The Government has appointed a diplomat as New Zealand’s special representative to Afghanistan, as small groups of evacuees continue to escape Taliban rule.

A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed the Government had assisted 57 people out of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in recent weeks – 96 people in total since an evacuation effort airlifted 393 people from Kabul’s international airport in August.

Mahuta has now appointed Ambassador Matthew Hawkins, currently ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, to be New Zealand’s special representative for Afghanistan, and given him the job of helping New Zealanders and visa holders leave the country, as it descends further into crisis.

Afghanistan has been controlled by the Taliban, a fundamentalist militant group, for more than two months. Since the takeover, the Government has issued more than 1200 visas to Afghans who supported New Zealand’s Defence Force and family members of Afghan-New Zealanders, among others.

Hawkins has been in Doha, Qatar, in the past week speaking with Qatari counterparts. Qatari Airways has helped New Zealand with getting people out of Kabul. The Government has a team of four consular staff working directly with the airline.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), according to an October briefing for MPs, had 40 staff working alongside eight Defence Force staff and 99 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment staff working on the response.

“Afghanistan is plunging into an economic and financial crisis that threatens to undermine the new Taliban government almost from its inception. Many small businesses are collapsing as the banking sector remains paralysed, inflation rises, and cash runs out,” the briefing said.

READ MORE

• Former Afghan commander asks Government to do more for abandoned comrades
• Former guard at New Zealand base shot dead by Taliban
• Dozens killed in suicide bombing on Afghan mosque
• US holds crunch talks after Kabul falls - but NZ snubbed?

Nowroz Ali, who was granted a visa due to working for the Defence Force, was among a group of about 40 people from Afghanistan who arrived in Auckland at the weekend, after being flown out of Kabul.

“I’m relieved, I’m happy, I’m excited ... New Zealand people are nice, they treated me nicely.”

He said many former employees of the Defence Force, who in the lead up to the Taliban’s takeover pleaded for the Government’s help, remained in Afghanistan.

“I got out because I have [a] passport. Those that remain in Afghanistan unfortunately don’t have passport ... It’s a problem.

“Unfortunately, many families it’s been months they’ve been in hiding, they’re already running out of cash, it’s very hard for them to provide for themselves.”

Dr Ellen Nelson, a former Defence Force engineer who served in Afghanistan, said it was “great” that a special representative had been appointed.

Nelson was working with four other former Defence Force staffers to help get 460 Afghan visaholders out of the country, and had been working with MFAT on this.

“We are all really looking forward to understanding the contribution that the special representative is going to make to achieving this task of evacuating these families and ... what resources will be allocated to the special representative to be able to achieve this task,” she said.

National Party foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said the number of people brought out of Afghanistan to date suggested there could be “years and years” of work ahead.

“But the problem, of course, is that the people that have New Zealand visas are in a fundamentally unsafe position until they are extracted.

“I would hope that the appointment of the special representative can perhaps speed up some of that extraction.”

Brownlee said he had been criticised for saying New Zealand needed a “conduit” between itself and the Taliban.

“That is still the case. It is just the harsh reality of we are at. We don't approve of that government. We don't like it. We don't have to recognise it. But we do have to accept that if we want to help these people, we need some kind of approval system from that government – administration, we’ll call it”.