The former Minister of Defence says that while New Zealand troops made permanent and lasting gains for the people of Bamiyan province in Afghanistan, it came at a terrible price.
Wayne Mapp says the coalition of 50 countries who committed forces to Afghanistan in the wake of AL Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001, achieved only one of their two goals.
As American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the former Minister of Defence spoke to Q+A about New Zealand’s involvement in the twenty-year conflict.
Wayne Mapp says that they achieved their initial goal, defeating Al Qaeda, but not their second, securing the on-going security and stability of Afghanistan by building up the local police and defence forces.
“It’s clear western coalitions can defeat an immediate threat, but building a nation that’s all together a different task. Particularly if let’s say a quarter to a third of the nation really don’t want you there and will fight you.”
He told Jack Tame that even as the coalition poured hundreds of thousands more troops into Afghanistan, under US President Barack Obama’s Surge strategy, official briefings to the defence ministers were showing the commitment required would be greater than their capacity to provide it.
“No one actually thought they could actually stay as long as the military said we needed to. And so it ended up being something of a hope that we could succeed even the advice was saying: ‘It’s going to be really difficult’.”
Wayne Mapp acknowledged that one of the challenges of being in such a coalition was that New Zealand, with no more than 400 troops in the conflict at any one time, had a limited voice when it came to the overall strategy for the fighting force of 135,000.
Mapp was Minister of Defence when New Zealand suffered its first combat fatalities, losing Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell in Bamiyan province, and Corporal Douglas Grant and Lance Corporal Leon Smith from NZSAS in Kabul.
“I remember General Mataparae saying to me at one point … this is before Tim O’Donnell had been killed… ‘at some point out luck is going to run out’. Well it did, and it ran out a lot worse than we ever anticipated. With five being killed in just a 10-day period in 2012.”
“The loss of soldiers, when it’s on your watch and in part because of the decisions you have made, weighs heavily and it should weigh heavily, because you know a whole family’s been affected. Their future has been mortally affected, and you have to bear a responsibility for that.”
Over the course of the war, more than 3500 NZDF personnel were deployed to Afghanistan, mainly based in Bamiyan, between late 2001 and 2013.
“It was the staying on that proved to be the challenge. The Nation Building proved to be a task that was beyond the capability of the coalition.”
You can see the full interview on Q+A, this Sunday from 9am
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