Twenty years since the beginning of the Afghanistan war on terror . Twenty years , to the day that I was finishing a six-month deployment to Timor-Leste ( East Timor ) assisting the Timorese people safely hold their first Constituent Assembly elections and freely vote for representatives for each of the countries thirteen new districts .
The East Timor elections on 30 August 2001 were starting to look like they had been a success and by 11 September 2001 I was spending time cleaning my equipment ready to start my return journey back to Australia . It had been a busy four years after joining the Australian SASR ( Special Air Service Regiment ) in 1997 . With the selection course , a year of training , the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 and now the East Timor deployment , I was looking forward to some leave and time at home with my family .
That night , as I cleaned and packed my gear at our base in Balibo I declined a colleague ’ s offer to watch the news events unfolding in New York . Maybe it was the fact that I had been studying terror attacks for the last 4 years that I didn ’ t realise the gravity of the situation , deciding that night that sleep was my priority given the several days of travel that lay ahead . It was not until a few hours later when I woke that I realised the devasting severity of what had just occurred .
It was not the graphic violence I was witnessing on the live television coverage as everyday citizens suffered at the hands of evil . It was the understanding of what it would be like to give up your life for no other reason than to take away the pain . And not the pain of natural sickness or disease , but pain deliberately and maliciously inflicted on you simply because you did not believe what someone else believed .
As a professional soldier , I am accepting of death . After experiencing my share of Afghanistan ’ s twenty years of recent war , the only thing I now hope is that
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