18 research outputs found

    Policing our ocean domain: Establishing an Australian coast guard

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    This paper calls for the establishment of a new statutory authority, the Australian Coast Guard, out of the current Border Protection Command that is directly responsible to a Minister for the assessment of intelligence, planning and implementation of operations and future improvements to maritime border security

    A new aircraft carrier for the Royal Australian Navy?

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    The Australian Government's decision to acquire a new aircraft carrier is critically analysed in strategic, operational and financial terms. The paper concludes that the strategic justification offered is "not proven", that the operational characteristics of available contenders do not satisfy assessed requirements and that the Australian defence budget cannot support both planned outlays and carrier associated costs. A comprehensive re-assessment of naval force structure is recommended

    The Governance of Security in Australia's Maritime Domain

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    The structures for managing the policing of Australia‘s maritime zones have been changed frequently since the 1970s in response to political crises. All responses avoided creation of a dedicated agency to undertake the task but none of the cooperative arrangements that emerged have been sufficiently robust to respond satisfactorily to the next crisis. The current arrangements under the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service have not prevented instances of poor performance, lax financial management and unclear responsibility. This article argues that these are inherent structural weaknesses of the current approach to maritime security and that it is time to establish a dedicated agency to perform the task

    Drowned by Politics: Australia's Challenges in Managing its Maritime Domain

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    The idea of maritime border protection has been prominent in recent Australian political discourse because of its coincidence with asylum seekers arriving at Australian territories by boat. Yet this construct is misleading. There is no maritime ―border‖ and asylum boats, although the current challenge are not necessarily the most difficult problem faced in managing Australia's maritime domain. This task is shaped by the geographic, legislative and administrative environment, which governs how this management occurs and how emerging challenges are tackled. The resulting arrangements have benefits but also inherent weaknesses at the points of intersection in a system of co-operation and coordination. The influx of asylum boats into Australia's north western waters since 2009 has greatly stressed these arrangements and may have brought them close to breaking point

    A War Not War: Policy Considerations for a Protracted Campaign against International Terrorism

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    Australia and other nations appear to be gearing for a \u27war\u27 on terrorism. But this will not be a war in the conventional sense. In some instances, for civilian communities it may be worse than war. In general, the long-term success of the campaign will depend more on the work of police and other civilian law enforcement and intelligence agencies than it will on conventional military battles. This note looks at the policy consequences of this and other judgements and warns that the public has not yet been given sufficient indication of how government will deal with them

    Relative safety?

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    Overstretched: the Limits of RAN Control of Boat People

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    On 3 September, the RAN began an operation to prevent boats carrying suspected illegal immigrants making landfall on Australian territory. This paper discusses changes in policy leading to this action and the stresses upon the RAN in maintaining it. It concludes that in the medium term the policy is sustainable only over short, intermittent periods and that solutions to the problem of illegal entry by boat must be found elsewhere

    War by other means

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    The political process is being used to wage a civil war in Iraq, writes Derek Woolner WHY are Australian troops in Iraq? Currently the government argues, along with its coalition partners, that they are there to prevent the situation worsening. Australian Defence Force deployments are part of a presence that is building local security capability, buying time for the development of democracy and averting the prospect of civil war. This is true enough, but is increasingly irrelevant. Events in Iraq have been unfolding according to their own logic. Those events will probably deliver a representative parliament and effective security forces but these will not be institutions to build a united country. Neither will Iraqi democracy be of the liberal democratic model that the Bush Administration had thought would inspire a wave of change throughout the Middle East. Current coalition strategy aims to empower the locals to take control of Iraq, by developing Iraqi security forces to defeat the ongoing insurgency and by placing them under the control of a representative democratic government. The US military campaign against a largely Sunni insurgency in the central ‘Sunni triangle’ is a holding action, buying time until this happens. The United States cannot do otherwise. It lacks the resources to prosecute an effective counter-insurgency campaign. When the British put down a Shia insurgency in Mesopotamia in the 1920s it had a soldier to population ratio of 1:23. In Iraq today the coalition ratio moves around 1:174. Consequently, every American claim of success is confounded as the insurgents regroup, restructure and improvise. The reality is that a civil war is already growing, fuelled by the realignment of political power. On 16 September the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared war against Shiite Iraqis. The declaration was probably intended to exploit resentment amongst Sunnis at their increasingly apparent exclusion from national decision-making, the draft national constitution. On 15 October Iraqis voted on a document that proposed a federal system around strongly autonomous territories amalgamating provinces on sectarian criteria. The constitution will see revenues from all new oil developments retained by these regional governments. None of this suits the Sunni living in regions with few oil reserves and with their co-religionists in oil-rich Kirkuk threatened with ejection from a Kurdish autonomous region. Unsurprisingly, when the draft constitution appeared, the response was civil unrest across Sunni communities. The subsequent acceptance of the constitution showed not a victory for secular democracy but rather how deep is the ethnic and sectarian divide in Iraq today. The total vote split roughly along the 80:20 proportion of Shia and Kurds to Sunni Arabs. Gaining 90 percent approval in some Shia provinces, the proposal was rejected by over 80 percent in Saddam Hussein’s home province of Salahuddin and by over two-thirds in Anbar, the seat of the Sunni insurgency. The constitutional proposal was carried when Nineveh, with large Sunni and Kurdish populations, rejected the proposal but only by 55 to 45 percent. A condition enforced by the US in launching its democratisation project was that the constitution would fail if rejected by a two-thirds majority in any three provinces. Obviously, few among the Sunni were influenced by the last minute and largely cosmetic concessions offered to Sunni politicians in the week before the vote. On the other hand, most Shia continue to follow their Grand Ayatollah who instructed his people on their religious duty to vote for the constitution. In effect, since Saddam’s defeat Iraq’s Shia leadership has been running a civil war through the medium of politics. They are fortunate that their revered leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, has acute strategic insight. At a time when the US thought implanting democracy would produce a secular, cohesive Iraq Sistani recognised that it would deliver power to the Shia. The most important force now shaping Iraq is not the mesmeric, continual violence, but the requirement of the Ayatollah that Shias support democratisation. Despite tribal and political differences, the Shia have followed their religious leadership in avoiding diversions from the democratic process. Consequently, their cohesion has captured the US occupation. America was already heavily enmeshed with the Kurds (for whom they provided the two-thirds/three provinces rule as a constitutional safeguard of Kurdish autonomy) as the Sunni insurgency grew. The last thing the US could afford was a Shia uprising. Since the entire American strategy presupposes democratic development, the US could not prevent the Shia’s demographic dominance and sectarian unity controlling the process. Even better for the Shia and Kurds, whilst Sunni tribal fighters come under US attack, political control has allowed them to retain their militias and develop them into powers within the state. Both US and British officials have conceded that the regulation of militias has passed to the Iraqi government. The 90,000 strong Kurdish pesh merga are a guarantee of ongoing independence and Kurdish political leaders will not surrender them to a unified Iraqi security force. The newly accepted constitution legitimises this situation. Although there are many Shiite militias the major forces are Badr and the Mahdi army. The (then) Badr Brigade was the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leader, Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim is a key power broker behind the Shiite majority in the National Assembly. It was re-named the Badr Organisation in June 2003 and claims to no longer have a military roll. Yet, when the Australian Army group arrived in Al Muthanna in April, the local Badr chief proclaimed his armed supporters ensured provincial security. Sunni leaders such as Adnan Pachachi, former Foreign Minister, voice concerns that Badr is taking control of the security services. With public support from President Talabani and Prime Minister Jaafari and former official Bayan Jabr, now Interior Minister, Badr is well placed for this operation. The Mahdi army, under the control of the radical Imam Muqtada al-Sadr, is active both in the south and in the slums of Baghdad’s Sadr City. It has heavily infiltrated security forces in Basra. Police chief General Hassan al-Sade claimed that the militia made up half his force, that he could trust only a quarter of his offices and that some were involved in assassinations. Other reports claim that 90 per cent of security forces in the region owe primary allegiance to Shiite militias. Together they have turned the south of Iraq into what critics claim is an Islamic republic not unlike Iran. The growing influence of these politically sponsored militias with their factional loyalties now questions the viability of the strategy to build nationally focused security forces. The significance of the recent British attack on a Basra police station and the crowds’ retaliation is that both Prime Minister Jaafari and Interior Minister Jabr, while talking-up ongoing cooperation with Britain, supported the actions of the Basra police. The path forward in Iraq is not entirely clear. Elections in December for the first full Iraqi government may not be dominated by Shia parties. Creating further uncertainty is the prospect of a power struggle amongst the Shia militias. Tension and conflict are emerging. Al-Sadr, with his power base in Baghdad, has no interest in a federated Iraq. Badr and the Mahdi army have clashed in Basra, the Mahdi succeeded in buying-out Badr’s control of the Basra internal affairs department and they recently have begun to receive assistance from Iran. As often happens in revolutions, there may soon be an attempt to purge fellow radicals, possibly exploiting any uncertainties around the December elections. Yet the most probably outcome is that the Shia religious leadership will remain in control. Events in Iraq are approaching their logical conclusion. Democracy will triumph, but not in the support of western interests. The security forces will gradually become (brutally) effective but operate for sectarian rather than national interests. The Sunni triangle will be given little but the prospect of further violence, increasingly from Shia dominated security forces. For its contribution to this outcome, Australia currently has allocated more than $1.2 billion dollars for all ADF deployments to Iraq. • Derek Woolner is a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Canberra Times
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