Urgent Debates

Mr SPEAKER Link to this

I have received letters from Keith Locke and the Leader of the Opposition seeking to debate under Standing Order 380 the deployment of Special Air Service personnel to Afghanistan. I have also received a letter from Charles Chauvel seeking to debate the announcement of an emissions trading scheme target range of 10 percent to 20 percent below 1990 levels.

These are both particular cases of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. I would have been inclined to accept either one of them. However, there can be only one such debate on the same day. The Standing Orders provide that in these circumstances the Speaker must determine which is the most urgent and important. I have concluded, given the immediate significance of the decision to recommit SAS personnel, that it should be given priority. There will be other occasions upon which the emissions trading scheme targets can be debated.

Keith Locke’s application was the first one I received, and I therefore call upon Mr Locke to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. That matter is the commitment by the Government of special forces to Afghanistan. The Green Party is strongly opposed to the Government’s decision to send the SAS back to Afghanistan. We do not want our soldiers fighting and dying in an unjustifiable war that is not helping the Afghan people. It is very important that we have this debate today, because we as a Parliament should always debate the sending of New Zealand combat troops overseas to participate in foreign military conflicts. We should never lightly risk the lives of our soldiers, and we should never lightly participate in armed conflicts, which inevitably result in much death and destruction and have a huge impact on the lives of local people.

War can never be the preferred means of settling disputes. My colleague Kennedy Graham currently has a member’s bill before Parliament, the International Non-Aggression and Lawful Use of Force Bill, to bind New Zealand not to commit aggression against another people acting contrary to international law. It is important, in particular, that we debate the commitment of combat troops to Afghanistan, because of the important moral, legal, and practical issues it raises. Such commitments of combat troops have been controversial in many of the countries that have contributed forces to Afghanistan, and in particular in countries similar to us such as Canada, Australia, and Great Britain, where half of the population is now opposed to the presence of those combat forces in Afghanistan, and want those combat forces withdrawn.

Half of the New Zealand people, according to public opinion polls, are against the commitment of our special forces, as well, and today in Parliament, the Green Party is trying to represent their views. There is a very strong anti-war feeling in New Zealand. We had a very big movement against New Zealand’s involvement in the Viet Nam War, and there is a strong Kiwi commitment to peace, which is shown by the fact that we became a nuclear-free country and are very proud of that. There is nothing more tragic than our solders dying in an unjust war, as Kiwi soldiers did in Viet Nam.

The Government’s arguments for sending the SAS to Afghanistan just do not stand up. It is claimed that this decision will help the Afghan people, yet, clearly, the American-led offensive has so far only strengthened the extremist Taliban. It has allowed the extremist Taliban to cloak itself in the mantle of Afghan nationalism as the defender of Afghanistan against foreign invaders. That has enabled it to recruit new supporters and fighters hand over fist. In short, the US-led effort, of which the SAS will be a part, has been counter-productive. It has resulted not in the weakening of the Taliban but in its strengthening.

The main rationale used by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp, to justify the sending of SAS personnel to Afghanistan is that the war they will be part of is necessary to stop Afghanistan becoming “a haven for terrorists”. In fact, the war is itself a war of terror, with terror coming from both sides. The Taliban has used terror against Afghans who resist its extremist practices, and the American forces have used terror in bombing targets in rural Afghanistan, where there has been significant loss of civilian life. Even the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has criticised the bombing and the resulting civilian casualties, and what he calls “a type of military conduct that alienates the population”.

So Afghanistan is already a haven for terrorists of all types, including the Afghan Government itself. The United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston reported in May that “Afghans are unlawfully killed by police and other armed personnel acting under the authority of Government officials.” The US mission in Afghanistan also reports complaints about torture in Afghan Government prisons, and those reports are verified by human rights organisations like Amnesty International. That provides another problem for a New Zealand combat unit operating in Afghanistan if it hands over prisoners who it cannot be sure will not be tortured by the Afghan authorities. For some years New Zealand has tried to obtain a written agreement on the treatment of any prisoners it hands over, but to date the Afghan Government has simply refused to provide a written assurance. Its assurance is only verbal. There is also the problem of New Zealand contravening the UN convention on torture if it hands over prisoners to US authorities. Even though the treatment of Afghan prisoners is probably improving under the Obama administration—there has been some progress there—US detention facilities in Afghanistan have not yet been given a clean bill of health.

We are now learning more and more about the systematic mistreatment of Afghan prisoners in US bases such as Bagram Air Base and the Kandahar base since the 2001 invasion. Unfortunately, in 2002 an earlier SAS unit was implicated in this problem. It captured some 50 or so prisoners who were passed over to the US forces, and it is likely that at that stage they were mistreated. The New Zealand Defence Force was unwilling or unable to track the prisoners through the US prison system, and, in any case, the prisoners had not been properly identified by the SAS before they were handed over, thus potentially creating, contrary to the Geneva conventions, what are called ghost prisoners.

One brutal military truth is that we cannot win a war if the Government we are defending is not really worth defending and has alienated the people of the country, and that is the case with the Karzai Government. Yes, Hamid Karzai might win the presidential elections that are taking place in Afghanistan around now, but, as respected columnist Gwynne Dyer points out in this morning’s New Zealand Herald, it will be through “bribery, blackmail, and threats”. He will win in a coalition with local warlords, who have run roughshod over their people. Two local warlords, Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Abdul Karim Khalili, are Karzai’s vice-presidential candidates. Even Colonel David Haight, a US commander in Afghanistan, was quoted by Gwynne Dyer in this morning’s New Zealand Herald saying in relation to the elections: “There is going to be frustration from people who realise there is not going to be change. The bottom line is they are going to be thinking: ‘Four more years of this crap.’ ”

The Karzai Government is utterly corrupt, and it is also in an alliance with Islamic conservatives who are not too different from the Taliban. We see that the Karzai Government has just forced through a law, which Karzai himself supports, which allows husbands to starve their wives if they do not give them sex, gives males exclusive guardianship of children, and requires women to get permission from their husbands before they can go out to work. It also does not help that the corrupt Karzai Government is so weak that it has to be supported by foreign troops. That does not give it too much credibility among the Afghan populace.

There is also the whole question of the legality of foreign military operations on Afghan soil. The original US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was not justified under international law. Horrific though the September 11 attacks were, a single terrorist incident in one country is no legal justification for invading a country on the other side of the world. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which justifies self-defence, does not cover that. Operation Enduring Freedom, which was the name of the US-led invasion at the time, which continues today, was not and has not been endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. Certainly, New Zealand cannot claim an argument of self-defence for sending the SAS to Afghanistan. The sending of the SAS to Afghanistan contravenes the international law against aggression, and may well also contravene the Geneva Convention if the SAS transfers prisoners to possible torture in the jails of either the Afghan Government or other coalition forces, such as the United States.

The Green objection to a unit being sent to actively engage in the war in the south and east of the country does not mean that we wish to run away from helping the Afghan people solve their very deep problems. Those problems have stood for years and years, and have only been complicated by foreign interventions dating back to the British intervention more than 100 years ago, the Russian intervention, and now the American-led intervention. On the political level, what is really needed in Afghanistan today is a dialogue and reconciliation between the different political factions as a prelude to nation-building—and there are some promising signs there. There has been an adjustment of some of the Western policy promoting, to an extent, dialogue between the different political forces, including the Taliban or elements of it. That is very positive, but it runs contrary to also engaging in the frontal war, in particular in the south and the east of the country. There are some promising signs in the ceasefire announced recently between the Karzai Government and the Taliban in the province of Badghis, and hopefully that sort of thing will spread.

We want to be promoting that sort of thing as a peacemaking country, and as a country with some moral standing, as seen through our presence in peacekeeping and peace building through our provincial reconstruction team. We want to build on the framework of possible ceasefires, and encourage the development of more democratic institutions and the development of the rule of law. The rule of law is not followed very much in Afghanistan today; that is something that has been commented on quite strongly by UN authorities. They complain that the rule of law is not really being upheld in Afghanistan. We also want to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, and we have been doing very good work there for the last several years through our provincial reconstruction team in the Bamian province. In the whole period the team has been there, it has been effectively a peacekeeping and reconstruction operation; it has not once had to fire a shot at any armed combatant during that whole time. We want that work to be continued. It is disappointing that when the Government made a decision to send the SAS, it said that it will pull out the provincial reconstruction team in the fairly near future. We support the Government in its announcement that it will be giving more civil aid. The Green Party has been promoting that for some time. We have a positive approach to helping the Afghan people.

The Government’s decision to send the SAS is very disappointing in another way. What is at stake here is the continuation of the path New Zealand has been taking for some years towards a more independent foreign policy, whereby New Zealand is constructively engaged in peacemaking and peacekeeping. Now it appears to be falling back into a role that we traditionally had in the time of the Viet Nam War, for example, of being subordinate to the Western alliance, and particularly to the foreign policy and military policy of the United States. I do not think we should go backwards now; we want to keep going forwards. We have progressed so far since the massive protest against New Zealand’s participation in the Viet Nam War some years ago; since our effective withdrawal from ANZUS to stop nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered warships from entering our waters; in the work we have done in the international arena to promoted nuclear disarmament through, for example, the New Agenda Coalition; and, more lately, in staying out of the illegal war in Iraq. Let us continue this peaceful and independent course.

Hon MURRAY McCULLY (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Link to this

There are few more difficult decisions for any Government to make than the decision to deploy men and women from its armed forces into a theatre of conflict. No Government in the world makes such a decision lightly, and I assure members of the House today that this Government did not make that decision lightly.

The decision to yet again deploy the SAS into Afghanistan in the near future was a decision taken after careful reflection. It was made in the context of the wider review of New Zealand strategy in relation to Afghanistan. It was made in the light of the review of the wider international effort in Afghanistan that has taken place over recent months. Above all, the decision was made after determining that the further deployment of our SAS in Afghanistan was in the national interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders.

I welcome the opportunity to share with the House today some of the thinking that lay behind the Government’s decision. New Zealand’s engagement in Afghanistan has grown incrementally since the initial deployment of the SAS by the previous Labour Government in 2001. New Zealand’s engagement now includes a significant deployment of New Zealand Defence Force personnel leading and manning the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian province. It includes the assignment of military staff and liaison officers to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. It includes deployment of military logistics, communications, and medical specialists. It includes a police training team operating under the European Union policing project EUPOL, which is based in Bamian with the provincial reconstruction team. It includes a development assistance programme now worth $9 million this year that is focused on agriculture, education, health, small infrastructure, and the promotion of human rights. It includes diplomatic accreditation from our embassy in Tehran.

As I have already said, the review on which Cabinet based its decisions looked at the totality of our engagement, taking account of the situation in Afghanistan and of the changing strategy of the international coalition to which New Zealand belongs.

As is widely known, the level of violence in Afghanistan has been rising, and the Government of Afghanistan has been less than successful in extending its authority throughout the country. In response, the international coalition has been adjusting its strategy. The key elements of that emerging strategy include a renewed and increased commitment to Afghanistan by the international community, a strengthened Security Council mandate for the UN assistance mission to coordinate international non-military assistance under the guidance of a special representative of the Secretary-General, and a NATO comprehensive strategic military political plan to better coordinate International Security Assistance Force military support to Afghanistan and to improve coordination of international civil and military assistance with the UN assistance mission. The strategy includes a strong emphasis on training the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to take over lead responsibility for security. It includes a rebalancing of the international effort towards development and governance assistance, including additional aid flows and increasing civilian participation. Finally, it includes injections of additional military forces to stabilise the security situation and to maximise the effectiveness of development and governance assistance.

The decisions taken by the Cabinet of New Zealand last week place New Zealand’s contributions for the medium-term future within this broader international strategy. The further deployment of our SAS is our contribution to the renewed efforts by coalition military forces to improve security so that the non-military aspects of the international effort can be implemented in a sustained fashion. I agree with those who say that military force alone will not achieve our objectives in Afghanistan, but those objectives will not be achieved without military responses to the insurgency.

As a coalition partner from the beginning in Afghanistan, New Zealand must play its part. We have a direct and vital interest in supporting the international effort to deny international terrorism a base in Afghanistan, as the death of a New Zealander in a recent Jakarta bombing reminds us all. The decision to deploy the SAS to Afghanistan was ours. The Government was responding to a formal request from the International Security Assistance Force. Requests to consider further military contributions were also received from coalition partners, including Australia, the UK, and the US. We concluded that the SAS was best suited to the campaign being waged in Afghanistan today. Our decision has been welcomed by the Afghanistan Government and other coalition partners.

Above all other considerations, the Government decided that a further deployment of the SAS to Afghanistan was in the best interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders. New Zealanders are a highly mobile people. New Zealand nationals travel in planes and they stay in hotel rooms and resorts. Where terrorists strike around the world, the chances are that New Zealanders will be at risk. All New Zealanders today have a strong interest in reducing the threat of international terrorism and the ability of Afghanistan to play host to the terrorist groups that are present there.

As required by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386, we have formally notified the United Nations Secretary-General of the decision to deploy the SAS to Afghanistan under the International Security Assistance Force, which is mandated by the Security Council under chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. We have updated our military technical arrangement with the Government of Afghanistan. We have also obtained a renewed assurance from the Government of Afghanistan that any persons transferred to Afghan custody after being detained by New Zealand forces will be treated humanely, in accordance with the international obligations of both countries.

The review outcome I have spoken of today will change our involvement in the Bamian provincial reconstruction team that New Zealand has led and manned since 2003. For some time the International Security Assistance Force and the coalition partners have been examining the functions and performance of the provincial reconstruction teams. There is no single model of provincial reconstruction team operations. Each lead country has brought its own operating style and personnel mix. Earlier this year I was privileged as a member of this Parliament and the only member of this Government to date to visit our provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan—

Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) Link to this

If the SAS goes back to Afghanistan, its personnel will go with the thoughts and prayers of everyone in this House for their safety. But in its last term in office the Labour Government made a considered decision not to recommit our SAS forces and it did so for very good reasons, which I want to talk about today. Putting the lives of New Zealand troops at risk is not a decision that any Government takes lightly, nor is it an issue to play politics with. It is too serious for that. It is an issue that requires careful analysis of the risks, of the benefits to be gained, and whether this is the most effective response that New Zealand can make to the situation in Afghanistan. I am the first to say that there are times when it is necessary to stand up and fight for one’s country, for its protection, for our values, for the beliefs we hold, and for what is right. Thousands of New Zealanders of our parents’ generation laid down their lives to fight for their country.

In Opposition, in the past I have endorsed decisions made by the National Government to send troops overseas. I did so after returning from Timor-Leste in 1999 as a monitor for the United Nations in the referendum there. In Government, I have contributed to decisions that have seen our people placed at risk—in Afghanistan, with our SAS, where we were one of the first countries in after September 2001, and in Bamian, where we were the third country to set up a provincial reconstruction team. I have contributed to decisions to send our forces to the Solomon Islands and to redeploy in Timor-Leste after 2006. I stand by those decisions because I believe they were the right decisions to make at the time. There is a huge responsibility in making such decisions. We have to do the right thing, not only in a moral sense but also in terms of the choice of options that are before us. In determining to make a deployment, we have to consider what the cause is that we are fighting for. We have to look at the options that we have, at what positive difference a deployment by New Zealand forces can make, and whether the benefits to be gained outweigh the costs that may be incurred.

The previous Labour Government withstood pressure to commit troops to a war in Iraq that we did not believe in, and we were proven right by history. Regarding Afghanistan, we made a different decision. I think the rationale for sending troops to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 was understood by most New Zealanders. Al-Qaeda had killed thousands of people in its terrorist attacks, and if left undisturbed it would have continued to do so. But, as I said before, after the third rotation of SAS forces came back in November 2005, the Labour Government reassessed the situation and decided not to recommit the special forces. That in no way reflects on the decency, the discipline, the effectiveness, and the competence of the SAS personnel themselves. I know many of them personally, and they are some of the finest people we could meet. I have absolute confidence in them. The decision we made not to send them back reflected our assessment of the situation that had evolved in Afghanistan, on the basis of the information that the Government had before it, and from our belief that in this new situation there were much better options to contribute to finding peace in that country. The big difference that had occurred was that the conflict had moved from being about rooting out international terrorist forces of al-Qaeda to a much more local conflict between disparate ethnic, religious, and political elements in Afghanistan.

If we were worried about al-Qaeda in the world today, we would be deploying troops to Pakistan, where most of its leaders are now based, not to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is in many other countries—in the Yemen, in the Sudan, and in Somalia—but we have not found it necessary to send combat forces to those countries. Most people in this House know that although Afghanistan is a country, the primary loyalty of its people is to its ethnic and religious groups, whether they are Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek, or Tajik. The lack of successful interventions by the United Kingdom over hundreds of years, and by the Russians more recently, demonstrates how difficult it is to establish a centralised form of control. I do not believe that Afghanistan can be reconstructed, from the top down, today.

We rightly deplored the excesses and the fundamentalism of the Taliban, but we should not pretend in this House that the conflict in Afghanistan today is a simple one between the forces of good and evil. The values of the current Afghan Government are such that many of us find it hard to sacrifice New Zealand lives to protect that Government. This week’s decision that it was legal for a man to starve his wife to death if she denied him conjugal rights is not the sort of values I believe that we should sacrifice New Zealand lives for. Nor do I believe in the sharia law that says that a person can be executed for changing his or her religion. We have to ask questions about whether it is appropriate to send our troops to support a “narco-State”. On 60 Minutes last night we saw Australian troops walking through hectares of opium crops without being able to touch them. Afghanistan is a country that provides 93 percent of the opium around the world in this current day. I do not find it easy to want to sacrifice New Zealand lives for a State that suffers from endemic corruption. Some members—and I think the Minister of Foreign Affairs is one—have argued in the House that those are secondary considerations to stopping Al-Qaeda re-establishing in Afghanistan. But the truth is that it is currently operating across the border in Pakistan and nobody is suggesting that we involve ourselves in that country.

The United States - led intervention has been in Afghanistan for 7 years, yet the defeat of the Taliban forces looks further away than ever before. The Taliban now controls one-third of the country, notwithstanding the 90,000 United States and allied forces that are involved in the conflict in that country. Last month 75 United States and NATO troops died in Afghanistan; it was the deadliest month since 2001. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians died, which was 24 percent above the same figures for the previous year. The hard fact is that when a person, an innocent civilian, dies in a village, villagers do not ask whether the Taliban were embedded in that village, and, therefore, that was why the allied forces responded. They simply know that their loved one was killed by a foreigner, and we lose the battle for hearts and minds. The contrast is in Bamian itself, where we have won the battle for hearts and minds. We have helped establish stability and security, we have provided the basis for development, and we can work alongside an administration led by Governor Habiba Sarabi, who is both honest and competent. We can see the difference we are making, and there is less risk to our troops in making that difference. That was an effective deployment.

I cannot understand why we would swap commitment to something that was working well at a lower risk to New Zealand lives for something that is absolutely unproven as to its effectiveness and has a much higher risk to New Zealand lives. I understand that the Americans and others have asked for it, but this is a decision that we make on our values and according to our analysis and judgment. For the reasons I have set out, from 2005 the previous Labour Government decided not to recommit the SAS to Afghanistan; we do not support that action now.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) Link to this

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. There is an old saying that if the people who make the decision to go to war were the same people who had to actually go to war, there would be a hell of a lot fewer wars. But it seems that that is still not the case. Politicians make the decisions, but clearly it is other people, the soldiers, who die for those decisions.

Afghanistan is not our war, and the SAS should not be going. We should not be in Afghanistan with forces that are dedicated to nothing other than attacking people. We support provincial reconstruction absolutely, but that is not what the SAS is being sent to Afghanistan for. Like most Kiwis, I admire the professionalism, commitment, and skill that the SAS has shown in its recent deployments overseas. Like most Māori, I cannot help but be proud of the achievements of our SAS, because so many of them are Māori. But if I could ask a simple question, it would be what on earth we Māori people are doing flying across to the other side of the world to fight and kill people who are doing nothing else but defending their own homeland.

We all know why the Americans want the SAS back. In the SAS’s last three deployments it has shown that in its specialist role as a deep penetration patrol troop it is probably the best in the world. American troops generally do 1-day patrols, but our guys are out for up to a month, and they penetrate hundreds of kilometres into the countryside.

Who are we are trying to kid here? People have been invading and trying to conquer Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and in the end they have all given up. History tells us that neither Soviet-style Government nor Western-style democracy will take hold in Afghanistan, and history has shown us that even massive, huge, occupying forces are eventually ground down and forced to leave. The USSR could not do it; now the USA is in there, and it will not be able to conquer Afghanistan, either. We know that because Barack Obama is already talking about pulling back into the cities rather than trying to hold the countryside. There are simply not enough troops to hold it all.

We know, too, that America’s strategy for victory is not based on winning hearts and minds; it is based on overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower. The Americans apologise when they get it wrong, they pay compensation, but then they move on to the next village with the same attitude. The higher the number of innocent civilians killed, the greater the resistance to the coalition forces. I ask myself whether we want to be part of that.

On top of that, the Taliban themselves are, quite simply, dedicated and ferocious fighters. Why would they not be? They have something to fight for: their families and their homeland. The world is now fully aware of how badly the Americans treat their so-called prisoners. The world knows well the stories of the torture of innocent civilians and of the untold killings of innocent civilians by American and other coalition forces. We know clearly the response from the Middle East to those who come into its homelands to rape its resources, kill its people, and take over its lands. We have seen it in New York, we have seen it in London, we have seen it in Bali, and we nearly saw it in Sydney.

So again I ask whether we really want to be part of that. Yes, we can play a role, and we are playing a role in provincial reconstruction in Afghanistan. New Zealand forces are gaining kudos from coalition and Afghan commentators for their skills, commitment, and ability to help communities to rebuild. But the answer to ending the war in Afghanistan is simple. The answer is for the USA and all other coalition forces to get out of Afghanistan, and sooner rather than later. Western firepower will not outlast the rage of the people of Afghanistan who want all outsiders out. The people of Afghanistan will win. The United States already knows it to be true. Only the Afghan people can ultimately determine what sort of Government, if any, they want to have, and we have no right to try to impose a system of Government on them that they have clearly shown they do not want.

In the lead-up to the SAS decision, John Key said that whatever decision we make, it has to be made here in New Zealand with what is perceived to be in the best interests of New Zealand. They are whom I answer to: the New Zealand public. They are the people entitled to that answer—nobody else. The Māori Party has to question whether interfering in external disputes outside of our own territory is in the best interests of any New Zealander.

The Government has announced that it will send more than 200 SAS soldiers to Afghanistan, and we know that many of those soldiers will be Māori. We also know that the SAS will not be deployed in a peacekeeping role. The SAS is “the premier combat unit of the New Zealand Defence Force”. The SAS will join other special forces that have been described as hunter-killer units.

The Māori Party holds true to our previous statements that denounce the glorification of war. We do not support our soldiers overseas fighting and killing civilians or aiding others to do so, so why should we send our own to their aid? The military role that our Government has had in Afghanistan in the recent past has been covert in nature, and we suggest that it is not about what is best for the people of Afghanistan. Our overseas aid money is being used by the military to wage war on innocent people. We care about the welfare of the innocent victims of war, so we support the announcement of more civil aid as an approach to supporting people.

This weekend the United States acting ambassador said there was tremendous international respect for New Zealand’s efforts in Afghanistan. New Zealand Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan do an excellent job in running a provincial reconstruction team, which is used as a model for others. NATO routinely invites others to look at what New Zealand is doing and to try to imitate that elsewhere. About 140 of our Defence Force members have been operating the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian province since 2003. Given that situation, it defies belief that our Prime Minister would recommend that the provincial reconstruction team be wound down. The provincial reconstruction team is about making a practical difference in infrastructure.

In terms of our international responsibility, every nation should examine its role in this so-called war on terror. We need to correct that phrase because it is no longer a war on terror; it is a war of terror. We would have preferred that the Minister of Defence consulted tangata whenua on overseas deployments to fight this so-called terrorism. What one calls terrorism depends on who one is and where one stands. In my office I have a poster that has a photo of four Apaches—Geronimo, Yanozha, Chappo, and Fun. They are in the desert and are armed with muskets and rifles. The caption states: “Homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492”. The photo makes it absolutely clear who they are and where they stand. They are no ordinary US citizens; they are tangata whenua, and they have considered themselves to be fighting a war of terror against them ever since the British moved in and started taking over their homeland. When our SAS troops confront the enemy in Afghanistan, it is unclear to me who is maintaining homeland security and who exactly is fighting terrorism.

We do ourselves a grave injustice by being seen to be complicit in the war of terror against the people of Afghanistan. If we can help through provincial reconstruction then we will support that, but we will not support the sending of New Zealand’s premier combat unit—the SAS—back into Afghanistan. Its role is defined very much by the American military presence and military direction. Tēnā koe. Kia ora tātou katoa.

Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) Link to this

The Progressive Party was established only after a policy disagreement over intervention in Afghanistan in any circumstances, so we have some fairly passionate views about this issue. Today we believe we must continue to support stability in Afghanistan, but the days when we should have combat troops there are over.

In 2002 the Progressive Party supported New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan, because the situation there at the time represented a clear and present threat to the civilised world. Al-Qaeda had just committed a terrorist atrocity in the United States. I was Acting Prime Minister on the day that it happened. One of those killed in the attacks on the United States was a New Zealand citizen. I sent a message as Acting Prime Minister to the United States President saying that New Zealand saw the attack as an attack not only on the United States but on all civilised society. I promised that New Zealand would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in resisting terrorist attacks, and we have kept that promise.

The al-Qaeda threat was, in fact, a global threat. The Taliban responded to those attacks by giving al-Qaeda shelter. In football stadiums—where, ironically, election rallies are being held this week—the Taliban was carrying out mass executions. Men, women, and children were being executed for the perverted political ends of the then Government of Afghanistan. That no longer happens. The Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of 7 years ago. It is not perfect—in fact, it is far from perfect—but it is different. The world could not have stood by and ignored what was being done. We were right in that view, and we have made a difference, even though it might be incremental and even though it is clearly not the kind of democratic perfection that one would like.

The United Nations Secretary-General at the time said: “The only way to win against terrorism is to organise a common international action. The main point is that the fight be led within the framework of the United Nations on the basis of the two Security Council resolutions and the General Assembly resolutions.” The United Nations agreement was crucial in forming my view, and the view of others in the then Alliance, that we should be part of that intervention.

International law makes it clear that the only grounds for military intervention are self-defence or United Nations sanction. So United Nations authority for the Afghanistan intervention was vital to ensure that it complied with international law. Once that was decided, our involvement was to send provincial reconstruction teams. We also sent the SAS. Its work was not, and is never, soft. Willy Apiata’s Victoria Cross is proof of that. We cannot send children to school or sick people to hospital, and we cannot develop economies and end poverty, when terrorists are doing their best to kill and to threaten entire communities.

So I supported SAS involvement in Afghanistan to help reconstruction, at that time—my present party exists because of it. But it was never an open-ended commitment. What we cannot support is involvement that tries to take sides in the feudal infighting in Afghanistan today. There are layers of sides in Afghanistan, and we cannot—nor should we try to—pick one over the other. We can help the country, however, to clear itself of al-Qaeda. We must have United Nations authority to do so, and we must have a firm base in international law. So we cannot just walk away from Afghanistan, in my view. That would give not only Afghanistan but northern Pakistan to the Taliban and to other ideological extremists.

Pakistan is, of course, a nuclear State. I do not particularly like that situation, but it happens to be a fact. It is teetering dangerously. The consequences of a nuclear State like Pakistan becoming even more unstable are too dangerous to tolerate. The whole world has a strong interest in making sure that that does not happen. The best contribution we can make, in our view, is to support stability in Afghanistan. How best can we do that? We should certainly offer to be of help and assistance, but I do not support doing so through the continued combat role of the SAS in Afghanistan. We have been pulling and have pulled our weight in Afghanistan; we have spent over $180 million on military assistance and aid there. That is one of the biggest commitments outside of international war theatres that we have ever made as a nation. So we cannot be accused of not taking the issues and events there seriously—we have.

This is not a debate about whether we should assist Afghanistan; it is about what kind of assistance we offer. Our contribution today has to be towards rebuilding and helping to strengthen the Afghan communities, the Afghan economy, and, of course, the Afghan National Army. Following the elections later this week the future of security in Afghanistan will be the responsibility of that army in particular. It is our view that SAS engagement is no longer the appropriate vehicle for that purpose. As I have said, we believe we should continue to engage in Afghanistan, and we should continue to offer assistance, but the role of the SAS, in our view, is now not appropriate any longer. New Zealand should continue with its provincial reconstruction team engagement, which has been extraordinarily successful and has played a very important role in the rehabilitation of the region in which it operates. That is the course we recommend to the House and to the Government.

Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP (Minister of Defence) Link to this

I seek leave to speak for 10 minutes.

Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) Link to this

I seek leave to give a speech lasting 10 minutes.