I agree with Milton about the lack of decent and detailed coverage of Afghan issues in the Australian media. I would add a further piece of reading to his list, and one very relevant to the Australian military effort in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An Afghan NGO called The Liaison Office (TLO) has written an assessment for the Dutch Government of the Netherlands' effort in Uruzgan. It is a dispassionate and frank account of both Dutch successes and failures in the province, but also touches on aspects of the Australian military effort there.
What I most like about the report is that it should complicate the Australian debate on Afghanistan between those with an uncritical faith in the current counterinsurgency campaign and those that have already condemned the whole Afghan enterprise to failure and are demanding a swift withdrawal. The report shows we should be skeptical about aspects of the counterinsurgency effort, but that progress is not impossible. It also makes some constructive suggestions about what the coalition should, and should not, do in the future.
Finally, a note of disclosure: Dr Susanne Schmeidl, one of the authors of the report and co-founder of TLO, is the editor of the Lowy Institute's Afghan Voices series. A new paper in that series will be out in coming months.
Photo by Flickr user Defence Images, used under a Creative Commons license.
