A RISKY MISSION, BUT ONE AUSTRALIA IS OBLIGED TO FULFIL

The Government is right to send extra troops to Afghanistan, which
needs all the help it can get.

WITHIN days, 300 elite Special Forces troops will go to Oruzgan
Province in southern Afghanistan. Later this year, 75 RAAF personnel
will be sent to Kandahar to help with air-traffic control, followed by
a helicopter contingent next year. The dispatch of extra troops to
this long-troubled country, announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister
John Howard, will double Australia's deployment to about 1000.
Presciently but wisely, Mr Howard has warned of the dangers faced by
the troops, who will be under Australian command as part of the
International Security Assistance Force. "There is the distinct
possibility of casualties, and that should be understood and prepared
for by the Australian public," Mr Howard said.

Whatever the risks, and for however long the troops will have to face
them, Australia is right -- in fact, obliged -- to increase its forces
in Afghanistan. This country's commitment to secure and restore
Afghanistan has become even more vital and timely in the light of that
country's deteriorating security and the rise of Taliban violence.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who supports the troop increase, had a
point when, in response to Mr Howard's announcement, he said that
Australian troops should never have been withdrawn from Afghanistan
after the initial invasion in 2001. The Age has long lamented this
premature move. In 2003 this newspaper said that nations that go to
war in the name of freedom must be prepared to rebuild in order to
give the victims of oppression a reasonable chance of living decent
lives.

In July 2005, The Age noted Afghanistan's slow and steady progress
towards democratic government was under increased threat from two
areas: the re-emerging Taliban; and rapacious warlords with eyes on
the country's over-abundant opium crop -- an industry that accounts
for roughly two-thirds of the world's heroin supplies and whose
earnings help finance al-Qaeda and allied terrorist groups.

Afghanistan's grasp of democracy is worryingly fragile: it is built
not on the glories of the past, but from the detritus of a history
that has seen this landlocked country conquered again and again.

It has been controlled chronologically, but by no means exclusively,
by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, Brezhnev's Soviet empire and
the Taliban. The country is scarred with centuries of conflict and,
latterly, the hidden lethal legacy of an estimated 5 to 7 million
landmines and the memento mori of 2 million people killed in conflict.

Afghanistan's wretched inheritance, which has left it one of the
poorest countries in the world, has ensured it is ripe for terrorist
refuge.

In March, a report by the Lowy Institute (an Australian think-tank on
international affairs) warned of the increases in Taliban-led
activity: last year Afghanistan experienced 140 suicide attacks, 1745
bombings and more than 4000 combat deaths.

In reality, Afghanistan's plight, and Australia's commitment to it,
has been overshadowed by Iraq and its own terrible ramifications. That
the troops are still in Iraq, and Mr Howard is committed to keeping
them there, is not alleviated by his decision to commit extra forces
to Afghanistan, which is a different, and (in the case of troop
vulnerability) far more dangerous, matter.

Iraq was justified for long-since-discredited motives, whereas the
reasons for supporting Afghanistan have only intensified.

It is good to see Mr Howard is at last honouring his commitment to
"take a stand for democracy and to take a stand against terrorism" in
Afghanistan, and that this has bipartisan support.

It is also good to realise we are not alone: Australia is one of 37
countries supplying a total of more than 30,000 troops throughout
Afghanistan under NATO's International Security Assistance Force. It
is not going to be a short-term deployment, such as the one which
routed the Taliban in late 2001, but a longer, more complex and
threatening series of engagements that could lead to more foreign
troops being committed.

The Australian forces face great risks in this volatile
region.

They go to Afghanistan armed with expertise and courage.

And our prayers.