My Thoughts

Human history dating back 100,000 years, and at the crossroads of the Silk Road, the region now known as Afghanistan is regularly known as “the graveyard of empires”. The mighty have fought to conquer and control, all have struggled, and at the core are a proud people, with a varying history and culture. A people called friend, a people now almost forgotten …

With on the ground experience, Mark Direen provides his view and looks at the military occupation, the recent withdrawal and what it now means for the people of Afghanistan.

Twenty years since the beginning of the Afghanistan war on terror. Twenty years, to the day that I was finishing a six-month deployment to Timor-Leste (East Timor) assisting the Timorese people safely hold their first Constituent Assembly elections and freely vote for representatives for each of the countries thirteen new districts.
The East Timor elections on 30 August 2001 were starting to look like they had been a success and by 11 September 2001 I was spending time cleaning my equipment ready to start my return journey back to Australia. It had been a busy four years after joining the Australian SASR (Special Air Service Regiment) in 1997. With the selection course, a year of training, the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 and now the East Timor deployment, I was looking forward to some leave and time at home with my family.
That night, as I cleaned and packed my gear at our base in Balibo I declined a colleague’s offer to watch the news events unfolding in New York. Maybe it was the fact that I had been studying terror attacks for the last 4 years that I didn’t realise the gravity of the situation, deciding that night that sleep was my priority given the several days of travel that lay ahead. It was not until a few hours later when I woke that I realised the devasting severity of what had just occurred.
It was not the graphic violence I was witnessing on the live television coverage as everyday citizens suffered at the hands of evil. It was the understanding of what it would be like to give up your life for no other reason than to take away the pain. And not the pain of natural sickness or disease, but pain deliberately and maliciously inflicted on you simply because you did not believe what someone else believed.

As a professional soldier, I am accepting of death. After experiencing my share of Afghanistan’s twenty years of recent war, the only thing I now hope is that when my time comes, I either die of old age with a whiskey in my hand, by accident living life to the fullest, or by my own choice for a purpose that is bigger than me. To be in a situation so hopeless you have no option but to end the immediate suffering is a brutality I struggle to accept. Apart from the horror, what was also unknown on the morning of 12th September 2001 in East Timor, is that this day would mark the beginning of the 20 years of war and sacrifice that lay ahead of us. While some of my close friends would deploy to Afghanistan just weeks later, my first deployment came the following year in 2002. In total, I would deploy to Afghanistan five times, some of my friends, up to eight. For what equated to multiple years of our lives and careers, we performed the duties entrusted to us by the Australian Defence Force and our political leaders.
The epic moments from those deployments would become permanently imprinted in our brains. The sacrifices by our children and families, getting shot at, blown up, and losing friends became a part of life. The acceptance of death showed the commitment we made to our country and the pursuit of the values Australia, and the West promoted. We believed in these values and still do. Some of us were so committed we stayed for the full 20 years of that fight, both in serving roles and post service to work with Australia’s public servants, keeping them safe as they advanced Australia’s national interest in Afghanistan; all the while with war raging around us.
I stand by the choices of our leaders in undertaking the mission. Our purpose and intent was moral and just. To fight oppression and help all Afghans to govern themselves free of fear.

In 2001, before the full US invasion, Richard Carlton of 60 Minutes (Australia) travelled to north-eastern Afghanistan and asked an Australian citizen fighting for the Northern Alliance “Will Australian troops make an iota of difference here?” Soberingly accurate even today this is his honest reply:
“The fight against terrorism, it’s the responsibility of all nations. And I think the Australian Government, our government in a way, should prevent injustices all over the world.”
As the war continued, we built trust with the Afghan people. As a nation, they gave their support and commitment and were willing to stand up and fight oppression with us. We fought and sacrificed alongside them, we became friends, we trusted each other. We were fighting for freedom together. One of the things that hurts the most today is the feeling we have betrayed that trust. Thousands of allies and their families abandoned because the fight was no longer politically advantageous. Humanity is not about helping a friend in order to get something in return.
John F Kennedy once said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
That certainly no longer seems the case under the current United States of America Government. And sadly, it no longer seems to be the case for our country
either.

While our Australian news networks share the voice of the Taliban regarding Australian soldiers committing ‘some of the worst and brutal kind of human rights violations’ our leaders are staying conveniently quiet about the fact that Afghanistan is now run by a government that made it their modus-operandi to attack civilians in order to win their war against us. One hundred and twenty-four attacks alone in Kabul since 2017 in the form of car, truck, and suicide bombs, surrendering Afghan National Army soldiers gunned down in the street, citizens dragged from their cars and homes and shot dead, people hung from Blackhawk helicopters, press being beaten in Kabul, and former USA interpreters having their tongues cut out, while the media has the audacity to report on the “toxic culture” of our own troops.

As to why the country surrendered and fell so fast leading to the current crisis, that is a complicated question with an even more complicated answer. Ultimately the USA, Australian, and allied soldiers fought bravely but failed due to corruption and regional politics; the two things our militaries were not at liberty to solve.
General Sami Sadat said it well when he wrote in the New York Times that Afghan forces had fought bravely over the past two decades of war and that “we were betrayed by politics and presidents.” With non-existent logistic, medical, and offensive fire support to the Afghan National Army, the majority of Afghan soldiers decided to go home and protect their families. On August 16 this year as the situation unravelled in Kabul, President Biden declared “American troops cannot, and should not, be fighting and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”

The statistics tell a different story.

• Forty-one Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014.
• 2,500 American service members with another almost 4,000 USA contractors killed over the duration of the conflict.
• 66,000 Afghan national military and police killed over the last 20 years.

Clearly this was a nation willing to fight.

In my earliest days serving in Australia’s Defence Force, I learned a trademark military saying that in the end just didn’t seem to apply to Afghanistan. “We don’t work to a time; we work to a standard.” Equally as powerful as it turns out was the great Afghan catchcry, “You may have the watches, we have the time”
The Taliban were clearly playing the long game. They knew from the outset that patience would become their greatest weapon. I will struggle with the events surrounding the fall of Kabul for the rest of my life. We didn’t leave because the Taliban defeated us, we gave up because in the eyes of our leaders the mission was taking too long. We did not invade Afghanistan as the Taliban will now tell us through Australian media. We used military force to liberate an oppressed people, to assist Afghanistan to build a country where they could have freedom. The same freedoms we enjoy. For the last twenty years we fought for justice and convinced the Afghan people to join us in that fight. Then we walked away when it got hard. What this means for the Afghan people is sadly more suffering. Engaging in an endless fight to protect their tribes and families. Unfortunately, not only have our governments betrayed their trust by walking away, but we have unintentionally rearmed our enemy as we walked away. War can be both a thrill and horrible nightmare. It is not black and white; it exists in the grey. It requires both sacrifice and enduring commitment. I believed in what I fought for and still do. I am proud of my service and the service of the people I fought alongside. They should be proud of their service too. If we have the capacity, we should willingly do it again. Never truer are the words of Australian Defence Force leader, Lieutenant General David Morrison (Chief of Army 2011 – 2015 and 2016 Australian on the Year) “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”. The Taliban standard I cannot accept. As a nation we should not accept it either. It is time to learn from our mistakes. To let values not politics guide our actions. Because freedom and humanity will always be worth fighting for. MD

With a military career spanning more than two decades including 10 years as an Australian Special Forces soldier, Mark has worked in and lead teams in some of the world’s most hostile and unforgiving environments. Mark has travelled the world, he’s a motorcycle rider that has taken on some of the world’s toughest terrains.
Specialising in adventure and hazardous environment travel and experiential improvement his company Point Assist helps people create life changing experiences and reshape the way they think and operate.
Find Mark at www.pointassist.com.au

This artical was featured in TRAVERSE MAGAZINE No. 26 in Oct/Nov 2021

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear” Aung San Suu Kyi

It has been well documented that at its most primal level our biggest human fears are fear of rejection and loneliness, fear of failure, and fear of death. Clearly, it’s the last one that has dominated our country over the last two years, so strongly in fact that it has caused us to push aside the others.

So why is it everyone so afraid of the current COVID-19 pandemic? So afraid that governments would close all borders and obstruct citizens returning home, prohibit children going to school and stop people from going to work.

It’s simple. Our leadership, media and health experts have used and spread fear in order to control the country’s population in the name of safety.

By March 2020, we all knew that COVID would kill and undoubtedly our leaders were right to pause and assess the situation before moving forward as a country. We needed to prepare for the fight against COVID. It was necessary to educate our communities, enhance our public health systems and develop vaccines. What was also needed, but sadly lacking, was to prepare our collective mindset. Given the fear of death is one of our biggest, we needed resilience and compassion for the fight. To come together as a country. Undoubtedly, our mindset should have been a key weapon in the battle against COVID.

But, instead of fighting, we decided to try and hide.

Now 18 months later, our leaders are just realising what some have known for a long time. We can’t beat COVID, and we can’t hide from it. It only needs a small undetected foot hold, and it will spread. Today, almost two years on, some states are still scared and hiding, hoping it magically goes away soon. Still our only weapons to fight COVID are lockdowns and vaccines and we know both won’t go close to saving all lives. Even if our vaccines were 100% effective now, they won’t be next year when there is a new, possibly more deadly strain.

The end result of all this hiding?

More division, hate and fear than ever before in this country.

How much has been achieved by all we have endured over the last 18 months and continue to endure today? Is the false illusion of safety worth the re-prioritisation of our country’s values? Does the transfer of responsibility for personal safety from the individual to the government make us safer in the long term? And if it does, is the improvement worth the cost to Australia’s principal value of “respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual”?

The use of fear has become so commonplace we no longer even recognise we are afraid.

Our leaders know we desire safety. “Thanks for keeping me safe Premier” we read and hear regularly. Approval ratings have never been higher while we continue to hide from COVID with quarantine’s, lockdowns and borders closures. There is open public angry at “those people putting us at risk”. All the while, our country goes deeper and deeper into debt.

All with no real plan. Just a hope. That we can save every life.

Unfortunately we cannot.

And not only can we not save every life, it also shouldn’t be our top priority. Our priority should be our countries values, beliefs, and principles. The very thing that makes us all Australian.

It’s time to fight to save our culture. Our countries soul. Because left uncontrolled, these fears will lead to regret and regret can devastate our lives.

So how do we overcome these fears?

We accept we are afraid, and we move forward.

I have had to overcome many fears in my life, including the fear of death. And never have I overcome fear by pretending I could hide from it or avoid it. I have only ever overcome fear by acknowledging it. To face it and make a truce a with it. I accept that it is a part of me, and I allow myself to live my best life with it. To keep the fear in my head and out of my heart and soul.

What we need now is to overcome the fear of death in order to be able to live. I would rather live a short life full of adventure, experience, purpose and passion than a long one void of freedom and filled with ‘what if’s’.

It’s with this in mind, I declare that I won’t let your fear control me. I will continue to live so that my encounter with death, whenever it might come, will not be accompanied by regret.

This has never been more important than in our current climate. Despite twelve weeks now spent isolated in quarantines, not being allowed to travel to see my family, my life is still good. And I continue to work to make it better.

At a time when people feel their lives are on pause; waiting for their next holiday, for lockdown to finish, or my personal favourite, to ‘get their freedom’s back’; I am continuing to live. To move forward and improve.

Recently Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated, “It’s time to give Australians their lives back. We’ve saved lives. We’ve saved livelihoods but we must work together to ensure that Australians can reclaim the lives that they once had in this country”

My reply to Mr Morrison, I never gave you my life and it is not yours to give back. While you have prolonged some lives you have not saved them. The only way to save a life is to make sure it is not squandered. That it is not lived in fear, trying desperately to prolong it while hiding from all danger. Dealing with our fears and accepting some risk is a natural part of life. We know we can’t live longer so it goes without saying we should try to live better. With purpose, passion and void of regret.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius