The Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan following 20 years​ of military intervention, leaving many questioning what was achieved and at what cost. National Correspondent Lucy Craymer examines New Zealand’s Afghanistan legacy and what the government’s response now needs to be.

In 2001​ the Labour-led government decided to send troops to Afghanistan. Four months later, the then-Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade ​Matt Robson made a pledge “to ensure a return to democracy”.

It would be another 19 years​ before New Zealand forces were finally pulled out of the country. By then, hundreds of thousands of Afghan, Taliban and foreign soldiers had died ​or were injured in a war that cost governments around the world more than a trillion dollars.​

New Zealand, alone, lost ten soldiers​ and spent hundreds of millions of dollars​ on its military campaign in what is the longest-running deployment in our history​- $109m​ was funneled into aid projects such as farm development, and school and hospital buildings.

Now with the Taliban resuming control, there are concerns that many of those projects will disappear and that the lives of the Afghans involved are now at risk.

How did New Zealand end up involved in Afghanistan? (And what did we have to gain)

Following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the then-acting Prime Minister Jim Anderton​ told Parliament that New Zealand had a “strong resolve” to help “bring terrorists to justice”.

Nine days later, then-Prime Minister Helen Clark said New Zealand was “prepared to make a military contribution” and within a month she had moved a motion asking Parliament to deploy New Zealand’s Special Air Services, or SAS. By November,​ the United Nations Security Council had resolved the UN would have a central role in establishing a transitional administration in Afghanistan and was asking member states to send peacekeeping forces.

Some commentators say that New Zealand’s decision to head to Afghanistan was a case of the country wanting to curry favour with the US following more than a decade of frosty relations.

Robert Patman​, an expert in international relations from the University of Otago,​ says he doesn’t see this as the case as New Zealand chose not to follow the US into Iraq two years later.​

Instead, he argues, a small country like New Zealand needs to support a rules-based international system. A significant terrorist attack on such a powerful country is a threat to that system.

“If the United States was the most powerful country in the world, and it was powerless to defend itself against a transnational terrorist group like Al-Qaeda then everyone else was vulnerable as well,” he says. “We need international rules that we can operate by and terrorism clearly threatens that.”

Politically, the move was not without its merits. From 2006, New Zealand troops operated under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation​-led (NATO) International Security Assistance Force, which increased our engagement with the defence grouping. We are now referred to as a NATO partner.

Furthermore, a close working relationship on the ground with the US military helped thaw relations with the superpower, according to commentators. In 2010​ the Wellington declaration was signed cementing improved US relations.

Issues in Afghanistan

Although the presence of soldiers in Afghanistan was hailed by many of the allied forces as exemplary, it was not without controversy and criticism back home.

SAS troops were involved in a 2010 raid soon after Tim O’Donnell’s death that was eventually the subject of the book Hit and Run​ and a government inquiry​. The Operation Burnham​ inquiry, which concluded in 2020​, found a child was likely killed during the SAS-led raid, and that elite soldiers misled ministers and the public about allegations of civilian deaths. The SAS was found not to have been directly responsible for any wrongful civilian deaths, and the report said they acted professionally during the raid.

Furthermore, 17 civilians ​were killed or injured in incidents connected to unexploded ordinance on New Zealand's firing ranges in Afghanistan, a Stuff Circuit investigation revealed in 2019.​ Following this story, the government ordered the ranges be cleaned up.

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Concerns were also raised about the handing over of terror suspects to US authorities even though the US administration had defined captured terror suspects as “unlawful combatants” meaning the Geneva Conventions – which provide protections for prisoners of war – did not apply. Many of those suspects ended up imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Questions were also asked around the collection of biometric data from suspects by the New Zealand military.

Reconstruction and development

Some of the work that those deployed to Bamiyan ​province did had a humanitarian bent. According to a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aid work in the region spanned infrastructure projects such as building schools and classrooms, police stations and hospitals. Funding went to supporting the development and training of teachers. New Zealand also sent police to help train Afghan police recruits -- training more than 3000​ of them.

New Zealander Alan Pearson​ was part of a team from Prime Consulting International that worked alongside farmers in Bamiyan ​province as part of a humanitarian project, partly funded by New Zealand.

“Our work was very much targeted at the grassroots needs of the people. We taught those farmers to do their jobs in a more sustainable manner,” says Pearson, who is the group’s chairman. That meant heading out into the fields to teach farmers how to drive tractors and developing seeds that were better suited to the environment.

Within three years of the project, the farmers average income had increased by 35 per cent​, wheat yields were up by 80 per cent​ and potato yields improved by 32 per cent, according to Prime Consulting.​

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Pearson​ says the farmers they helped will still have their new skills, and the seeds that were developed for the region remain.

“People always need food, and they probably need it even more now,” he says.

Another New Zealand company built solar mini group networks for villages in Bamiyan that provided electricity supply to villages that either didn’t have power or had relied on standalone generators. Infratec,​ the company which developed the project, says it provided power for roughly 30,000 people​. It is now being run by a national utility company.

New Zealand also partly funded projects such as the development of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission​. The organisation worked to improve the lives of minority groups, fought for better conditions in prisons, prosecuted cases others would not take on and catalogued the impact of the ongoing war.

Chief of the Defence Force Air Marshal Kevin Short says those who served played a role in helping the people of Afghanistan, particularly in Bamiyan, through security, infrastructure, agriculture, renewable energy, health or education​. “We changed the lives of many people, especially women and children.”

How do these advancements look under a Taliban government?

No-one really has a clear idea if development will be wound back under the Taliban, but the occupation over the last 20 years has meant more people have been educated and received better healthcare, and human rights have improved.

Rosslyn Noonan,​ a former Human Rights Chief Commissioner, says she’s spoken to a former executive director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in recent days. He was “shattered at the destruction of what they’ve worked so hard for”, Noonan says.

However, she is somewhat more hopeful. She believes the young women who have been educated through this period, who have had aspirations and seen a different life might find ways to challenge the Taliban or support change or to support women and children.

Bethan Greener,​ an associate professor at Massey University who looks at international policing and security, says there is now an entire generation that has grown up in a country and seems set on a different trajectory.

“Those 20 years provided a chance for people to imagine different futures and possibilities,” she says.

The immediate need, and the legacy

The Taliban’s leadership has attempted to downplay fears of a return to the repressive regime, however they have not yet spelled out an alternative political system, aside from offering vague promises of pardons for government and military personnel and that women could continue to participate in society in accordance with sharia law.

The defence force has now sent a plane and personnel to the region to help with the evacuation of New Zealanders and Afghan allies.

New Zealand should act urgently to provide some sort of safe passage to people who worked directly with the New Zealand government and military, says Marianne Elliot,​ who previously worked as a human rights officer with the United Nations in Afghanistan. But there are many other people who have worked with Western organisations and institutions who will miss out on visas to safely depart the country. New Zealand needs to do its fair share to take in these people as well, Elliot says.

Many of the successful programmes may have been funded by international money but were implemented by locals.

Noonan​ adds she has real concerns for some of the staff that worked at the Independent Human Rights Commission and have already received threats because of their work. New Zealand needs to follow the lead of countries such as Canada and be open to letting people come to New Zealand, who are threatened because of their commitment to human rights, she adds.

“Our rhetoric is principled humanitarianism, peace loving, human rights. Now we actually need to show some practical evidence of it,” she says.