More than 50 people protested on April 12 against the Australian government's decision to send 300 extra troops to Afghanistan. The speakout was called at short notice by the Stop the War Coalition. Activists pointed out that the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are part of the same "war on terror", are both motivated by lies, and are both wars of occupation in which innocent people are being killed for US corporate interests.
Paddy Gibson from the Stop the War Coalition pointed out in a media statement that "a recent poll of several thousand men in Kandahar and Helmand by the Senlis Council, a Brussels-based think tank, found that only 19% of people in the two provinces felt that international troops were helping them. Foreign troops have been responsible for a spate of indiscriminate civilian killings in recent months, such as a massacre of 30 Afghans by US Marines on March 4".