Lazarus Rising

by John Howard

  Although I was adamant the Government would not fund continuing operations and the management of the affairs of the company should remain in the hands of the administrator, it was made plain that the Government would guarantee the payment of all statutory entitlements. These included unpaid salary, holiday, long service leave and so on. Furthermore we would meet the cost of what could be regarded as a community standard for a redundancy payment, which was eight weeks in all. Many Ansett employees had far more generous redundancy arrangements than these. It was always a possibility that the liquidator might recover further money which could augment the amount to be guaranteed by the Government. The Government honoured in full these commitments.

  Sympathy for the Americans in the wake of the terrorist attacks was very high in Australia. The appearance of George Bush on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, just a few days after the attack, made a powerful impact. There was great resonance in his promise that those responsible for the atrocity would shortly hear from the United States.

  Knowing that Australia would be involved militarily, contact began between our military people and the Americans. Before any military action could be taken, a case in international law had to be established. If the Americans had credible evidence that al Qaeda, operating out of Afghanistan, was responsible for the attack then a military strike against the terrorist organisation, and those harbouring it, would be completely justified.

  On 20 September President Bush made a powerful and special State of the Union address to a joint sitting of congress. He said that all the evidence so far gathered pointed to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organisations known as al Qaeda being responsible for the attack. He said they were some of the murderers indicted for bombing US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.

  At this very early stage, when American anger was at a white-hot level, the President was careful to distinguish between terrorists obscenely using the Islamic religion and the mainstream of that religion’s adherents. He said, ‘The terrorists practise a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics — a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.’

  He went on to say:

  I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It is practised freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.2

  In all subsequent speeches George Bush was careful not to conflate his unceasing attack on Islamic extremism with a general condemnation of Islam. Those who continue to argue otherwise are themselves responsible for distorting the truth. The gist of what Bush had to say about Islam then was precious little different from Barack Obama’s much-heralded 2009 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. Yet the latter address was represented as creating a new dawn in relations with Islam.

  Bush made specific demands of the Taliban regime, then in charge of Afghanistan. They included the delivery to the US authorities of all leaders of al Qaeda, the release of all foreign nationals who had been unjustly imprisoned, the protection of foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers, the immediate closure of every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and the handing over of every terrorist and their support structure to appropriate authorities.

  He also demanded that the United States be given full access to terrorist training camps so that inspections could ensure those camps were no longer operating.

  These were uncompromising and non-negotiable demands. Given what had happened, they were entirely legitimate and a necessary precursor to any military action. It was a direct and emotional address, probably the best delivered by George Bush in the eight years of his presidency. He was strong but measured. He spoke with feeling and sensitivity, and yet displayed a steely determination to go after those who had murdered his fellow countrymen and women as well as the citizens of many other countries, including our own.

  The Americans were meticulous in building their case. Shortly afterwards, Tom Schieffer called on me with a bundle of intelligence material which reinforced the already firmly held belief that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack. On the basis of this and other intelligence material, I was as convinced as anyone could be in the circumstances that al Qaeda was to blame and that, absent full compliance with the President’s demands of 20 September, a military assault on their centre of operations in Afghanistan and, if necessary, elsewhere would be justified.

  There was powerful public support for joining the Americans. The Labor Party lined up beside us. We determined that the best assistance could be provided through Special Forces and P3 surveillance aircraft to operate out of Diego Garcia, a joint British–American base in the Indian Ocean. Our naval vessels were still in the Persian Gulf helping to police the sanctions against Saddam Hussein. George Bush telephoned me on 28 September, brought me up to date with planning and thanked me for the offer of military assistance.

  The time for calling the 2001 election was fast approaching. The planets had begun to align for the Coalition. The steps the Government had taken to respond to the concerns of many had begun to bear fruit. We had recovered a long way from the political nadir of the Ryan by-election, which had proved to be a St Patrick’s Day massacre for the Liberal Party. All of this had occurred before the Tampa incident. I’ve dealt with this in more detail in Chapter 32.

  Critics claimed otherwise, but I never argued that terrorists had deliberately sought to use the process of illegal immigration or asylum-seeking to gain entry to Australia for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities. I did make the most obvious of points that there was always a possibility of this occurring, if Australia did not enforce a strict policy of border protection.

  I called the election for 10 November, announcing this on Friday, 5 October. A few days later Richard Cheney, the US Vice-president, telephoned me to indicate that military operations would commence against the Taliban in Afghanistan within a matter of hours. I immediately announced this at a news conference, and issues relating to the war against terrorism inevitably intruded heavily into the election campaign, given our forces were involved. There were several anthrax scares, none of which proved positive, throughout the campaign and the backdrop to our electioneering was the new and still quite frightening war against terror.

  The next scheduled Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group (APEC) meeting was for 20 and 21 October 2001 in Shanghai. In normal circumstances I might not have attended, given that an election campaign was under way. These were not normal circumstances. I knew that the issue of terrorism would be high on the agenda. It was also a big moment for China and its President, Jiang Zemin.

  That APEC meeting in Shanghai in October 2001 would be the most significant international gathering to take place in China since the Communist takeover in 1949. Coming as it did just a month after the terrorist attacks in the United States, it was an important opportunity for the APEC countries to demonstrate a united effort in responding to terrorism.

  There was an added personal note for me. Jiang Zemin and I had developed a close working relationship since our ice-breaking meeting in Manila, on the fringes of the 1996 APEC meeting which laid the groundwork for the productive links developed between our two countries over the ensuing five years. It would also be an opportunity for me to speak personally to George Bush concerning the war against terrorism and the military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  There was intense public and media interest in the APEC meeting. The meeting itself flowed smoothly. Jiang Zemin conducted the entire proceedings in English, and that include
d the delivery of his own leader’s contribution to general debates. The Chinese impressively organised the event, and the expressions of support for the Americans were both comprehensive and convincing.

  Away from the formal sessions at such gatherings there are numerous bilateral conversations. At one of these, a quite passionate Vladimir Putin spoke in scathing terms to me of the activities of Muslim separatists in Chechnya. He had strong feelings, although Russia herself could not escape some blame and responsibility for the tragic loss of life in that part of Russia.

  Bush thanked me for Australia’s contribution of SAS soldiers, of whom he spoke admiringly, to the military operation in Afghanistan. I am sure that he echoed the feelings of the US military. Relations between Australian and US military personnel had been close for many years, and I knew from frequent discussions with senior officers from both countries how much they enjoyed their professional cooperation.

  The US-led attack in Afghanistan was both swift and successful. Within a matter of weeks the Taliban had been routed, and something of a motley collection of replacements, dominated by the Northern Alliance, assumed control in Kabul. Or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, assumed a semblance of control in Kabul.

  Afghanistan, historically, has proved virtually ungovernable. It has a track record of either devouring or at the least effectively resisting invading armies. It was lost on no one that the very forces which the Americans encouraged to resist and ultimately expel the Soviet invaders in the 1980s, the Mujahedeen, went on to form the core of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

  Hamid Karzai, a pro-Western figure, assumed the presidency of Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. An Indian-educated urbane man, Karzai was ideally suited for the international diplomatic circuit. He was the friendly, acceptable face of the new Afghanistan. Beneath the surface, however, his writ did not run all that widely in his own country. He nonetheless remains in charge nine years later and has proved more durable than his many critics allowed.

  Australian troops came home from Afghanistan late in 2002. They would return several years later when, along with the forces of other countries, they re-engaged the resurgent Taliban in a protracted campaign which continues to this day. At the time of writing Australia has about 1400 personnel in that country. By September 2010, more than 20 Australians had died on active service in Afghanistan, with many more being wounded. A big increase in US forces has enabled a large NATO offensive in Helmand Province, which has made progress.

  The continued military operation in Afghanistan presented yet again the awful dilemma of Western societies being engaged in such missions. Unless those operations are quick, decisive and overwhelmingly successful, domestic political support for them ultimately ebbs away and can, in certain circumstances, turn into toxic opposition. That was the lesson of Vietnam.

  Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan should continue to receive bipartisan support. The cause is just. It is in this country’s national interest that Afghanistan never again becomes a terrorist haven.

  Late 2001 and early 2002 represented the high-water mark of international support for George Bush and the United States in its response to the attacks of September 2001, and its ongoing war against terrorism. As the United States and some of its allies, including Australia, turned their attention to Iraq, the international alliance began to fragment. This is dealt with in later chapters.

  My first personal contact with George Bush could barely have occurred against the background of more remarkable circumstances.

  I was not to know it when I arrived in Washington on Saturday, 8 September, but the epoch-changing events of three days later were to take the alliance to new levels of intimacy. The personal relationship between the American President and me would become the closest of any between the respective heads of government of the two countries.

  32

  MV TAMPA

  On Sunday, 26 August 2001, MV Tampa suddenly appeared on the horizon of Australian politics. What transpired over the following few days dramatically recast the debate in Australia about asylum-seekers, and the word Tampa became a permanent part of the Australian political lexicon.

  The Tampa was a Norwegian-registered and flagged vessel. On that Sunday, en route from Fremantle to Singapore, the Tampa received an urgent request from Australian Search and Rescue, alerting it to a vessel in distress. In response, the Tampa diverted its course and rescued 434 potential unauthorised arrivals in international waters, from a fishing boat that had set off from Indonesia and had an Indonesian crew.

  Before describing the remarkable developments which followed, some context is needed to depict accurately the mood of the Australian people at the time.

  Australia is one of only about 20 countries which participate in United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee resettlement programs on an annual basis. In 2008 Australia accepted the second-largest number of refugees for resettlement in the world, taking 6500, after 56,750 by the USA. To preserve perspective, it should be borne in mind that this resettlement program only places a small proportion of the world’s refugees. The great bulk of them remain in the neighbouring countries to which they have fled. This means that a heavy burden is placed on those neighbouring countries, so many of which are desperately poor. At least, however, Australia does more than many other developed countries to help relieve the refugee problem.

  Australia has a long and compassionate record in accepting refugees. In the 1970s, under the Fraser Government, this country, on a per capita basis, took more Indo-Chinese refugees than any other nation on Earth. Most of them had fled the brutal Communist regime in Vietnam, which had emerged victorious from the long war in that country. Many Australians felt that we had a moral obligation to take a large number of Vietnamese refugees, because Australians had fought beside their South Vietnamese allies in the war against the Communist Vietcong. Taking the Vietnamese ‘boat people’, as they were to be called, was seen as something of a special case. Most of them were processed in regional holding centres offshore.

  Unauthorised boat arrivals occurred spasmodically, but not at a rate which caused any real public concern. Between 1981 and 1988 no arrivals were recorded. The number began to rise again in the early ’90s, but not significantly. There was a huge jump in 1999 to 3721 from just 200 in 1998. In 1992 the Keating Government had introduced mandatory detention. This followed a three-year period in which there had been a kick-up in arrivals, but nothing like the surge some years later. Initially mandatory detention covered only unauthorised arrivals. In 1994 it was extended to include all non-citizens who did not hold a valid visa. It is worth noting that most of the people in immigration detention centres in Australia during the past two decades have been visa overstayers, unauthorised air arrivals and those whose visas had been cancelled. The one exception to this was the spike which occurred between 1999 and 2002 in the number of boat arrivals. It was this marked increase in unauthorised boat arrivals which lifted public anxiety so sharply.

  The figures tell a clear story. The number rose quite suddenly to 3721 in 1999, remained high at 2939 in 2000 and almost doubled to 5516 in 2001. The dramatic rise in 2001 put the issue on the front pages. Every day, so it seemed, another boat had arrived. The sheer size of our coastline led Australians to feel particularly vulnerable to the unchecked arrival of scores of boats. Visa-holders who came by air had to present valid documentation to arrive here in the first place; even if they overstayed they were not viewed in the same light as people who came here in the first instance without documentation. That is why the alarm about the rise in the number of unauthorised boat arrivals was understandable.

  By July and August 2001, there was genuine concern in the Australian community about the flow of asylum-seekers. There was a growing feeling that Australia had lost control of its borders. No matter how logical the arguments the Government had employed to date might have been, there was intensifying public unease. In the process, public support for orthodox immigration and an order
ly humanitarian refugee program began to erode. This was apparent to me from extensive talkback radio sessions, comments from MPs and random encounters with members of the public. Politicians are rightly exhorted to ‘keep in touch’ — no MP doing that would have missed the strength of community feeling.

  In rescuing those 434 people, the master of the Tampa acted in accordance with long-established protocols designed to ensure the rescue of people in distress on the high seas.

  After picking them up, at the direction of the Indonesian search and rescue authorities, the Tampa proceeded towards the Indonesian port of Merak, where the ship had been granted approval to dock. Likewise, the people rescued had received approval to disembark at the same port. Again the Tampa was acting in accordance with established maritime protocols.

  The vessel carrying the 434 people had sailed from an Indonesian port. It was thus appropriate, under international law and practice, for the people rescued at sea to be returned to the country where they had originally embarked on their now sunken vessel.

  It was at this point that events unexpectedly changed, and produced the extraordinary situation which led to the boarding of the Tampa by Australian soldiers. Realising that they were bound for Indonesia, those rescued by the Tampa applied duress to the ship’s master, and forced him to completely alter course and head for Christmas Island.

  The Tampa stood off Christmas Island, outside Australian territorial waters. The master of the ship was told by Immigration Department officials that he did not have permission to enter Australian waters. It was obvious that the asylum-seekers wanted to get to Australia and that the way to do that was to be taken to Christmas Island. The Government was determined that this should not occur. If this mutiny were allowed to succeed, the impression would be created that Australia was a soft touch, and people-smugglers would take careful note. Under international law those rescued should be returned to Indonesia. To make our position perfectly clear, in two separate telephone conversations Alexander Downer warned his Norwegian counterpart that the ship had no permission to enter Australian waters. In the second conversation he informed the Norwegian Foreign Minister that, if necessary, the Australian military would be used to prevent the Tampa violating Australian waters.