A former AFP officer who was deployed to Afghanistan wants Australia to put pressure on the United Nations to form an international force to prevent a complete Taliban victory.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
David Healey, who is now a lawyer studying "post-conflict policing in Afghanistan" at the ANU, is in despair over the American and Australian pull out.
"The Americans have blood on their hands," he said. "It's an absolute travesty and it need not have happened."
As an agent in the Australian Federal Police, he was seconded to Afghanistan in 2010 under what was called Operation Illuminate. His task was to advise the police there on how to operate within the rule of law as well as on more basic tasks like simply surviving.
He thinks the situation is still salvageable and that the victory of the Taliban was not inevitable.
"We need to go back in, even if it's an emergency force," he said.
READ MORE:
He thinks the UN would be the right umbrella organisation, and not NATO or a US-led force. "We need to put pressure for an international force," he said.
Mr Healey, now the principal at Canberra's David Healey Solicitors, was deployed to Afghanistan with the Australian Federal Police for a year in 2010 to help train and mentor Afghan officers on "how to stay alive". He also helped provide much needed security to the provinces.
He said by the time the AFP deployed to Afghanistan, some damage had already been done with really poor and uncoordinated training, and by 2014, "the important jobs of state building and the rule of law rebuild had been left largely undone".
He warned of what would happen if western troops pulled out back in April, just as Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australia would withdraw its remaining 80 troops from Afghanistan by September, in line with the US's plan to withdraw theirs.
"As soon as they pull out anyway, the Taliban will just take over. They're already fairly prevalent in most provinces," he said at the time.
"Islamic State is in the same boat."
As well as having trained national police in Afghanistan, Mr Healey did work for the AFP as a lawyer in Kabul on the rule of law.
He's been doing a PhD on the rule of law in Afghanistan and how it might have been created.
Mr Healey also warned that there would be criminal ramifications if troops were totally withdrawn from Afghanistan, and those ramifications would undo much of the good work done over the past two decades.
"So you had drugs, you had illegal firearms, illegal immigrants coming out of Afghanistan and spreading to parts of the world including Australia," he said.
"It's dangerous to withdraw completely, because transnational crime is already largely unchecked in Afghanistan due to the issue of poor security.
"The Taliban relies on the profits of the heroin and the poppy field and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that heroin could make a large and unwelcome return to the streets of countries around the world including Australia if a re-deployment to Afghanistan by way of UN police-led mission is not contemplated."
Mr Healey expected his paper would be published by the end of 2021.