Australia’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan - she shamefully asks herself "what role did we have in the decision-making in Washington over the prosecution of the campaign?"

Guardian (Aus Ed):

A tragic and wasted opportunity’: Australia’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan

Was two decades of war worth the price in human life, enduring suffering and monetary cost? It depends who you ask

‘It’s almost like, were we ever there? There’s just a few remnants of bases and buildings. It all looks as if it’s been essentially for nothing.’

File photo of Australian soldiers in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. Photograph: Cpl Raymond Vance/Australian Department of Defence/AAP

During the two decades in which Australia was ensnared in an unwinnable war after trailing the US into Afghanistan, a succession of our political leaders spoke reassuringly about how they would not desert the Afghans.

“We will not abandon Afghanistan,” the then prime minister Julia Gillard declared in 2011.

Her successor, Tony Abbott, said we must never “cut and run”.

And yet, with no formal announcement, Australia finally retreated from Afghanistan in mid-June with barely a whimper, pulling out the last of its 80 military personnel ahead of America’s final troop withdrawal in late August.

‘Moral obligation’: former prime minister John Howard calls for Australia to help Afghan interpreters

The war has killed 41 Australian troops. Another 260 have been seriously injured and a staggering 500 others have taken their own lives since their deployment. Australia has invested more than $10bn in a war that has also perhaps irreparably damaged the reputation of the elite Special Air Service amid allegations of war crimes against the most decorated living Australian soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith (which he strenuously denies), among others.

Australia’s Afghanistan adventure is ending ingloriously.

The Taliban are resurgent, capturing Afghan National Army bases and threatening many who worked with the US, its allies and Nato – including hundreds of interpreters who helped Australian forces. The divided, corruption-plagued US-backed central government is unable to properly defend itself with its fragmented, ill-disciplined army. Fear of an uncertain future grips Afghanistan.

The conclusion that Australia has abandoned Afghanistan on the exiting coat tails of America seems inescapable.

The optics are pitiful. Even shameful.
The remnants of the Australian military departed unceremoniously, the only public sign they had done so a news report two weeks later.

Aspects of the US withdrawal have been more ignominious. Under cover of night this week US forces plunged their main operating base at Bagram into darkness, shutting off the power and abandoning the HQ to looters while slipping out the unlocked back door.

The Americans didn’t bother to tell the Afghan commander who remained at Bagram he was now in charge.

‘We’ve abandoned Afghanistan’

Retired Adm Chris Barrie was chief of the Australian Defence Force when Australia joined the American invasion of Taliban-governed Afghanistan in late 2001, after the September 11 al-Qaida attacks on the US.

“We’re leaving with indecent haste, as the Americans have,” Barrie says. “We followed the Americans in, and we were not going to stay an hour longer than they were. Really, we’ve abandoned Afghanistan. Twenty years of effort comes to almost nothing.”

The invasion had the express aim of ridding Afghanistan of al-Qaida terrorist bases and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden.

“It’s impoverished, and its infrastructure has been destroyed in a lot of places,” Barrie says. “A lot of breadwinners in a lot of families have been killed by a lot of coalition forces including ours. The Taliban is on the rise, and I am troubled by the unfolding events.

“But we weren’t really there to do any good for the people of Afghanistan, we were there to help the US. And it raises the question, what role did we have in the decision-making in Washington over the prosecution of the campaign?”