Afghanistan/Australia — Paper presented by the Minister for Defence on casualties, procedural issues etc.

It has already been a dif­fi­cult year for the ADF. This year, Aus­tralia has lost two more brave soldiers. 

Cor­po­ral Richard Atkin­son was killed in an impro­vised explo­sive device strike on 2 Feb­ru­ary 2011. 

Sap­per Jamie Lar­combe died as a result of gun­shot wounds sus­tained dur­ing an engage­ment with insur­gents on 19 February. 

Our thoughts are with the fam­i­lies, friends and col­leagues of Cor­po­ral Atkin­son and Sap­per Lar­combe, as they to come to terms with their great loss. These sol­diers served their coun­try well and will always be remembered. 

We have lost 23 fine Aus­tralian sol­diers in Afghanistan. 

As well, four Aus­tralian sol­diers have been wound­ed in Afghanistan this year, with 168 ADF per­son­nel wound­ed in action since 2002. Our thoughts are also with our wound­ed and their families. 

The sac­ri­fice our men and women are mak­ing is great, as is the appre­ci­a­tion of our nation and our people. 

Our forces face a resilient insur­gency, who, in com­ing months, will seek to re-take ground. 

In this envi­ron­ment, we must steel our­selves for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther casualties. 

Despite these trag­ic loss­es and the chal­lenges ahead, Aus­tralia remains resolute. 

Con­clu­sion

We are see­ing progress in Afghanistan. 

This progress is frag­ile. The Tal­iban know they need to regain momen­tum, so we can expect them to fight back. 

The com­ing fight­ing sea­son will be tough. As we pre­pare for it we are also mind­ful of the civil­ian toll of the war. 

We can expect high-pro­file attacks by Afghan insur­gents to con­tin­ue and to increase, like the 21 Feb­ru­ary sui­cide attack in Kun­duz province that killed around 30 Afghans and wound­ed 36 others. 

An increas­ing num­ber of civil­ian casu­al­ties are caused by insur­gent attacks and the delib­er­ate tar­get­ing of civil­ians or tac­tics which result in civil­ian casualties. 

These attacks are aimed at under­min­ing Afghan and inter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in the progress that is being made on secu­ri­ty, gov­er­nance and devel­op­ment and on transition. 

Tran­si­tion has com­menced with Pres­i­dent Karzai’s announce­ment on 22 March of the first provinces and dis­tricts to tran­si­tion to Afghan authority. 

Tran­si­tion must be con­di­tions based and irre­versible. Tran­si­tion must not be a sig­nal to pre­ma­ture withdrawal. 

The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must con­tin­ue to pro­vide a long term com­mit­ment to Afghanistan. 

That is why Aus­tralia has made clear it expects to main­tain a pres­ence in Afghanistan after our cur­rent train­ing mis­sion has con­clud­ed, either in fur­ther spe­cialised train­ing, over­watch or through civil­ian capac­i­ty build­ing and devel­op­ment assistance. 

Aus­tralia is con­fi­dent that the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has the right strat­e­gy for putting Afghanistan in a posi­tion to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for secu­ri­ty mat­ters and pre­vent it from again being a haven for inter­na­tion­al terrorists. 

This mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal strat­e­gy and the required resources are now, at long last, in place and deliv­er­ing hard won progress. We see this in Uruz­gan as we see it else­where in Afghanistan. 

Aus­tralia stands firm in its com­mit­ment to Afghanistan. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →