What is Kevin Rudd like?

War will not bring peace | theage.com.au

WHAT is Kevin Rudd like?" "What type of man is he?" "Will he win the election?" Afghan friends and colleagues assailed me with these questions when I returned to Afghanistan in October last year. Their obsession with our federal election bemused me. Ten years ago they didn't know when Australian elections were or that Australia had a prime minister.

My friends explained: "Your next prime minister is very important to us. We need to know whether he will be someone else who believes that guns are the answer to everything. You see if he is different, and if the next American president is different, if they are people of peace, then maybe there is hope for us."

Fifteen months later, Kevin Rudd, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President-elect Barack Obama insist that scaling up the military intervention will make Afghanistan and the world safer. But war can resolve neither Afghanistan's conflicts nor the spectre of global terrorism. More troops and more guns will only plunge Afghanistan further into violence.

At the 2020 Summit, public psychologist Kate Barrelle explained how military interventions and economic sanctions can enforce compliance by "putting a lid on" resistance. The longer that lid remains in place, the more resentment wells up beneath it. When military or economic force increases, the pressure erupts in spurts of violence, such as increasing numbers of suicide bombers. Eventually, the lid gives and widespread violence explodes.

The military intervention might have worked had it moved immediately from deposing the Taliban to disarmament and then rapidly scaled down. It didn't. NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan now numbers 47,600 troops, including 1090 Australians. With special forces and private security companies there are 70,000 troops in a country of about 32 million — one foreign soldier for every 460 Afghans.

The Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief reports that non-government organisations cannot work in many regions where military units are active. Many rural communities consider international troops a major threat to their safety. And then there are the guns. Interceptions of "illegal munitions" receive