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MEDIA, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY DAVID BEATSON is a broadcaster, communication consultant and writes for the political blog Pundit. Complacent media fails debate over ‘empire’ wars

Other People’s Wars: New Zea- land in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, by Nicky Hager. Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing, 2011. 439 pp. ISBN 978-1-877517-69-3. foundation of thousands of govern- ICKY HAGER’S main charge ment documents, obtained under New Nin Other People’s Wars is that Zealand’s Official Information Act New Zealand’s defence and foreign and from confidential sources, and affairs establishment has developed copies of diplomatic cables that were a culture where some senior offic- dispatched from the United States ers ‘wanted to obey the government Embassy in Wellington and obtained only when they agreed with it’, and by Hager from the Wikileaks’ col- otherwise ‘quietly undermined’ its lection. policies and decisions. They be- Dismiss Hager’s analysis and lieved they could ‘go to war without conclusions, if you will, but it is dif- telling the public most of what they ficult to dismiss the original source did’—and Hager provides convin- material he uses to carve through the cing evidence that, for most of the New Zealand defence mythology that last decade, they have been success- has been spin-fed to a trusting public. ful. His sprawling, densely footnoted Myth 1: The ANZUS fracture and referenced book is built on a solid At the end of 1999, Helen Clark

214 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 17 (2) 2011 MEDIA, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY led her Labour-Alliance coalition preparing the five armies to integrate government into office, determined into an effective coalition force dur- to avoid any impression that it was ing conflicts in the 2001 to 2010 looking for a revival of the ANZUS timeframe. ANZUS may have been alliance. She walked into a wall of defunct since 1984, but the old mili- resistance from some of the coun- tary alliance club was still operating. try’s most senior defence and foreign affairs officials. Myth 2: 9/11 provoked the wars A member of Clark’s political Hager produces testimony from US staff told Hager that ‘every draft com- Secretary of State Colin Powell con- ing from defence and foreign affairs firming that, 24 hours before the 9/11 was worded to reshape the govern- attack, White House officials decid- ment’s new policies, back into the old ed to give the Taliban a final ultima- ones’. The issue quickly came to a tum: hand over Osama Bin Laden head when the officials delivered their or they would channel funds to anti- draft of the government’s Defence Taliban forces. If that failed, the US Policy Framework early in 2000. would intervene directly and throw Clark rewrote it personally. From them out. The next major conflict this point on, the New Zealand gov- of the new millennium was already ernment would contribute to global planned. The only surprise on 9/11 security and peacekeeping through was that Al Qaeda struck first. ‘participation in the full range of UN The next day, President Bush and other appropriate multilateral already had his eye on the next peace support and humanitarian relief target—Iraq. Citing US counter-ter- operations’. rorism co-ordinator Richard Clarke, The Clark Framework did not Hager portrays Bush in the White stop the officials’ drift back to the House situation room, muttering: ‘See old alliance relationship. Hager if Saddam did this … Look into Iraq, documents the presence of two NZDF Saddam.’ officers at the start of a week-long ‘interoperability’ discussion between Myth 3: NZ’s UN mandate representatives of the armies of Helen Clark was flying to Europe the United States, Britain, Canada, when the hijacked aircraft hit the Australia and New Zealand at Fort Twin Towers and the Pentagon. She Benning, Georgia, on 11 September rushed home to confront the first 2001. The focus of their discussions: pressure test of her Defence Policy

PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 17 (2) 2011 215 MEDIA, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY Framework. Five days after the 9/11 engage in military cooperation or attack, her government advised the exercises with the armed forces of US that ‘if there were a specific role a nation which sanctions the use of for New Zealand special forces, we their armed forces to suppress hu- would of course consider it’. man rights.’ Hager does not try to explain the It has taken nearly nine years Prime Minister’s sudden transforma- of digging by Hager and another tion from Helen the Peacemaker to independent New Zealand free-lance Helen the Warrior Princess. She did journalist, Jon Stephenson, to unearth not wait for the formation of the UN the unsavoury truth about the botched International Security Assistance raid by an American-Canadian-New Force before committing the SAS Zealand joint special operations task- to the war against terrorism. They force on the village of Band e Timur entered as part of US-controlled Op- in May 2002. Two 70-year-old village eration Enduring Freedom. That, to- leaders and a 6-year-old girl died in gether with their precise date of entry, the attack. 55 prisoners were taken, was concealed at the time under the transferred to US custody and beaten cone of silence that governing politi- and mistreated. Fifty were released cians and officials are both happy to without apology or compensation. place over SAS operations. Five are still unaccounted for. The Hager cracks the cone to produce New Zealand SAS led the raid, but the evidence that by the time SAS was not equipped to identify the troops set foot in Afghanistan the real prisoners taken and had no ability to war-fighting was over and Bin Laden track their welfare in custody. All this had left the country. The Kiwi troops was concealed, but is now conceded. found they had ‘no specific role’ to Nine years later, no-one is held play. Step by step, he shows how accountable, and intelligence botch- NZDF senior officers proceeded to ups, civilian deaths, and allegations invent one, and sold it to the Ameri- and evidence of the suppression of cans. Through no fault of the troops, human rights by New Zealand’s allies this new role would soon see the SAS in Afghanistan continue to plague the demolishing another tenet of the Clark operations of the SAS in and out of Defence Policy Framework. Kabul.

Myth 4: Protecting human rights Myth 5: Saying No on Iraq The Clark Defence Policy Frame- When George Bush and Tony Blair work stated: ‘New Zealand will not started conditioning other alliance 216 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 17 (2) 2011 MEDIA, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY leaders for the invasion of Iraq in Official Development Assistance April 2002, Helen Clark was quick supported activities in Afghanistan’, to say no. She was not prepared to be dated June 2009. It concludes that involved in an intervention that did NZDF was ‘not an effective aid pro- not have a UN mandate. vider’ and ‘projects overseen by the New Zealand Navy frigates and NZDF through the PRT do not ap- RNZAF Orion aircraft were sent to pear to be sustainable in any way and the Persian Gulf from November anecdotal evidence is that some have 2002.Their assigned role was to break already failed’. None of the critical the Al Qaeda Gulf-Afghanistan sup- detail from this report appears in the ply line—not to protect the Gulf-Iraq publicly released government review invasion supply line. But US control- of Afghanistan policy, which, never- lers were running both operations in theless, recommended ‘civilianisa- the Gulf and made no such distinction. tion’ of New Zealand’s contribution The same problem arose In June 2003, to provincial reconstruction. when NZDF engineers arrived in Iraq The main function of NZDF at to support a UN-mandated recon- Kiwi Base has never been reconstruc- struction effort. They were embedded tion, as we use the word. Its main in a British unit that was part of the role is to operate security patrols, Operation Iraqi Freedom invasion gather signals intelligence, and build force. Hager shows that evidence of Afghan army and police capacity mission ‘blur’ was gathered by the to take over these roles. In military NZDF, but he leaves one crucial ques- operations, NZDF’s Bamiyan deploy- tion unanswered: was it ever drawn to ment answers to a US commander the government’s attention? in Bagram. A contingent of Ameri- can troops shares quarters with the Myth 6: Bamiyan reconstruction Kiwis at the base. Among them, Since September 2003, Kiwi Base, under the terms of an official NZ-US Bamiyan, has been the centre-piece administrative arrangement document of the NZDF’s campaign to project that Hager has discovered, can be the softer side of its war effort—as a ‘counter intelligence team at NZ the model of a successful provincial PRT Bamian (2-4 pers.)’. This is the reconstruction team. basis for his claim that New Zealand is Hager shatters some of the illu- contributing to the protection and sion by quoting from a previously support of a CIA base. It is probably unpublished report on ‘New Zealand the most debatable claim in his book.

PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 17 (2) 2011 217 MEDIA, CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY Hager casts his net much further than this in Other People’s Wars, but these six myths have been pivotal in shaping the public perception of New Zealand’s involvement in the 9/11 wars. We are only now beginning to appreciate the yawning gap between the honey-coated vision of UN-driven peace-building, mentoring and aid- focused reconstruction and the blood and grit reality of our war-fighting in Afghanistan. However, the blame for this does not rest solely with secretive, manipulative officials in defence and foreign affairs. It also falls on leading politicians of all persuasions and a largely complacent mainstream media for failing their public duty to foster informed debate on policies that con- sign brave young New Zealanders to kill and die in the graveyard of other people’s empires.

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