afghanistan for all its manifest and obvious failings is slowly
moving forward. It is not going to be like the government of Australia. It's an Afghan
government built around tribal and familial loyalties," he said.

"It's corrupt, it's inefficient, it suffers from bureaucrats who are illiterate but
slowly slowly we are seeing progress."

AAP mb/sb/msk

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