Last week, from July 4-8, some 50 people travelled to Queenscliff, Victoria, as part of the Swan Island Peace Convergence to enter into a week of protest and nonviolent civil disobedience to the war in Afghanistan. They came from as far away as Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane and as close as the small, sleepy seaside town of Queenscliff itself. The nonviolent resistance focused on hindering the operations of the Swan Island military base, a facility from which the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) operates, and one which trains the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), the elite fighters playing most of Australia’s combat role in Afghanistan.

Our goal was total Gandhian transparency – as we said at our first meeting together, we didn’t know if there would be police present, but if they were they would be welcomed as we had nothing to hide. Plans and reflections were put up on our website. We had been liaising with police for weeks beforehand, telling them everything we knew, which precipitated what they called “Operation Swan 2,” a containment force of approximately 180 police members including water police, the dog squad and mounted police. Given there were never more than 20 of us at the gates at any one time, this amounted to a serious overreaction on the part of the state, a trust deficit we were keen to undo.

Part of the reason for transparency was reduced fear – on the part of the participants (many of whom were attending their first “resistance” action) and on the part of the base staff and police. It is only in the context of reduced fear that people are open to changing their minds, and build the trust which is essential for working together and building an inviting movement.

Another factor was honesty and truth – if nonviolence is “truth force” then the force of truth must be given a chance to win the day. If as Gandhi said, “we each have a piece of the truth and the untruth” then it is only in putting our truths together that we both discover a larger truth, and discern the untruth.

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Over the last year and a small group of antiwar activists from Melbourne have been escalating our nonviolent resistance to the war in Afghanistan, focussing on the Swan Island Military Base off Queenscliff, Victoria. Australia has 1550 troops in Afghanistan; most are involved in mentoring and training Afghan National Army, but approximately 350 are the elite SAS, who are doing the targeted killings. Swan Island is one of two major training facilities for SAS troops, as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

We have chosen the tool of nonviolent direct action to disrupt and expose this secretive facility and its involvement in this ten year war. This allows us to have a disproportionate effect for the amount of time, effort and people involved, and to have a concrete, measurable, local impact on Australia’s war effort.

In March 2010, four of us entered the base; two blocked the gate with a banner reading “Base Closed: War Out of Order,” while two went inside and switched off power grids and a satellite. Our charges of Commonwealth trespass were dismissed by a magistrate on June 16.

Immediately after court we returned to Swan Island with 40 supporters, and this time nine people were arrested blocking the gate. Their charges were also dismissed by a magistrate in October 2010.

From July 4-8 we have planned a week of activities, including daily blockades of the base, children’s activities, film nights and a public stall in Main Street. The intention is to build a community of resistance in a way which is fun, empowering and effective.

The week of activity is planned to coincide with the beginning of the Talisman Saber U.S./Australia joint military exercises. There will be a series of protests and civil disobedience actions around the site of those exercises as well.

In the space of a year the Melbourne movement has grown from just eight people being involved to more than 80. In the deflated Australian political environment, where apathy and self-interest rule the day, this is a significant achievement, though one on which we will seek to build. My sense is that this growth is largely due to the personal witness of those who have put themselves on the line and repeatedly borne witness to an alternative method of political engagement, which has expanded people’s imaginations and provided a focal point.

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Those who attempt to work for social change, especially in terms of peace work, are no strangers to despair. The task can seem so great, and our efforts so small, that victories seem impossible, the problems insurmountable. People’s attitudes take forever to change, if they change at all. Malevolent forces seem to have all the power, the weapons, the resources, the inertia, the media, and even the culture captive. Many refuse even to begin the work for this reason.

Gandhi also noted this fact in his book Hind Swaraj (or Indian Home Rule) in a section I think it is worth quoting at some length. In it he explains why he believes that the force of “love” (which he says “is the same as the force of the soul or truth”) is the greatest power in history:

The fact that there are so many still alive in the world shows that it is based on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars in the world, it still lives on. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of this force of love or of the soul…History, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history.

Gandhi’s observation was based not just on a knowledge of history but also of the daily reality of people the world over. Grievances are forgiven, mercy is shown, differences worked out.

This is different from mere blind optimism because it is based on a more balanced observation of reality.

On a recent trip to Afghanistan with a Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation, I too was struck by the apparent intractability and irreducible complexity of the histories, conflicts and powers at play in the country. With so many grievances over so many years, how does a country heal and move forward? With so many stubborn powers vying for supremacy, how does conflict de-escalate? With such a lack of trust between even ordinary Afghans, how do you build capacity for cooperation?

On a day trip north of Kabul to the Panjshir Valley, our car stopped for a moment beside a scene of spectacular beauty: a shepherd tending to his sheep, on the fresh spring grass, with layers of misty mountains forming the backdrop. To our surprise and delight, we looked on as here, beside a busy highway, a new lamb was born. The shepherd turned his head towards us, smiled and waved. And then it struck me: this is how Afghanistan goes on. A day at a time, with the inevitability of the sheer will to live and love and create anew. It’s not the stuff of headlines perhaps, but it’s the necessary context of the headlines that concentrate almost entirely on power plays and military endeavors.

That is not to say that we don’t also need to continue the struggle for peace and justice. “To be hopeful,” veteran activist Fr. John Dear often says, “one must do hopeful things.” We are all part of living the reasons to see our despair transformed into hope, in our own seemingly insignificant actions, whether in the form of public political action or in our homes, communities and relationships. This daily reality has become the backdrop that informs my advocacy for an end to the war in Afghanistan – the sheer persistence of love and the resilience of the Afghan people. Every day people get up in the morning; every day they go to work in the fields, tend their vines, play with their children, forgive grievances. It is the almost inevitable working of this force which gives texture, shape, practicality, to the hope of a better future for Afghanistan, and the whole world.

Life is persistent amongst the ruins. Love is winning, but it can always use some help.

“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.”
– William James

A few weeks ago General Petraeus, leader of the US forces in Afghanistan, announced that once again he could proudly report that progress was being made. “We have managed to reverse some of the Taliban’s momentum,” he announced grandiosely, as though this was some kind of accomplishment for the world’s largest military after almost 10 years of war, more than a trillion dollars and countless lives destroyed. Of course his further admission that the gains were still, as in the December review, “fragile and reversible,” didn’t similarly make the news headlines.

This equating of winning a war with “progress” is never questioned by our media or our society. It is simply an implicit part of being involved. If we’re killing more of the enemy than they are of us, it’s progress; if we’re not, then we need to try harder to kill more. War as a method of progress is never questioned, just its ‘success’ rate. Progress is in the eye of the war wager.

Yet for ordinary Afghans, this war has not brought progress of any kind. It has only destroyed what progress had been made, and set them back for decades to come. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets.

A couple of weeks ago the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers marched through Kabul, to the UN headquarters, bearing a banner with a contrary message. “Peace is the prerequisite for any progress,” it proclaimed.

The alternatives to the great loudness, speed and force of the military is the quiet, slow, patient, painstaking work of relationship, work which the AYPVs are doing internationally through the Global Days of Listening, and locally through letters, the Bamiyan Peace Park, and other creative initiatives. For example, they made mobile phone pouches out of scrap leather, embroidered the word “peace” on them, and sent them with messages of love to students at schools in Kandahar in the south. The rarity of such action was underscored by the incredulous responses they received, such as, “I can’t believe such a love is possible.”

Yet after ten years of military effort, we can begin to see that even the grandiose claims of militarism are beginning to ring hollow. Poverty is worse than ever, as is security, with the conservative International Committee of the Red Cross declaring life “untenable” for ordinary Afghans.  Our continued unquestioning faith in the ability of violence to achieve results should be severely undermined. Even as Thomas Merton proclaimed the Vietnam debacle to be “the psychoanalysis of the U.S.” and the subversion of the myth of U.S. ‘progress’ so also Afghanistan should crack, if not shatter, our faith in redemptive violence and force to achieve good.

One of the inspiring things about the AYPV’s march is that it didn’t just proclaim a different way, it embodied it. As we’ve all seen in recent days, protests in Afghanistan typically end in violence and often deaths. Yet the presence of riot police didn’t intimidate or incite these young people to retaliate or flee in fear – instead they responded with active love. “Be alive and happy!” they called to police through beaming smiles.

These are small, humble, unspectacular actions but I am beginning to realise that this is how most real, lasting change for the better is made.

The Global Days of Listening too have been ways that ordinary people can connect across the world and make those most fragile yet strongest of bonds – human friendships. People from across the world are able to speak to people from Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza, and to build relationships more robust and meaningful than any peace accord. “Mountain cannot reach mountain,” goes the Afghan proverb, “only human can reach human.”  This is what real progress looks like – progress for humans to become more humane, more compassionate, more connected.

The last month has seen 6 Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bringing our country’s total to seventeen. Yet even with a federal election looming and 61% of Australians wanting troops brought home our involvement in the war has bipartisan support. In fact, far from raising questions over our mission there, these deaths seem to only strengthen the government’s resolve to remain. The same seems to be true of the U.S. and many other NATO countries.  It strengthens their resolve not because it makes the mission there any more necessary, or more strategically important, but because of a principle called “the sacrifice trap.”

This psychological principle works through an escalating commitment to a failing course of action, ironically in order to justify that course of action.  The more one sacrifices in pursuit of a particular objective, the more difficult it is to change course from that objective, and the more stridently it will be defended.  Often we experience this when they are put on hold by a telephone company. Our dogged commitment to the call seems to grow the longer they make us wait.  This is not because we don’t want to hang up, but because we feel the time spent will have been a waste if we do.

The more soldiers who are killed in the course of this war, the more committed some governments seem to be to it.  It is partly a matter of saving face – no one likes to admit they have made a mistake, let alone governments or countries.  But greater than that is the sense of investment, which must be seen to bear fruit, even in the most fruitless course of action.  Furthermore, the greater the “investment,” the more the prize seems to be inflated in importance.

During the Talisman Sabre joint US/Australian military exercises in 2009, my friends and I had many conversations with soldiers from Australia and the U.S., many of whom had spent time in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my surprise, almost without exception, they expressed the futility of the task there.  Some had lost good friends. But they were under orders, they said, and their families relied on the income they generated from the army.

It is believed that as many as 25 percent of US soldiers are looking for a way out of the military, yet don’t feel able to leave.  Having committed their lives to the military – and in many cases, committed acts they regret – the stakes have been raised to unacceptable levels to admit that they have been wrong.

The only way out of the sacrifice trap is to give those involved – soldiers, the military hierarchy, and government – a way out that enables them retain their dignity and reduces the cognitive dissonance between knowing their actions are wrong or counter-productive and doing it anyway.  Ironically, the more stridently the left pillories their actions, the less likely it becomes that it will change course, because it forces them deeper into the jaws of the sacrifice trap.

I wonder then whether the latest Wikileaks scandal might actually backfire on the voices for ending the war. If it leads to demonization and harshness, it almost certainly will.

Of course, toning down the criticism of the war does not mean that people should not be held accountable for immoral actions, but demonizing them will only hinder the process of necessary change.

There seems to be a delicate balance in this between personal pride and personal cost. Several countries have of course already backed out of their involvement in the war, but they have been countries with relatively little invested in terms of personal pride. Nations seem to have seen their way clear to withdraw when the cost outweighed the pride element.

If a rigorous cost-benefit analysis were to be undertaken – including accounting for the reality of property destruction, injury, and loss of life on all sides – I am certain it would reveal that the war in Afghanistan is really in no one’s national interest, and that there are numerous other, less costly options to achieve the stated objectives.  But until such advice is heeded, further commitment to this “war without end” will continue to be a disservice to us all – especially to those soldiers putting themselves at risk at the behest of their government.

Inspired by Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s call to be prepared to bear significant costs for peacemaking, my small group of antiwar activists in Melbourne, Australia decided to “up the ante” and try some actions that might be potentially more costly than anything we had done before resisting the war in Afghanistan. This was back in October 2009.

We spent months researching Afghanistan—the geography and politics, as well as the war. We also spent some time placing these events in the context of our Christian faith, asking some hard questions about our activism: were we too focused on symbolism and not enough on effectiveness? Were we too focused on effectiveness and not enough on means?

This culminated in our action at Swan Island, a highly secretive military base in southern Victoria, Australia, near the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. The island also houses a yacht club and public golf course, all accessible via a bridge which is guarded during the day and locked at night. The base itself provides training for Australia’s elite SAS troops, who are playing most of our combat role in Afghanistan, as well as ASIS, or Australian Secret Intelligence Service (our equivalent of the CIA in the US). We figured if we could disrupt the activities of this base, we could probably disrupt some of the preparation for and implementation of the war.

So in the early hours of March 31 (the week before Easter) Jacob Bolton, Jessica Morrison, Simon Reeves and myself went to Queenscliff and swam the short distance to Swan Island.

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Last weekend I had an opinion piece published in the Melbourne Age, a major Australian daily newspaper.  It was responding to the recent scandal of gunsights used by Australian, New Zealand and U.S. soldiers having been inscribed with Biblical references.  This story gave me the opportunity to clarify both the fact that Christianity is intended to be nonviolent, and that nonviolence is never passive in the face of injustice or oppression.

There were a number of comments after the original article, and the discussion has continued in the letters to the editor.  Two objections were raised in Monday’s newspaper, and two responses to the objections appeared in Tuesday’s paper.

It’s a rare event when nonviolence (let alone Christianity!) gets a run in the mainstream media in Australia.  This was a source of great encouragement.

It also made clear just how far we have to go in explaining and communicating nonviolence.  Two things in particular frustrated me.

1. It doesn’t seem to matter how often you say that nonviolence is not passivity, people will continually object on the assumption that nonviolence is passive.

2. It might seem pedantic, but the pervasive editing of the correct ‘nonviolence’ to the incorrect ‘non-violence’ is a demonstration of the kind of misunderstanding nonviolence receives in mainstream culture.

Have a look and see what you think.