Local forces on ground more effective than airstrikes: Tony Abbott

Australian PM Tony Abbott — Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott addresses members of the media after a party room meeting at Parliament House in Canberra February 9, 2015. Reuters/Sean Davey

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has claimed that increasing the number of specialised military forces and trainers on the Iraqi and Syrian grounds will be a more effective approach than conducting frequent airstrikes against the Islamic State militants.

At the Margaret Thatcher gala dinner in London on Tuesday, Abbott delivered a controversial speech, in which he claimed that Europe should learn dealing with refugee influx properly from Australia, which defeated people smuggling problem effectively. The ex-PM targeted the United Nations leaders’ summit on terrorism in September, where the complete focus was on counter-attacking ISIS communities rather than emphasis on dealing with the caliphate effectively that inspires the ISIS extremists.

During his PM-ship, Abbott supported the U.S.-led airstrikes over Iraq and Syria through the Royal Australian Air Force, but he agreed that the air campaign had a limited effect on the mission. “The United States and its allies, including Britain and Australia, have launched airstrikes against this would-be terrorist empire. We’ve helped to contain its advance in Iraq but we haven’t defeated it because it can’t be defeated without more effective local forces on the ground,” he said.

On the other hand, Abbott’s successor Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that there were no plans of changing the way Australia fought terror threats. “We don’t have any plans to change the nature of our deployment in that theatre, that is not to say they won’t change in the future,” he said via the Australian Financial Review. “We have to be, just as we have to be agile, in terms of innovation policy, we have to be agile in terms of our approach to the security challenges we face. We have no plans to change the nature of the deployment at the present time.”

On the gala dinner held in the memory of Margaret Thatcher, Abbott said that Thatcher understood that the ones who escaped using decisive forces where necessary are those who are later ruled by those who use them. Abbott also advocated the need for combined efforts from the U.S., Britain and Australia to fight ISIS communities effectively.

In his speech, the ex-prime minister suggested Europe should close its borders for refugees to stop more refugee influx from conflicted countries. The advice turned into a global controversy as Abbott hit the humanitarian sentiments, though unintentionally.