Frontline of fear: Why we mustn't shirk our moral responsibility to Afghanistan

Friday, 20 August 2021

Agha Mohammed Naqshbandi's father was a teacher, killed by the Taliban because he refused to stop teaching girls. In 2000, alone at age 17, Naqshbandi escaped.

OPINION: One of the great war correspondents of the 20th century, Martha Gellhorn, wrote that people have a propensity to behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business.

In the case of Afghanistan, New Zealand made it our business when we went there in 2001. We kept making it our business when we continued that deployment for 20 years.

And it should remain our business long after the Defence Force Hercules evacuates New Zealand citizens and allies and Afghanistan inevitably fades yet again from the news.

Another brilliant war correspondent, the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, this week described Afghanistan as the frontline of fear, as witnessed by the devastating scenes when thousands of Afghans overran Kabul International Airport desperately seeking to flee.

* Misread warnings helped lead to chaotic Afghan evacuation

* Defence Force deploys as Kiwis and Afghan allies 'struggle' to reach Kabul airport

* Government scrambles to react to Taliban resurgence

Hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.

They would have known their chances were slim but anguish and fear are the precursors of panic. For seven, their quest for life led instead directly to their deaths.

The debate about how it all came to this has already begun.

Some argue the military presence dragged on too long, and that the exit should have been made as soon as Osama bin Laden had been hunted down and al-Qaeda subdued; that staying for two decades only gave Taliban leaders time to calculate their revenge and return.

Others say the coalition didn’t stay long enough, that a genuine belief in nation-building would have required a mission lasting generations, long enough to cement change; that the invasion’s brevity was entirely self-serving.

For the citizens of Afghanistan those deliberations are academic as they fear and fight for their very existence. These words are not hyperbole.

Paula Penfold reporting in Afghanistan with Stuff Circuit in 2019.

And we cannot now seek to disentangle ourselves.

I understand why many of our soldiers and troopers who made sacrifices and put their lives on the line – and lost their mates along the way – have been reflective this week, some questioning whether it was all worth it, others justifying why it was.

I admire those whose reflections are honest and considered, because of course war is nuanced and complicated.

I have no respect for those seeking to rewrite history, speaking in imperialist tones only of bringing reading to the people, and suchlike.

The truth cannot be glossed over that not everything we did in Afghanistan was for the betterment of Afghans: neither the well-known events such as those that led to the Operation Burnham inquiry, nor the less well-publicised concerns such as New Zealand soldiers' role in the collection of biometric data.

Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai told Stuff Circuit in 2017 the international intervention was already a failure.

There are already reports internationally that the Taliban has seized US military biometric devices that could identify Afghans who assisted coalition forces. The possibility of information we helped collect being exploited by a violent theocracy is a hellscape.

The staggering speed with which the Taliban has regained control might be surprising but nothing else about it should be. Those who know have been warning about this outcome for years.

Back in 2017, when we interviewed former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, he was diplomatic about the work of the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team – “you came from such a far-away place, you sent your young men and women here, and spent your resources here; we’re very grateful” – but scathing of how the international intervention was playing out, calling it a failure.

“We have more radicalism, we have more extremism, we have more attacks all around – that is failure.”

He was most prescient about coalition mistakes he said inflamed the insurgency.

“They got it wrong by targeting Afghan homes, Afghan villages, Afghan people, and not the sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan”, he said, stressing he had repeatedly tried to warn coalition leaders.

“Had they listened to Afghans, had they adopted an approach that was suitable to the environment, Afghanistan would have been a very different country today.”

Even then, we were told up to 60 per cent of rural areas were already back under Taliban control.

The insurgents were poised, biding their time, waiting for the moment everyone left so they could reclaim the cities, reclaim the whole land, reclaim the people.

New Zealand was part of that coalition that ignored the pleas of Karzai and others who knew what we were doing wasn’t working.

We can’t now cherry-pick what we liked about the deployment, feel good that we helped build hospitals and roads, that for a moment in time girls were able to go to school. Obviously these were positives, but as former prime minister Helen Clark (who sent our troops in the first place) said this week, such achievements have ‘gone up in smoke’.

So now the real responsibility begins: the moral one.

The people of Afghanistan will need our help. There will be a humanitarian crisis. There will be refugees.

And it is our business.