There’s more to the war in Afghanistan than terrorism. Glen Williams meets the brave Aussie women resurrecting ravaged communities.
Up until now, it’s always been surreal. A dark item on the nightly news.
Afghanistan – a place associated with buzz words such as “war on terror” and “Taliban”; home of the suicide bomber.
“A bastard of a place” is how my true-blue dad describes it, after seeing snippets of it on the news and hearing about it on the wireless. “You wouldn’t want to bloody go there, mate.”
And I always agreed with him. Yet here I am, in the hull of a Hercules alongside soldiers, aid workers, an acclaimed photographer and a war artist from the Australian War Memorial.
After a few days’ training at a vast air base in the Middle East, learning to handle guns and recognise landmines, we are about to be plonked down in a war zone – the front line – in Tarin Kowt, a town circled by jagged mountains in southern Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province.
Woman’s Day has been invited by the Australian Government’s overseas aid agency, AusAID, to see first-hand how the Australian military is bringing new light to this all-too-dark, long-running conflict in Afghanistan.
We will experience life behind the wire in Kamp Holland, the Dutch base where Australian and Dutch soldiers work side by side with civilian workers. And we will meet some of the amazing women who are sharing in this mammoth task of restoring peace to this danger-fraught part of the world – all with one goal: to return Afghanistan to the Afghans.
Read the full story in this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale April 19, 2010.
