We owe it to the people of Afghanistan to finish what we started

Saturday, 16 November 2019

Children killed in an explosion caused by a device left behind on a New Zealand firing range in Afghanistan. For Stuff Circuit's documentary Life + Limb. L-R: Hussain Khudabakhsh, Hussain Bakhsh Mohammad, Amina Nowruz, and names unknown.

OPINION: It has been six years since New Zealand wound up its decade long deployment to Afghanistan. It was a deployment that took a terrible toll on the young New Zealand soldiers who served there - 10 were killed, and others injured. The cost of war, as always, is high.

But, for the Afghan people they left behind, the legacy of that terrible war continues to exact a toll.

As a Stuff Circuit investigation today reveals, seven children were killed in an explosion caused by a device left behind on a New Zealand firing range.

Tohira who lost two children, five-year-old Laila and Hussain, 11, grieves at the cemetery, with one of her other children.

The New Zealand Defence Force says it is in talks to clear the firing ranges; $10 million has been set aside for that task, though it seems there is still some dispute as to whether the Russians or Americans who were there before us might also be at fault.

* Blast from New Zealand firing range ammunition kills Afghan children

* War inquiry remains necessary despite new information**

That hardly matters to the Afghan villagers still living with the threat of being killed while just going about their daily life. They just think six years is too long to wait. They are right.

A report earlier this year on the human and financial costs of the 'explosive remnants of war' in Afghanistan revealed the horrifying legacy of that deployment; at least 5442 people have been killed and 14,693 injured by devices embedded or left on the ground since the start of the US-led war in 2001.

The ongoing costs included the 'deep psychological impact' of the fear of being harmed, magnified by knowing or seeing someone injured or killed. Tragically many of those killed are children, the majority of them boys.

We sent troops to Afghanistan under the banner of humanitarian assistance; the Kiwis led one of a number of provincial reconstruction teams whose mission, we were told, was to rebuild infrastructure - roads, hospitals schools, bridges - the basic things needed to get a broken society back on its feet.

But the most fundamental human need of all must surely be the freedom that comes with knowing that you can live without fear of you - or your children - being killed or maimed by weapons of war.