Embedded Reportage

Here's a great excerpt on the war on Afghanistan from an Australian reporter who was embedded. He spoke with Radio Australia, a private station, last night.

Last night Barack Obama said the United States did not want to keep troops in Afghanistan and would gladly bring US forces home when the problem of violent extremists was eradicated.

That may take some time, although Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, nominated as the new commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told Congress this week believes the Afghan war is still winnable.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Thom Cookes, journalist Australia network

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COOKES: Well the security situation in Afghanistan is such that movement around the country is very, very difficult. Movement on the road is almost impossible in private vehicles for instance. So you need to move around in the air. And all of the air is obviously governed by military forces there. And to visit any of the military facilities obviously you need to be going there with their cooperation. So being embedded theoretically, there were restrictions on your reporting in a sense that they the military authorities were able to vet some of it, but in practice they never do. They understand the ramifications of doing that. So it means that you are inside their security protection, you're often inside their bases, and you are technically subject to some censorship but in practice I certainly didn't experience that.

LAM: And where exactly were you in Afghanistan?

COOKES: I spent some time in Kabul, spent around about a month in Afghanistan; some time in Kabul, some time in the south eastern province of Zabol and some time in Uruzgan in the central south province as well.

LAM: And I understand you saw some action as well, tell us about that?

COOKES: Yes I did, the Australian forces are particularly very, very sensitive to the media and they normally very tightly control the media's exposure to the actual combat that the Australian troops experience. As far as I'm aware I think it's the first time any journalist has ever filmed the Australian and Afghan troops working together actually in combat - which is quite an eye-opening experience. As with most of the other coalition forces, there's a detachment of Australian forces which are mentoring the Afghan national army and it was a joint operation between these two that I witnessed for a week in a village, which is north-east of Tarin Kowt.

LAM: Well the new US commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal says that the war is still winnable. What are your observations about that - do you think it is winnable?

COOKES: It's a very complicated situation in Afghanistan as most people are aware and most people refer to it as a counter-insurgency rather than a war. There are no frontlines, there are various groups which are in conflict with the coalition forces that are there and they all have very diverse aims. So there's no front if you like and there's certainly no physical front and there's no real ideological front. So I think it depends on how you define what winning means and what victory looks like. Most of the western analysts are talking about bringing some level of stability to Afghanistan, I would like to think that's definitely possible but that's a very long-term objective. I think most of the average thinking of counter-insurgency finishing is around about seven or eight years.

LAM: As you say, it's more of a counter-insurgency than a war per se, but what's your impression of say the locals for instance? Are they cooperative or didn't you get to see much of that?

COOKES: I did, I actually spent most of the time I was out in the regions was on counter-insurgency missions and we were talking to villagers as part of that. Their response to you is obviously coloured by the fact that you're with a bunch of guys with guns who are trying to enforce order, so you have to take the exchanges with a grain of salt. But there's a very varied level of conflict and response to that conflict in the villages. You have hard-core insurgents who are often from places like Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Chechnya and so on, who are ideologically motivated and probably aren't going to change their views no matter what happens. You have a sort of second tier if you like of people who are local Afghans inspired perhaps across the border from Pakistan, who fall into that middle category who are able to be swayed. And then there are people in Afghanistan who are just annoyed about having anyone in their backyard, whether their coalition troops or anybody. And it's akin to having a look in your back paddock and finding someone there you didn't know and they're just angry about that. And then layered over the top of that, are all sorts of land disputes and private disputes that have been brewing for the last 30-40 years. So most people in Afghanistan that you come into contact with just want stability, peace and to get on with their lives as most people everywhere else does. There's a very small hard-core insurgents group which I think are not open to any sort of dialogue.