Government scrambles to react to Taliban resurgence

Monday, 16 August 2021

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Chief of Defence Air Marshal Kevin Short: They thought they had two months.

EDITORIAL: Has it come to this – a betrayal two decades in the making?

Afghanistan’s rapid descent back into the horror show of life under the Taliban has New Zealand scrambling to evacuate citizens and identify and help Afghan nationals who have worked with our Defence Forces to their now heightened peril.

The failure of the Afghan government’s defences following the pullout of US forces is less shocking than the sheer speed of the capitulation, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed was expected to take something in the order of two months.

But in what former PM Helen Clark has termed a massive intelligence failure, the comparative strength of the resurgent Taliban was wildly underestimated.

* Auckland woman whose dad was killed by Taliban fears for family in Kabul

* Afghanistan: How to help people affected by conflict as Kabul falls to Taliban

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says work to get New Zealanders out of Afghanistan has ramped up, as commercial options become unavailable.

A horrid future now presents itself. The past two decades were enough for Afghan girls and women, once so cruelly treated under the oppressions of the Taliban’s twisted ideologies, to taste freedoms that will now be so briskly wrenched from them.

Nowadays, the Taliban has a more adept public relations approach and spouts intentions for a new, more open, government. Believe none of that. Its intentions are as oppressive as ever.

Much as its leaders speak of an amnesty for those who worked with the government and foreign forces, atrocities are already being reported. Chillingly, in some provinces local religious leaders have been instructed to provide a list of girls over the age of 15, signalling a return to the virtual enslavement of life as a Taliban “wife’’ – a recruiting tool alongside plain bribes that have enticed troops to join the ranks of the victors.

Among the most sickening signs is that thousands of the country’s most dangerous terrorists, held in the former American base at Bagram, have been freed. These will not be forces for moderation in the time of transformation that lies ahead.

There remains a pallid hope that the foreign aid that sustains three quarters of the Afghan government’s budget might be used to constrain the worst excesses of life under the Taliban. But it is hard to find encouragement at the thought.

The events of this week will stand to the abiding discredit of US President Joe Biden.

The pullout was arguably a necessary policy for his presidential campaign but how flaccid now seems his contention that it was largely mission accomplished. The initial goals of ousting the regime that had provided sanctuary for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in 2001 was gone, and it was now time for the Afghan government and troops to defend their own land.

But the Taliban, aided by funding from wealthy Gulf Arabs and revenue streams including a drug trade, has prevailed with shocking speed.

The immediate need is clear. Whether it can be achieved in time is not.

Some 53 Kiwis need to get out of there. As well, 37 nationals who insist they have worked with NZ during the occupation must be swiftly reassessed and have their visas expedited.

About 40 Defence personnel will need to head back in to aid the evacuations.

Even if the process goes well this is a terrible, chastening time. How hard will it be now to look in the eye the 3500 New Zealand personnel who have served in Afghanistan, and families of the 10 who died there, now that the freedoms for which they laboured have been so quickly surrendered?