“Was it worth it?”
It’s a question that anchors — and haunts — the new Afghanistan gallery at the Australian War Memorial, where the answer comes not as a resolution but as a contradiction.
Veterans, Afghan civilians, families and interpreters of the 20-year war are all being asked the same thing. The answers vary widely. Others speak of meaning, service and lasting benefits; others question that premise altogether.
One mentions two generations of Afghan women being educated and able to go to university. Another trauma 20 years later changed the Taliban and took over the Taliban.
Nothing in the room resolves.
That tension – too much for some, not enough for others – runs through the new permanent exhibition inside the redesigned museum, an ambitious attempt to present Australia’s longest war without reducing it to a single, coherent narrative.
For managers, the challenge has been less about what to include than how to put it together at all.
Bliss Jensen, director of the memorial development of the gallery, says the project – part of the new construction of the building worth 550 million dollars. – it was built on difficulty rather than certainty.
“We were very adamant from the start that we shouldn’t shy away from telling difficult stories,” he says. “Many of our audience surveys and advisory group opinions … all showed us there was a desire to see complex content, to be objective, balanced, but to go there.”
The initiative has produced a 900 square meter gallery containing about 1400 objects, many photographic testimonies and interpretations of layers dating from the deployment to Australia from 2001 to 2021 – from after September 11 to the evacuation of Kabul. 41 members of the Australian Defense Force died.
But even the end opposes the end.
“We started in 2019 and by 2021 we were all watching, with great fear, from our lounge rooms, the evacuation of Kabul,” Jensen says. “But the history of this conflict is still being written. We know that the story will change, and we’ve planned some kind of change around the show.”
That uncertainty carries the most competitive material in the warehouse.
The Australian Defense Force Inspector General’s investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the ADF in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, known as the Brereton Report, is presented with operational artefacts, material rules of engagement and international humanitarian law.
The modified page from the report is clearly displayed, its uncolored parts visible as its text.
A close interpretation places the results within a broader account of services and their consequences.
“We’re open and honest about it, and we’re dealing with the facts,” Jensen says. “We also put the allegations in a wider context.”
The “context” is lifting heavy objects in a warehouse designed to prevent sanitation and reduce.
Along with that math, a series of photo essays by veteran, war widow, mother, lawyer and artist Kat Rae responding to Brereton’s claims that the layers repositioned documents and figures in burqas, deliberately blurring and distorting images to show conflicting understandings of reality in war.
The panel says from the report itself that “overwhelmingly, (those deployed) worked with skill, efficiency and courage” and that there is a long tail of significant mental health issues, which continue to emerge.
A veteran’s testimony sits alongside accounts of Afghanistan. Military operations are intertwined with the civilian experience. Competing realities take place in the same space without reconciliation.
“There’s no sound like, you know, what the Afghanistan service is,” Jensen says.
The memorial has deliberately challenged a single institutional structure. Instead, it leans into difficulty, even when it causes discomfort.
Ben Roberts-Smitha former SAS soldier who has been charged with five counts of war crimes – murder over the alleged execution of Afghan prisoners, expected to be among the audience in the official opening next week. He denies the allegations.
Memorial officials understand the spotlight placed on the show.
“It will be too much for some and not enough for others,” Jensen says.
That line has become, in fact, the guiding logic of the gallery.
Expanded from the smaller previous exhibition, the new gallery gathers around 1400 objects as well as 26 audio and visual sections and more than 50 commissioned films, designed to capture not just events but interpretations – how meaning changes depending on who is telling the story.
Australian War Memorial director Matt Anderson, who served as Australia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, said the new gallery was “the first draft of history”.
“It tells our united story of service and sacrifice, through the experiences and voices of the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way, in our uniform and in our name,” he says. “We have to be very proud. I know I am.”
Jensen says it leaves the conflicts intact – a deliberate decision to reflect the fact that Australia’s longest war is still unsettled in memory, politics and public understanding.
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Rob Harris is a national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former European writer.Connect through email address.
