“Soldiers don’t switch off.”
Joe King, a former Australian combat medic, was struggling to comprehend the botched ending to his country’s longest war as he contemplated his own service in Afghanistan.
King is among 39,000 Australian troops who have been deployed to the region since 2001. Operation Slipper, later named Operation Highroad, claimed the lives of 41 Australians – 261 were wounded and at least 500 have since taken their own lives.
On Monday the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Australia’s involvement had been worth the cost in lives, despite the Taliban seizing control after government forces crumbled in weeks.
“No Australian who has ever fallen in our uniform has ever died in vain – ever,” Morrison told the ABC’s News Breakfast.
But King said the commitment to fighting after the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, when he was deployed, was a “joke”, and he has suffered crippling post-traumatic stress because of his guilt.
“‘I’m fucking sick of it just ruminating in my head,” he said. “They were never going to hold that country.
“If you cannot help the people [through military means] then you do the right thing and you educate them, because that was the only way to fix Afghanistan.
“The Taliban know that if you stop education, you stop the progress of a country, which is why they attacked the education system so viciously. They’re opposed to educated people, who are harder to brainwash.”
Australian veterans of the war were feeling a full range of emotions as they watched 20 years of involvement ripped to shreds in days.
A former special forces operator who asked for his name to be withheld said he was “compartmentalising the whole bloody thing” as a coping mechanism.
“I saw that not one of the locals knew how to do what we were doing, and that every one of our reports was saying, ‘We’re right on track’,” he said.
“We said one thing and the reality was another.
“This is going to sound very callous, but I just have to try to honestly not think about that – I’ve just had to focus on my role and just say to my friends: tactically we did everything right.
“The strategy was always wrong and the human element, if you let yourself think about that too much, you’ll just come undone.”
Other veterans said they were proud of their service despite the way Australia’s involvement was ending, and would do it again without question, even if they were to face injury or death.
Former Private Paul Warren lost his leg in a bomb blast that also killed Private Benjamin Ranaudo in 2009.
“I don’t have any regret or remorse or anything like that,” Warren said.
“I think almost anyone that joins, particularly combat corps and stuff like that … you want to serve your country, you want to go and be part of that.
“You’ve got to contextualise that when you join up you’re a soldier, you’re not a politician.
“You’ve got a role to perform and it’s more about mateship and loyalty and stuff like that, and courage within your small teams, and the things that make us Australian.”
RSL Queensland State President Tony Ferris said “veterans who served in the Middle East would undoubtedly be feeling great frustration and despair as the Taliban increased its hold over the country”.
Stalled evacuation efforts have only added to a sense of defeat felt by some veterans as they desperately try to assist interpreters and other staff who worked with Australian forces to get to safety.
The founder of Forsaken Fighters, former army Captain Jason Scanes, said he has been overwhelmed by requests for help, not only from the locally engaged Afghan staff, but from veterans trying to do anything they could in a last ditch effort to avoid bloodshed.
Scanes said he knew of about 95 Afghan interpreters and aid workers holed up in Kabul, as well as others isolated in Oruzgan province or Kandahar where Australian forces had been based.
In a joint statement, Labor’s spokesmen on defence and veterans’ affairs, Brendan O’Connor and Shayne Neumann, called on the government to provide extra support for veterans who “may be questioning the value of their work and sacrifice”.
“With suicide and mental health issues among the veteran community already at alarming levels, more needs to be done now to ensure these issues aren’t exacerbated further,” the statement said.
“For months Afghanistan veterans and Labor have been calling on the Morrison-Joyce government to fast-track visas for Afghan interpreters and staff who worked with our troops and whose lives are now in danger from the Taliban.
“Many veterans have said this issue is exacerbating their existing trauma because they see it as leaving their mates behind.”
The minister for veterans’ affairs, Andrew Gee, acknowledged it was “a distressing time for many of our Defence personnel and veterans”.
He said he had asked the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to contact the families of ADF members who lost their lives in Afghanistan, as well as any veterans the department was aware of who could suffer adversely as a result of what was happening in Afghanistan.
Support is available for current and former defence personnel and their families through Open Arms on 1800 011 046 (international +61 8 8241 4546) or at www.OpenArms.gov.au.
