Today is the tenth anniversary of the war on Afghan jihadists. Exactly 10 years ago, the United States and its allies declared war on a Taliban government for failing to deliver up al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin to American justice.
Allow me to use less reverential words. We civilised Westerners decided we’d had enough of barbarians flying planes into our skyscrapers, killing thousands of our civilians. And hence we sent our own planes to drop huge bombs on their villages and towns.
Australia was and remains part of that allied force. A number of Australian troops have died, but the closest thing we’ve had to an Afghan invasion of Australia is a few hundred fishing vessels carrying desperate Afghans from Indonesia.
It’s all so ironic. But for those of us born before the mid-80’s, the ironies don’t end there.
The Allies were fighting a set of Taliban militias led by people who, hardly two decades previously, had fought on our behalf. Mulla Omar, the head of the Taliban, was a former fighter for the Hizb-i-Islami, an Afghan faction led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and one of many factions the West and its allies backed in pro-Western Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union.
I spent my late primary and entire secondary school years caught up in this Western anti-Soviet jihadi consensus. I was in Year 9 when I became addicted to Rose Tattoo’s powerful anthem I Wish. Here’s what lead singer Angry Anderson had to say about the Afghan jihad.
I wish I was a heroFighting for the rights of manWish I was a tribesman inIn the hills of AfghanistanI wish I was a soldierFighting for the peace …Fighting insanity, inhumanity.
In July last year, ABC Radio National religious broadcaster Rachael Kohn introduced me on a program as 'a former jihad enthusiast'. Somehow I doubt Angry Anderson and I were alone in regarding the Afghan jihadists as warriors for peace or a war on insanity and inhumanity. In those days, no one spoke of jihad as a euphemism for terrorism or suicide bombing. The only religious extremists on the radar were the Libyan-backed IRA and the Iranians led by Ayatollah Khomeini. But the Afghans were heroes.
The war on the Soviets during the 1980s was a conservative jihad, supported by just about anyone who wasn’t a communist and loudly and proudly promoted by the political Right. Indeed, it was assumed that anyone who opposed the Afghan jihad was a communist