Among the many sayings attributed to Winston Churchill is, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This sentiment seems appropriate as Israel potentially appears ready to embark on a war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this week a decision on an all-out war against Hezbollah was “coming soon” and that senior commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had signed off on a plan for the operation.

• READ MORE: Rafah fighting ‘intensifying’ as Israel strikes north, south, central Gaza
• Are Israel and Hezbollah on the verge of full-blown war?
• Other War in Gaza reports

This threat comes despite the fact Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is far from over. Israel has still not achieved the two primary objectives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put forth at the start of the conflict:

• the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing entity in Gaza
• the freeing of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas (about 80 believed to still be alive, along with the remains of about 40 believed to be dead).

Why Hezbollah is attacking Israel now
Israel has cogent reasons for wanting to eliminate the threat from Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been launching Iranian-supplied missiles, rockets and drones across the border into northern Israel since the Gaza war began on October 8.

Its stated purpose is to support Hamas by distracting the IDF from its Gaza operation.

Hezbollah’s attacks have been relatively circumscribed – confined so far to northern Israel. But they have led to the displacement of some 60,000 residents from the border area. These people are understandably fed up and demanding Netanyahu’s government takes action to force Hezbollah to withdraw from the border.

This anger has been augmented this week by Hezbollah publicising video footage of military and civilian sites in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, which had been taken by a low-flying surveillance drone.

The Israeli army said plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated” amid escalating cross-border clashes with Hezbollah and a relative lull in Gaza fighting https://t.co/H0nq61Gbay pic.twitter.com/qzzFq3nDt5

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 18, 2024

The implication: Hezbollah was scoping the region for new targets. Haifa, a city of nearly 300,000, has not yet been subject to Hezbollah attacks.

The most far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called for Israel to invade southern Lebanon. Even without this pressure, Netanyahu has ample reason to want to neutralise the Hezbollah threat because residents of northern Israel are strong supporters of his Likud party.

US and Iranian interests in a broader conflict
The United States is obviously concerned about the risk Israel will open a second front in its conflicts. As such, President Joe Biden has sent an envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon to try to reduce tensions on both sides.

In Lebanon, he cannot publicly deal directly with the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, because the group is on the US list of global terrorist organisations. Instead, he met the long-serving speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who as a fellow Shia is able to talk with Nasrallah.

But Hezbollah answers to Iran — its main backer in the region. And it’s doubtful if any Lebanese leader can persuade it to desist from action approved by Iran.

Iran’s interests in the potential for an Israel-Hezbollah war at this time are mixed. It would obviously be glad to see Israel under military pressure on two fronts. But Iranian leaders see Hezbollah as insurance against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could reach deep into Israel. So far, Iran seems to want Hezbollah to hold back from a major escalation with Israel, which could deplete most of that arsenal.

That said, although Israel’s Iron Dome defensive shield has been remarkably successful in neutralising the rocket threat from Gaza, it might not be as effective against a large-scale barrage of more sophisticated missiles.

Israel needed help from the US, Britain, France and Jordan in countering a direct attack from Iran in April that involved some 150 missiles and 170 drones.

Israel and Hezbollah conflict: escalating cross-border tensions. Video: ABC News

Lessons from previous Israeli interventions in Lebanon
The other factor – especially for wiser heads mindful of history – is the country’s previous interventions in Lebanon have been far from cost-free.

Israel’s problems with Lebanon started when the late King Hussein of Jordan forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat, to relocate to Lebanon in 1970. He did that because the PLO had been using Jordan as a base for operations against Israel after the 1967 war, provoking Israeli retaliation.

From the early 1970s, the PLO formed a state within a state in Lebanon. It largely acted independently from the perennially weak Lebanese government, which was divided on sectarian grounds, and in 1975, collapsed into a prolonged civil war.

The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, leading Israel to launch a limited invasion of its northern neighbour in 1978, driving Palestinian militia groups north of the Litani River.

That invasion was only partially successful. Militants soon moved back towards the border and renewed their attacks on northern Israel. In 1982, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to remove the PLO entirely from Lebanon, launching a major invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut. This eventually forced the PLO leadership and the bulk of its fighters to relocate to Tunisia.

Gaza Genocide: 17th June: In depth report on escalation of cross border conflict: Hezbollah v Israel: Dissolving of genocidal war cabinet by Netenyahu to select others: visit by U.S. Hochstein today & far right fascists Gver/Smotrich jostling for war cabinet positions pic.twitter.com/g5J44afWeB

— JANET Gibson (@JANETGi59151282) June 17, 2024

Despite this success, the two Israeli invasions had the unintended consequence of radicalising the until-then quiescent Shia population of southern Lebanon.

That enabled Iran, in its early post-revolutionary phase under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to work with Shia clerics in Lebanon to establish Hezbollah (Party of God in Arabic), which became a greater threat to Israel than the PLO had ever been.

Bolstered by Iranian support, Hezbollah has become stronger over the years, becoming a force in Lebanese politics and regularly firing missiles into Israel.

In 2006, Hezbollah was able to block an IDF advance into southern Lebanon aimed at rescuing two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured. The outcome was essentially a draw, and the two soldiers remained in captivity until their bodies were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in 2008.

Many Arab observers at the time judged that by surviving an asymmetrical conflict, Hezbollah had emerged with a political and military victory.

For a while during and after that conflict, Nasrallah was one of the most popular regional leaders, despite the fact he was loathed by rulers of conservative Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.

Will history repeat itself?
This is the background to discussions in Israel about launching a war against Hezbollah. And it demonstrates how the quote from Churchill is relevant.

Most military experts would caution against choosing to fight a war on two fronts. Former US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 when the war in Afghanistan had not concluded. The outcome was hugely costly for the US military and disastrous for both countries.

The 19th century American writer Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Will Israel’s leaders listen to the echoes of the past?

Dr Ian Parmeter, research scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

With murders, contract killings, ambushes, war zone deaths and fatal injuries, a staggering total of 1668 journalists have been killed worldwide in connection with their work in the last two decades (2003-2022), according to the tallies by the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) based on its annual round-ups.

This gives an average of more than 80 journalists killed every year. The total killed since 2000 is 1787.

RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said:

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark is supporting aid agencies’ decision to halt operations in Afghanistan, and a UN official has urged the Taliban to reverse its ban on women humanitarian workers.

The country’s Taliban administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) not to let female staff work until further notice.

It said the move, which was condemned globally, was justified because some women had not adhered to the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.

• READ MORE: UN to Taliban: ‘Vital’ to reverse ban on women in NGOs

The news led to the beginning of a withdrawal by organisations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and Unicef.

Clark, who also used to head the UN Development Programme, said the aid agencies were forced to suspend their services or yield to an oppressive policy.

She condemned Afghanistan’s banning of female humanitarian workers.

“It’s a huge violation of human rights of women. Where do you draw the line? If the organisations simply capitulated to this edict from the Taliban, they would be seen to be going along with a huge violation of women’s rights,” she said.

“So it is important that big organisations are speaking out now as they have, and are saying they will suspend their operations while this policy holds.

“The problem is the Taliban and these horrible hostile decisions that they’re taking towards women.”

Clark said the Taliban had tried to present itself as more legitimate than the last time it ruled Afghanistan, but a leopard did not change its spots.

She expected the Taliban leadership would face strong ongoing pressure from the UN and other entities, and they would see the consequences of foreign aid groups withdrawing.

UN calls for Taliban to reverse the decision
A senior UN official has urged Afghanistan’s Taliban administration to reverse the ban on female humanitarian workers, and charities fear it will worsen winter hardships.

“Millions of Afghans need humanitarian assistance and removing barriers is vital,” UNAMA said in the statement, adding that its acting head and humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov had met with Economy Minister Mohammad Hanif.

The directives barring women from working at NGOs came from Hanif’s ministry.

The orders did not apply directly to the United Nations, but many of its programmes were carried out by NGOs subject to the order.

Four major global NGOs, whose humanitarian efforts had reached millions of Afghans, announced they were suspending operations on Sunday. Other smaller NGOs had also announced suspensions, including UK-based Islamic Relief Worldwide.

The NGOs said they were unable to run their programmes without female staff.

More than half of Afghanistan’s population relied on humanitarian aid, according to aid agencies. Basic aid was more critical during the mountainous nation’s harsh winter.

Two spokesmen for the Taliban administration did not respond to queries on the suspension of humanitarian programmes.

NGOs were also a critical source of employment for tens of thousands of Afghans, particularly women, as the local economy had collapsed following the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces and the Taliban takeover last year.

One such employee, a 27-year-old female aid worker in western Afghanistan who asked for her identity to be concealed because she feared retribution, said that her NGO had shut its office on Saturday and she could not go to work.

The NGO, funded by a Western country, worked with women in the agriculture sector, helping them set up sustainable incomes.

She said she was worried that losing her job would have a huge impact on her family because she was a single woman and the sole breadwinner.

Her father was dead and her mother was a housewife, she said, adding that she supported four sisters, three of whom were university students who could not complete their degrees since the Taliban administration barred women from attending university last week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

As protests in Iran drag on into their fourth week over the violent death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, there are two central questions.

The first is whether these protests involving women and girls across Iran are different from upheavals in the past, or will simply end the same way with the regime stifling a popular uprising.

The second question is what can, and should, the outside world do about extraordinarily brave demonstrations against an ageing and ruthless regime that has shown itself to be unwilling, and possibly unable, to allow greater freedoms?

• READ MORE: The Iran nuclear talks are resuming, but is there any trust left to strike a deal?
• 3 ways these latest Iran demonstrations are different to past protests

The symbolic issue for Iran’s protest movement is a requirement, imposed by morality police, that women and girls wear the hijab, or headscarf. In reality, these protests are the result of a much wider revolt against discrimination and prejudice.

Put simply, women are fed up with a regime that has sought to impose rigid rules on what is, and is not, permissible for women in a theocratic society whose guidelines are little changed since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Women are serving multi-year jail sentences for simply refusing to wear the hijab.

Two other issues are also at play. One is the economic deprivation suffered by Iranians under the weight of persistent sanctions, rampant inflation and the continuing catastrophic decline in the value of the Iranian riyal.

The other issue is the fact Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old whose death sparked the protests, was a Kurd.

The Kurds, who constitute about 10 percent of Iran’s 84 million population, feel themselves to be a persecuted minority. Tensions between the central government in Tehran and Kurds in their homeland on the boundaries of Iraq, Syria and Turkey are endemic.

A BBC report  on the Mahsa Amini protests.

Another important question is where all this leaves negotiations on the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA had been aimed at freezing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

Former President Donald Trump recklessly abandoned the 2015 agreement in 2018.

The Biden administration, along with its United Nations Security Council partners plus Germany, had been making progress in those negotiations, but those efforts are now stalled, if not frozen.

The spectacle of Iranian security forces violently putting down demonstrations in cities, towns and villages across Iran will make it virtually impossible in the short term for the US and its negotiating partners to negotiate a revised JCPOA with Tehran.

Russia’s use of Iranian-supplied “kamikaze” drones against Ukrainian targets will have further soured the atmosphere.

How will the US and its allies respond?
So will the US and its allies continue to tighten Iranian sanctions? And to what extent will the West seek to encourage and support protesters on the ground in Iran?

One initiative that is already underway is helping the protest movement to circumvent regime attempts to shut down electronic communications.

Elon Musk has announced he is activating his Starlink satellites to provide a vehicle for social media communications in Iran. Musk did the same thing in Ukraine to get around Russian attempts to shut down Ukrainian communications by taking out a European satellite system.

However, amid the spectacle of women and girls being shot and tear-gassed on Iranian streets, the moral dilemma for the outside world is this: how far the West is prepared to go in its backing for the protesters.

It is one thing to express sympathy; it is another to take concrete steps to support the widespread agitation. This was also the conundrum during the Arab Spring of 2010 that brought down regimes in US-friendly countries like Egypt and Tunisia.

It should not be forgotten, in light of contemporary events, that Iran and Russia propped up Syria’s Assad regime during the Arab Spring, saving it from a near certain end.

In this latest period, the Middle East may not be on fire, as it was a decade or so ago, but it remains highly unstable. Iran’s neighbour, Iraq, is effectively without a government after months of violent agitation.

The war in Yemen is threatening to spark up again, adding to uncertainties in the Gulf.

In a geopolitical sense, Washington has to reckon with inroads Moscow has been making in relations with Gulf States, including, notably Saudi Arabia.

The recent OPEC Plus decision to limit oil production constituted a slap to the US ahead of the mid-term elections in which fuel prices will be a potent issue.

In other words, Washington’s ability to influence events in the Middle East is eroding, partly as a consequence of a disastrous attempt to remake the region by going to war in Iraq in 2003.

A volatile region
Among the consequences of that misjudgement is the empowerment of Iran in conjunction with a Shia majority in Iraq. This should have been foreseen.

So quite apart from the waves of protest in Iran, the region is a tinderbox with multiple unresolved conflicts.

In Afghanistan, on the fringes of the Middle East, women protesters have taken the lead in recent days from their Iranian sisters and have been protesting against conservative dress codes and limitations on access to education under the Taliban.

This returns us to the moral issue of the extent to which the outside world should support the protests. In this, the experience of the “green” rebellion of 2009 on Iran’s streets is relevant.

Then, the Obama administration, after initially giving encouragement to the demonstrations, pulled back on the grounds it did not wish to jeopardise negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran or undermine the protests by attaching US support.

Officials involved in the administration, who are now back in the Biden White House, believe that approach was a mistake. However, that begs the question as to what practically the US and its allies can do to stop Iran’s assault on its own women and girls.

What if, as a consequence of Western encouragement to the demonstrators, many hundreds more die or are incarcerated?

What is the end result, beyond indulging in the usual rhetorical exercises such as expressing “concern” and threatening to ramp up sanctions that hurt individual Iranians more than the regime itself?

The bottom line is that irrespective of what might be the desired outcome, Iran’s regime is unlikely to crumble.

It might be shaken, it might entertain concerns that its own revolution that replaced the Shah is in danger of being replicated, but it would be naïve to believe that a rotting 43-year-old edifice would be anything but utterly ruthless in putting an end to the demonstrations.

This includes unrest in the oil industry, in which workers are expressing solidarity with the demonstrators. The oil worker protest will be concerning the regime, given the centrality of oil production to Iran’s economy.

However, a powerful women’s movement has been unleashed in Iran. Over time, this movement may well force a theocratic regime to loosen restrictions on women and their participation in the political life of the country. That is the hope, but as history has shown, a ruthless regime will stop at little to re-assert its control.

Dr Tony Walker is a vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Part 2 of a two-part series on the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover. Read part 1: The world must not wash its hands of Afghanistan’s misery

The advent of Taliban rule in Afghanistan a year ago this month, after two decades under the more liberal, internationally supported Afghan National Government, threw the Afghan populace backward through a time warp.

The return to Taliban oppression has been most traumatic for women and girls, who suddenly find themselves in the equivalent of the Middle Ages again with respect to their rights and prospects.

Today’s Afghanistan is the only country in the world that bans high-school education for girls and restricts females from working, with very limited exceptions. This not only robs girls and women of their futures, but has a much larger impact on Afghan society and the country’s standing in the world.

• READ MORE:  The world must not wash its hands of Afghanistan’s misery
• Other reports on Afghanistan since the Taliban takover

A lot has changed since 2001
Guided by a traditionalist, nativist dogma, the Taliban pursued a similar policy when it previously ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. Since then, however, much has changed for Afghan women, especially in the cities.

Nationwide, female literacy doubled — although granted it is still low — and women were eager for education and new opportunities. Some went into politics and public service.

After the 2019 election, 27 percent of Afghan parliamentarians were women, the same percentage as in the current US Congress. Every ministry and government division had at least one woman at a senior decision-making level — I myself was one of them.

More than 300 female judges, 1000 prosecutors and 1500 defence lawyers worked in the government’s judicial system.

Although women were less well represented in business than in government, there were more than 17,000 women-owned businesses in the country. Women were also prominent in other professions including diplomacy, academia and teaching, journalism, and civil society organisations.

Public opinion polls showed that most Afghan men favoured these new roles for women.

Mixed signals
With the Taliban takeover, girls and women suddenly found themselves disempowered, without work and facing severe hardship.

At first, however, there was some hope that the “new” Taliban would act differently from before. Indeed, when we in the Afghan National Government were negotiating with the Taliban pursuant to the 2020 Doha Agreement calling for reconciliation, the Taliban negotiators indicated a willingness to accept a more liberal female role in society.

However, in contrast to the Afghan government’s mixed-gender negotiating team, our counterparts were all male.

Once in power, the Taliban initially sent some mixed signals. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was closed. By September, schools for boys were reopened, but only elementary schools for girls.

Some women were kept in government offices only to be dismissed when men were trained to replace them.

In December, the Taliban did issue a decree that women could refuse marriage and inherit property, but otherwise nearly all their new measures have been repressive. As a result, the presence of women in Afghan society has been drastically curtailed, and in areas such as political life it is now zero.

The Commission on Human Rights was terminated. A May 7 decree forced women to cover their face in public, with threat of serious penalties.

Another on May 19 banned women from appearing in television plays and movies. Women journalists are required to cover their whole bodies, heads, and faces while reporting.

Deprived of women’s skills
There is no woman in the leadership and administration of the Taliban. None of the female judges, military officers, and women employees in the previous government have been allowed to return to their jobs.

Although a small number of women are allowed to work in the health, education, and journalism sectors, they cannot be effective or free to pursue their ambitions because of the severe restrictions imposed by the Taliban. This also affects aspirations; why should women even seek education if virtually no professional opportunities are available to them?

Although even male members of the mujahedeen have complained about the lack of opportunity for their women, the Taliban so far have privileged the most traditionalist elements of their base—even if they sometimes come up with excuses designed to hold out hope that they will change course later, like blaming the closure of girls’ schools on a supposed lack of female teachers.

The suffering from this is experienced not just at the individual and family level, but also by society as a whole, which is deprived of the skills of half its people.

Ironically, the Taliban also suffers, since it will never be accepted as a legitimate part of the international community if it denies basic rights and opportunities in education, employment, speech, and participation that are almost now universally regarded as fundamental rights of all mankind, including in most of the Islamic world.

It is hard to be optimistic about the future. But at the very least, foreign governments, the United Nations, and civil society organisations should continue to encourage Afghan women in any way possible and deny the Taliban government recognition and support beyond humanitarian assistance so long as it continues its brutal repression of women.

Dr Zakia Adeli was the Deputy Minister of Justice and a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Kabul University before she was forced to leave the country following the Taliban takeover last August.

Part 1 of a two-part series on the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover. Read part 2 tomorrow: The Taliban’s return has robbed Afghanistan’s women and girls of their future

A year after the fall of Kabul and the end of the US military mission in Afghanistan, the country remains a place of misery.

No foreign government has recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government, and much of the modern economy has collapsed. The new rulers have not kept earlier promises, including high-school level education for girls and an amnesty for former Afghan government soldiers and civil servants.

Following a survey earlier this year, the United Nations pointed to many outrageous deficiencies in internationally recognised human rights. Moreover, the July 31 drone killing of 9-11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri in a safe house in central Kabul showed that key elements of the Taliban leadership still harbour international terrorists, the original cause of the US intervention 21 years ago.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Afghanistan since the Taliban takover

Fragile rule
Afghanistan seems trapped in a vicious circle, and the 38 million people living in the country are the frontline victims of a profound and still deepening tragedy. Without human rights, the Taliban regime will not enjoy UN membership, widespread diplomatic recognition, robust international humanitarian assistance or a broader base of legitimacy.

Without outside support, which financially accounted for 40 to 50 percent of the Afghan GNP prior to the Taliban takeover, Taliban rule remains fragile.

The one positive element in this bleak picture is that military violence has lessened. Despite some resistance from the competing Islamic State Khorasan terrorist group, or ISIS-K, and various other factions, Taliban rule appears unchallenged in the short term.

But in the longer term, the inflexibility and fragility of the Taliban authorities raise fundamental questions about whether their victory a year ago was just another phase in a longer civil war.

In some rural areas of the south long under Taliban control, life goes on much as before. But the loss of jobs in the more modern urban sectors and the scarcity of food has forced many Afghans back into an almost primitive economy, selling household possessions and sometimes even children to survive.

The world cannot simply wash its hands of this situation. There are three overriding US and NATO interests; ensuring that Afghanistan does not again becomes a haven and training ground for international terrorists; easing the world’s largest humanitarian/human rights crisis; and assisting endangered Afghans eligible for emigration.

Honoring US commitments
The al-Zawahiri case demonstrated the need for a strong reminder to the Taliban of their obligation not to harbour terrorists. However, this goes beyond monitoring known terror groups and must include steps to prevent the rise of a new generation of extremists. There are reports and video evidence of madrassa religious schools being established all over Afghanistan, primarily by Pakistani extremist groups.

This must be a high priority in any international discussions with the Taliban.

On the humanitarian and human rights fronts, in the wake of the al-Zawahiri case the US initially terminated talks with the Taliban over a possible release of former Afghan government financial reserves for humanitarian assistance. But recently American officials decided to go ahead with the talks after all, in light of fears over a looming hunger crisis in the coming winter months.

Other humanitarian assistance is needed, but must be administered through established international humanitarian groups, not the Taliban itself. Moreover, the world needs to remain united in not recognising the Taliban until they extend fundamental, universally-recognised human rights to all citizens, including female ones.

A year on from the fall of Kabul, Australian reporter Lynne O’Donnell returned to Afghanistan — and now says she’ll never go back.

O’Donnell returned for three days last month, only to be detained, forced to retract articles, and coerced into making a public apology for accusing the Taliban of sex slavery.

During this harrowing time, she was in close contact with Massoud Hossain, a Kabul-born photojournalist.

• READ MORE: Lynne O’Donnell: Taliban detained, abused and threatened me
• Afghanistan, the Taliban and the liberation narrative: Why it is so vital to be telling our own stories — Pacific Journalism Review
• LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNINGS: Lynne O’Donnell and Massoud Hossain describe their ordeal
• See a gallery of Massoud Hossain’s images

The pair have worked together in Afghanistan for years, and both are on a Taliban death list.

Hossain is currently based in New Zealand, where he has been given asylum.

O’Donnell is a Foreign Policy columnist and was Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) between 2009-2017.

Hossaini is a Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist who joined AFP in 2007. In 2021 he won the William Randolph Hearst Award for Excellence in Professional Journalism.

They talk to RNZ broadcaster Kim Hill on their experiences and how they see the future for Afghanistan.

O’Donnell’s introduction to her Foreign Policy report on July 20:

“I returned to Afghanistan this week, almost one year after the withdrawal of the US military cleared the way for the Taliban’s victory. I wanted to see for myself what had become of the country since I flew out of Kabul on August 15, 2021, hours before the Islamists began what many residents now refer to as a ‘reign of terror’…

“I left Afghanistan today after three days of cat-and-mouse with Taliban intelligence agents, who detained, abused, and threatened me and forced me to issue a barely literate retraction of reports they said had broken their laws and offended Afghan culture. If I did not, they said, they’d send me to jail.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Former Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says his apology to journalist Charlotte Bellis does not extend to the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s MIQ system generally.

Bellis, a New Zealand journalist based in Afghanistan at the time, had gone public in January with her struggle to secure a spot in the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) hotels while pregnant.

Hipkins publicly apologised to her in a statement this morning, admitting her MIQ application was deactivated in error and some of his comments about her case had been wrong.

• READ MORE:  Chris Hipkins apologises to Charlotte Bellis for comments on MIQ application
• Other MIQ reports

He later told reporters there was no settlement payment involved, and both parties wanted to leave the matter behind them.

“We’ve concluded the matter. I’ve conveyed to her privately and now publicly my apology and she’s indicated she wants to leave it at that — and I’m happy to do that too,” he said.

“Right at the beginning, clearly there were a few things that got lost in communication, lost in translation. I do regret that and so my apology in that sense is a very genuine one.”

Hipkins was removed from the covid-19 portfolio just over a week ago, taking over police instead, with Dr Ayesha Verrall taking over the pandemic response.

Timing of the apology
He said the timing of his apology to Bellis had been agreed with her.

“She indicated that’s the timing that she wanted,” he said. “Obviously it would have ideally been better to have had this done before I gave up the covid portfolio rather than the week after, but ultimately MIQ’s been winding down now since February so I think everybody’s moved on from it.

“She indicated that she wanted something more public. I was happy to do that, it took a little bit of time to negotiate that and to get all of that ironed out.”

The National and ACT parties urged the government to also apologise over the handling of MIQ generally.

National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop said if Hipkins could apologise to Bellis, “then the government can surely apologise to all the Kiwis caught up in the lottery of human misery that was MIQ”.

“The High Court has found that MIQ unjustifiably breached New Zealanders’ rights from September to December 2021. The government should do the right thing and apologise for the way MIQ operated,” he said.

“There are countless other examples that haven’t hit the headlines. Other pregnant women who couldn’t return home. Kiwis trapped offshore who watched their visas expire in the countries they were in. People who missed the deaths of cherished loved ones and the birth of new lives.”

‘Caught out spinning’
ACT leader David Seymour said the government was not apologising for the misery its policy caused, just getting caught out spinning it.

“The government has rightly apologised for spreading misinformation about a citizen’s personal circumstances, now it should apologise for running MIQ selection so inhumanely and running it four months longer than necessary at enormous cost to the taxpayer and economy,” he said.

He said then Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield had advised MIQ was no longer necessary in December last year, and the government should be apologising for the $178 million it cost to maintain through to March.

“Included in that period was Charlotte Bellis’ repeated failed attempts to get a spot, forcing her to seek refuge with the Taliban,” he said.

Hipkins said they were very different matters.

“In this particular case there were some aspects of the information that I released that were incorrect and so I absolutely have acknowledged that and have apologised for that. In terms of MIQ I will maintain — and the courts in fact have maintained — MIQ was absolutely justified,” he said.

“What the court did find … the way we allocated space in MIQ wasn’t right. We tried a number of different things during that time to try different booking systems, to try and make that system fairer.”

Not contesting court ruling
He said he acknowledged the court’s ruling and was not contesting it, but repeated that the system as a whole was justified.

“Were MIQ ever to have to happen again in the future then those responsible for it would have to find a different way of allocating space within MIQ — but MIQ itself was absolutely justified.

“It’s the reason that we were able to go as long as we did without having covid-19 in the community.

“It’s also the reason why over the summer break, people managed to have a summer break and were able to have that opportunity to get their boosters before omicron arrived in the community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Australia must step up diplomatic efforts to encourage the US government to drop its bid to extradite Julian Assange who has now been imprisoned for three years, says the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

Today marks the third anniversary of Assange’s arrest when he was dragged from the Ecuador Embassy in London on 11 April 2019 to face extradition proceedings for espionage charges laid by the US.

The WikiLeaks founder and publisher has been held at Belmarsh Prison near London ever since, where his mental and physical health has deteriorated significantly.

• READ MORE:  Walkley Awards decide Julian Assange is a journalist
• Other Julian Assange reports

On this day, the MEAA calls on the Biden administration to drop the charges against Assange, which pose a threat to press freedom worldwide. The scope of the US charges imperils any journalist anywhere who writes about the US government.

MEAA media federal president Karen Percy urged the Australian government to use its close ties to both the US and the UK to end the court proceedings against him and have the charges dropped to allow Assange to return home to Australia, if that is his wish.

Assange won his initial extradition hearing in January last year, but subsequent appeals by the US government have dragged out his detention at Belmarsh.

“Julian Assange’s work with WikiLeaks was important and in the public interest: exposing evidence of war crimes and other shameful actions by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Percy said.

Assange charges an ‘affront to journalists’
“The stories published by WikiLeaks and its mainstream media partners more than a decade ago were picked up by news outlets around the world.

“The charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom.”

The US government has not produced convincing evidence that the publishing of the leaked material endangered any lives or jeopardised military operations, but their lasting impact has been to embarrass and shame the United States.

“Yet Assange faces the prospect of jail for the rest of his life if convicted of espionage charges laid by the US Department of Justice,” Percy said.

“The case against Assange is intended to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and frighten off any future whistleblowers and publishers with the message that they too will be punished if they step out of line.

“The US Government must see reason and drop these charges, and the Australian Government should be doing all it can to represent the interests of an Australian citizen.”

Assange has been a member of the MEAA since 2009 and in 2011 the WikiLeaks organisation was awarded the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism.

Afghan women are accusing the Taliban of using a pregnant New Zealand journalist as a publicity tool to show the world they can offer women rights.

Charlotte Bellis wrote an open letter on Sunday saying she had been rejected by New Zealand’s strict hotel quarantine system and was living in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had offered her “safe haven”.

Bellis was working in Qatar, where extramarital sex is illegal, when she discovered she was pregnant with her partner and realised she had to leave.

• READ MORE: ‘A betrayal’: Coverage of pregnant reporter ‘helped by Taliban’ is called out
• Pregnant NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis offered a place in MIQ
• Charlotte Bellis talks to Fox News about the pregnancy and the Taliban
• I’m appalled at the way the Charlotte Bellis situation has played out – John MacDonald
• How long will the stench of MIQ hang over NZ? Foreign media seized on Charlotte Bellis saga, but harm to NZ’s reputation will fade – Damien Venuto
• Muzhgan Samarqandi: MIQ debate trivialises the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan
• The Reporter Without Borders: In a war zone and a pandemic, who gets to pull strings? – Rafia Zakaria
• Charlotte Bellis’ open letter on MIQ to New Zealand – New Zealand Herald

When she was unable to go home to New Zealand, she briefly moved to her partner’s native Belgium, but could not stay long because she was not a resident.

She said the only other place the couple had visas to live was Afghanistan.

“When the Taliban offers you – a pregnant, unmarried woman – safe haven, you know your situation is messed up,” she wrote.

It made international headlines, but the news prompted scepticism in online groups of Afghan women, Kabul resident Sodaba Noorai said.

‘Surprised’ by Taliban comments
Noorai said Afghan women “were surprised” when they heard the news that senior Taliban contacts had told the journalist she would be fine if she returned to Afghanistan.

The Fox News interview on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the New Zealand government offered Bellis a place in managed isolation and quarantine, four days after her article was published and a spate of media reports followed.

“[Afghan women] were surprised the Taliban can treat women in a good manner and know how to respect them,” Noorai said.

“The Taliban is trying to convey the message that they know about human rights, especially women’s rights.

“But in reality their treatment of Afghan women is different to their support and respect for this New Zealand woman.”

Noorai said pregnant Afghan women had been killed by the Taliban for not being married.

Witnesses claim pregnant former Afghan policewoman Banu Negar was shot dead by Taliban militants in September, but the regime has denied the incident.

‘Double standard’ over white, Western woman
“This is a double standard where they treat a white, Western woman in a way to show the world that they are behaving like a civilised government,” Pittsburgh University Afghan researcher Dr Omar Sadr said.

“But with respect to the people of Afghanistan and the women of Afghanistan, the Taliban behave totally differently.

“At the moment, Afghan women are degraded as second-class citizens, deprived of fundamental human rights where their protesting is brutally suppressed.

“They are killed, tortured, and in some cases even raped.”

It has been almost six months since the militant group took over Afghanistan, and its treatment of women has become a central point of concern for the international community.

Women live in fear under Taliban rule
Women say they live in fear, while others have been killed after protesting against the country’s new rulers.

Afghan activist Rahimi, whose last name has been withheld for security reasons, said she had gone into hiding with her sisters because she was worried she would be arrested and tortured by the Taliban for attending protests over human rights.

“I no longer have a job so I’m in a bad economic situation, I attended many demonstrations for achieving our rights and my life is in danger by the Taliban,” she said.

“We’re afraid of their violence, their rape, their killing and murder, so we’re scared in our house.

“I have a request for the international community — don’t ignore the actions of the Taliban because of this case of this New Zealand journalist.”

Taliban negotiators travelled to Oslo, Norway last week, the regime’s first official overseas delegation since returning to power in August.

Humanitarian aid offered
US and European diplomats reportedly offered humanitarian aid in exchange for an improvement in human rights.

The Taliban is calling for almost $10 billion in assets frozen by the US and other Western countries to be released, as more than half of Afghans are now facing extreme levels of hunger.

“It is fundamental that we hold the Taliban accountable by their policies and actions on the ground rather than what they do in exceptional cases like Charlotte’s,” Dr Sadr said.

But women like Noorai have urged the international community to stand firm until all women in Afghanistan, not just foreigners, are given basic rights.

“Our message is to not recognise the Taliban until they really change themselves and treat us properly.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis says her re-activated emergency MIQ application has been approved, and she will return to New Zealand in March.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said yesterday afternoon that Bellis had been offered an MIQ spot.

The government has been defending its border controls after Bellis said she had to turn to the Taliban for help after not being able to fly home.

• READ MORE: Muzhgan Samarqandi: MIQ debate trivialises the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan
• Covid-19: NZ’s MIQ working but has tough trade-offs, says epidemiologist
• Charlotte Bellis’ open letter on MIQ to New Zealand – New Zealand Herald
• Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ – Pacific Journalism Review

Having been declined an emergency spot in MIQ, Bellis was assured by senior Taliban officials she would be safe in Afghanistan, where she and her partner have visas.

Bellis said her MIQ application had been met with “technicalities and confusion” and she had been asked to apply under a different category.

In a statement she shared on Twitter, Bellis said her and her photographer partner Jim Huylebroek were “excited” to return home and be surrounded by family and friends “at such a special time”. They are having a girl.

“We want to thank New Zealanders for their overwhelming support. It has been stressful and your kind words and encouragement helped Jim and I immensely. We are disappointed it had to come to this.”

Location risk factor
Bellis said the approval was not granted based on medical needs, but instead on the risk factor of their location — Afghanistan.

“I will continue to challenge the New Zealand government to find a solution to border controls to keep New Zealanders at home and abroad safe and their rights respected.”

Please find attached my response regarding Emergency MIQ Allocation. pic.twitter.com/mQ1R8W8eOd

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) February 1, 2022

Bellis’ plight has attracted media coverage in many countries.

At a post-cabinet media briefing yesterday afternoon, Robertson urged her to take up the place in MIQ made available for her.

He said her case did not mean people would get preferential treatment if they were overseas and made a fuss.

Robertson said Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) staff dealing with emergency applications were handling difficult and challenging cases on a daily bases.

He added Bellis and her lawyer were considering legal action against the government so he would not comment further.

Medical treatment pathway
Bellis told RNZ Morning Report yesterday that she had signed up for an MIQ spot via the medical treatment pathway because it was the correct one and what pregnant women were told to apply under.

She said she had been asked to re-apply under a different category, which was for New Zealanders in a location or a situation where there was a serious risk to their safety.

Bellis and her partner submitted 59 documents in their application to gain an emergency MIQ spot, she said.

“As a New Zealand citizen, I have a legal right to return and I will do whatever the government wants in terms of quarantine or whatever, we’re boosted.”

Bellis said the government needed to explain “the ethics around that and how they’re prioritising, particularly, foreign citizens over their own who are in dangerous situations”.

She said if people tested negative and had the booster dose, then the government needed to revise its policy to allow them entry.

In a statement, head of MIQ Chris Bunny said Bellis had applied for an emergency allocation MIQ voucher on January 24, but the MIQ date requested did not meet the emergency criteria. Travel had to be time-critical and urgent, within the next 14 days.

Birth not a ‘scheduled event’
Bellis said the government failed to recognise that birth was not a “scheduled event”.

Shortly after her application, the team managing emergency applications contacted Bellis to provide her with additional information should she choose to change her flights, the statement said.

RNZ has also highlighted the case of a New Zealander in Australia who was forced to care for her premature baby in hospital alone after her multiple attempts at securing an emergency MIQ room were rejected.

Cabinet had discussions yesterday about reopening New Zealand’s border and the Prime Minister would speak about that tomorrow, Robertson said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

My name is Muzhgan Samarqandi and I am from Baghlan, Afghanistan, but living in New Zealand with my Kiwi husband and our son. Like Charlotte Bellis, I too was a broadcaster in Afghanistan, back when this was possible for a woman without being a foreigner.

As a mother, my heart goes out to Charlotte, and I sincerely hope she and her partner get to New Zealand so she can give birth at home surrounded by her family.

As someone who has travelled for study and work and love, and who does not share the same passport as their significant other, my heart goes out to everyone stranded overseas, and I sincerely hope they can all get home and be reunited with their loved ones.

• LISTEN TO RNZ SUNDAY MORNING: ‘I mean, how do you schedule your birth?’ – New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis
• READ MORE:  Covid-19: NZ’s MIQ working but has tough trade-offs, says epidemiologist
• Charlotte Bellis: ‘I’m one of your people and I need help’
• Charlotte Bellis’ open letter on MIQ to New Zealand – New Zealand Herald
• Pregnant New Zealand journalist stranded by quarantine rules says she turned to Taliban
• Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ – Pacific Journalism Review

But as an Afghanistani woman, who has only recently emigrated from Afghanistan to New Zealand, I have to speak up.

I almost did so when Charlotte interviewed Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Taliban spokesperson with the Kiwi accent. She went easy on him. For example, at the end of the interview, she asked what he had to say to those who called the Taliban “terrorists”.

He said people didn’t really believe they were terrorists, but this was just a word the US used for anyone who didn’t fall in line with their agenda. There were no further questions.

This was a man who claimed responsibility on behalf of the Taliban for attacks on innocent civilians. A man who has admitted to crimes against humanity. It made me so upset to see him get away with answers like that. But then my energy was taken up just coping with the reality of what was happening to my friends and family in Afghanistan.

Social media responses
But now, when I read Charlotte’s letter in the New Zealand Herald and see the media and social media responses, I see the situation in my country being trivialised, and it makes me angry.

Charlotte refers to herself asking the Taliban in a press conference what they would do for women and girls, and says she is now asking the same question of the New Zealand government.

I understand there are problems with MIQ. And I understand the value in provoking change with controversy. But what I don’t understand is how someone who has lived and worked in Afghanistan, and seen the impact of the Taliban’s regime on women and girls, can seriously compare that situation to New Zealand.

Afghanistani women who resist or protest the regime are being arrested, tortured, raped and killed. Young girls are being married off to Talibs (a member of the Taliban). Education and employment are no longer available to them.

A 19-year-old girl I know from my village, who was in her first year of law last year is now, instead, a housewife to a Talib.

There are so many stories like this.

The Taliban distort Islam
Charlotte says the Taliban have given her a safe haven when she is not welcome in her own country. This is obviously a good headline and good way to make a point. But it is an inaccurate and unhelpful representation of the situation.

One commentary on Instagram, re-posted by Charlotte, suggested her story represents the truly Muslim acts of the Taliban, which the Western media have not shown. This makes me angry.

If a person in power extends privileges to someone who doesn’t threaten their power, it doesn’t mean they are not oppressive or extremist or dangerous.

The Taliban distort Islam and manipulate Muslims for their political gain. They violate the rights of women and girls, and it is offensive to compare them to the New Zealand government in this regard.

New Zealand is no paradise, I have experienced my fair share of racism here, and I am sure the MIQ situation can be improved.

But relying on the protection of a regime that is violently oppressive, and then using that to try to shame the New Zealand government into action, is not the way to achieve that improvement.

It exploits and trivialises the situation in Afghanistan, at a time when the rights of Afghanistani women and girls desperately need to be taken seriously.

Muzhgan Samarqandi works for an international aid agency in New Zealand. Her article was first published on the TV One News website and is republished here with the author’s permission.

A leading epidemiologist says New Zealand’s managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) is serving its purpose.

The system has come under increasing criticism recently as people struggle to return to New Zealand through the MIQ lottery or on emergency grounds.

Professor Michael Baker of the University of Otago said that while MIQ had done its job, it had come with some tough trade-offs.

• LISTEN TO RNZ SUNDAY MORNING: ‘I mean, how do you schedule your birth?’ – New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis
• READ MORE: Charlotte Bellis: ‘I’m one of your people and I need help’
• Charlotte Bellis’ open letter on MIQ to New Zealand – New Zealand Herald
• Pregnant New Zealand journalist stranded by quarantine rules says she turned to Taliban
• Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ – Pacific Journalism Review

New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis this week revealed she was one of those who had been unable to secure an emergency MIQ space.

Bellis, who previously worked for Al Jazeera in Qatar, is pregnant and unable to stay in Doha, because it is illegal for unmarried women there to be pregnant.

After failing to gain an MIQ spot, she was granted permission by senior Taliban officials in Afghanistan, where she had previously reported from, to instead go there.

Border restrictions key to low mortality
Professor Baker said that while he did not have any involvement or expertise in the emergency MIQ system, Bellis’ case would seem to justify her being a high priority.

“I think this is the really hard aspect of managing our borders tightly and limiting the numbers of people coming into New Zealand to a few thousand a week.”

Bellis said other countries were now offering their support but she felt let down by the system.

“I think they [MIQ] have such a narrowly-defined set of categories that there’s really no pathway if you’re pregnant because you’d have to have a time-critical, scheduled treatment,” she told RNZ’s Sunday Morning today.

Professor Baker said border restrictions had put a huge personal strain on many New Zealanders but they had also been a key part of the country’s covid-19 strategy and had helped to keep the mortality rate low.

• New Zealand has had 52 deaths for a population of 5 million since the pandemic began two years ago. There have been 5.6 million deaths from covid-19 worldwide.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

RNZ News

In just a few weeks the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply as millions cope without desperately needed international aid, New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis says.

Bellis is Al Jazeera’s senior producer in Afghanistan and reported on the turmoil in August as the Taliban took over the government and thousands of people tried to flee.

She has dealt with Taliban leaders for a long time, and has sensed a change in their attitudes since they first ruled the country before being toppled 20 years ago.

• LISTEN: ‘I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated’ – NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis in Afghanistan (Duration 10′:12″)
• READ MORE: Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ — Pacific Journalism Review

She had to leave the country in mid-September because the network feared for her safety and Bellis noted on Twitter that the Taliban were detaining and beating journalists trying to cover protests.

Now she has returned and told RNZ Sunday Morning that she was not worried about her safety.

“The situation here is pretty dire and there are a lot of stories still to be told and I feel invested in what’s happening here and I also just love the country. It’s a beautiful place to be with amazing people and I genuinely like being here.”

However, the country is facing an uncertain future with its population suffering more than ever now that international aid has been cut off.

UN warns of humanitarian crisis
This week the United Nations warned that Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and Bellis agrees.

“The Taliban took over about two months ago and I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated.

“People cannot find food, there’s no money, they can’t pay for things, employers can’t pay their workers because there’s no cash, they can’t get money out even from the ATMs.”

Millions of jobs have disappeared, half of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from and already children are dying from malnutrition, Bellis said.

All the aid agencies are appealing to the world to listen.

23 million need urgent help
She is about to go out with the UN Refugee Agency whose teams are organising some aid distribution as the temperatures drop to 2 degC overnight as winter approaches. They are handing out blankets, food and some cash to thousands of the needy in camps in Kabul.

“But it’s such a Band-Aid. There is no way they can reach the number of people they need to reach — it’s  like 23 million people who need that kind of assistance,” she said.

Neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran were very concerned, in part because they fear a huge influx of refugees. They have closed the borders to try and keep them away.

The process of getting money and food into people’s hands had broken down, she said, with a lot of it due to United States sanctions.

Three quarters of the country ran on foreign donations before the Taliban took over and that has dried up because no countries are recognising the Taliban’s legitimacy to govern.

Bellis has spoken to one senior Taliban official who said that at recent meetings between the Taliban and the US in Doha the Americans would not tell the Taliban what policies they needed to enact to unfreeze billions of dollars in funding.

“They [the Americans] are playing with millions of people’s lives.”

School problem for girls
She believes some Taliban leaders are pragmatic and would be willing to agree to high school girls being educated but are worried they will alienate their conservative base.

In the main, primary school age girls are able to attend their lessons but the problem is at secondary school level.

“If you’re a high school girl in Kabul it’s awful – sitting around thinking how did this happen. It’s really frustrating and really frustrating for everyone to watch and say this doesn’t make sense.”

Bellis said while she feels safe at the moment, the main problem is the terrorist group, ISIS-K, who have made threats against the hotel where she is staying.

The Taliban have said they will protect guests and have placed dozens of extra guards outside.

ISIS-K is believed to only number between 1200 and 1500 yet they are a potent force with their random attacks, such as beheading members of the Taliban, whom they hate.

She believes the Taliban’s biggest worry is that ISIS will appeal to its most fundamentalist members.

ISIS attracting recruits
ISIS is also believed to be trying to attract recruits who would be trained as fighters and be paid $400 a month which is a substantial amount of money in Afghanistan.

Bellis said she feels guilty staying at a hotel with the scale of poverty and deprivation she is witnessing.

“Right outside the door people are desperate,” she said.

She visited a major maternity hospital in Kabul yesterday and the only medication available for women giving birth was paracetamol.

“Imagine going into labour and thinking, OK if anything goes wrong I’ve got paracetamol. It’s just life and death on so many levels.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

For those of you wondering what you can do to help Afghans.. this @WFP project is the gold standard.
You donate meals direct to Afghans – choosing a set number of meals or month at a time. https://t.co/qgmuaTdpfo

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) October 26, 2021

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is very disturbed by the “11 journalism rules” that the Taliban announced at a meeting with news media on September 19.

The rules that Afghan journalists will now have to implement are vaguely worded, dangerous and liable to be used to persecute them, the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog said.

Working as a journalist will now mean complying strictly with the 11 rules unveiled by Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Centre (GMIC).

• READ MORE: Other Afghanistan media freedom reports

At first blush, some of them might seem reasonable, as they include an obligation to respect “the truth” and not “distort the content of the information”, said RSF.

But in reality they were “extremely dangerous” because they opened the way to censorship and persecution.

“Decreed without any consultation with journalists, these new rules are spine-chilling because of the coercive use that can be made of them, and they bode ill for the future of journalistic independence and pluralism in Afghanistan,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“They establish a regulatory framework based on principles and methods that contradict the practice of journalism and leave room for oppressive interpretation, instead of providing a protective framework allowing journalists — including women — to go back to work in acceptable conditions.

‘Tyranny and persecution’
“These rules open the way to tyranny and persecution.”

The first three rules, which forbid journalists to broadcast or publish stories that are “contrary to Islam,” “insult national figures” or violate “privacy,” are loosely based on Afghanistan’s existing national media law, which also incorporated a requirement to comply with international norms, including Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The absence of this requirement in the new rules opens the door to censorship and repression, because there is no indication as to who determines, or on what basis it is determined, that a comment or a report is contrary to Islam or disrespectful to a national figure.

Three of the rules tell journalists to conform to what are understood to be ethical principles:

• They must “not try to distort news content”;
• They must “respect journalistic principles”; and
• They “must ensure that their reporting is balanced”.

But the absence of reference to recognised international norms means that these rules can also be misused or interpreted arbitrarily.

Rules 7 and 8 facilitate a return to news control or even prior censorship, which has not existed in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.

‘Handled carefully’
They state that, “matters that have not been confirmed by officials at the time of broadcasting or publication should be treated with care” and that “matters that could have a negative impact on the public’s attitude or affect morale should be handled carefully when being broadcast or published”.

The danger of a return to news control or prior censorship is enhanced by the last two rules (10 and 11), which reveal that the GMIC has “designed a specific form to make it easier for media outlets and journalists to prepare their reports in accordance with the regulations,” and that from now on, media outlets must “prepare detailed reports in coordination with the GMIC”.

The nature of these “detailed reports” has yet to be revealed.

The ninth rule, requiring media outlets to “adhere to the principle of neutrality in what they disseminate” and “only publish the truth,” could be open to a wide range of interpretations and further exposes journalists to arbitrary reprisals.

Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index that RSF published in April.

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks prompted the US to invade Afghanistan, the Taliban announced they have taken the whole country again last week.

Journalists who remain there are at risk in spite of assurances media freedom will be respected.

Will proper journalism be possible under the Taliban? We ask a former foreign correspondent there who was once jailed by another repressive regime.

Anyone filling their lockdown downtime binge-watching the final series of US spy show Homeland might have found its fictionalised account of the US trying to get out of Afghanistan in a hurry pretty prescient.

“It’ll be Saigon all over again,” the gravelly-voiced Afghan president says as he warns the US that making peace with the Taliban will end in tears.

When the US troops left this month, it was indeed a case of “choppers at the embassy compound” once more.

And after that, getting other people out who feared the Taliban became a story all of its own.

RNZAF and NZDF forces dispatched to get out New Zealand citizens and visa holders provided the media with dramatic stories of improvised rescues.

One  exclusive in the New Zealand Herald described a grandmother in a wheelchair hauled out from the crowd via a sewage filled ditch, illustrated with NZDF images and footage.

But while the government said it got about 390 people out of the country, Scoop’s Gordon Campbell pointed out authorities here have not said how many were already New Zealand citizens — or Afghan citizens or contractors whose service put them and their family members in danger.

Afghan translator Bashir Ahmad — who worked for the NZDF in Bamiyan province and came to New Zealand subsequently — told RNZ’s Morning Report he knew of 36 more people still stuck there.

Sticking around

The end of 20 years of US occupation was witnessed by BBC’s veteran correspondent Lyse Doucet. She was also there in 1989 reporting for Canada’s CBC when the Soviet Union’s forces pulled out after its occupation that lasted almost a decade.

Back then she pondered how she would work when power changed hands to the Mujaheddin. Thirty-two years on, herself and others in Afghanistan — including New Zealander Charlotte Bellis who reports from Kabul for global channel Al Jazeera — are also wondering what the Taliban has in store for them.

The last time the Taliban were in charge — 1996 to 2001 — the media were heavily controlled and independent journalism was almost impossible.

Local and international media have flourished in Afghanistan after the US ousted the Taliban 20 years ago – but now their future is far from clear.

The Taliban have offered reassurances it will respect press freedoms. On August 21 they announced a committee including journalists would be created to “address the problems of the media in Kabul.”

But some have already reported harassment and confiscation of equipment. Five journalists from Etilaatroz, a daily newspaper in Kabul, were arrested and beaten by Taliban, the editor-in-chief said on Wednesday.

The #Taliban has arrested and badly beaten two journalists from @Etilaatroz . They journalists were covering demonstration in #Kabul. #Taliban_has_not_changed pic.twitter.com/gGZgWeXSFa

— Abdul Farid Ahmad (@FaridAhmad1919) September 8, 2021

Other local journalists got out while they could.

The day before the suicide attack outside Kabul airport the BBC’s Lyse Doucet found pioneering journalist Wahida Faizi — head of the women’s section of the Afghanistan Journalists Safety Committee — on the tarmac trying to get out. (Faizi has reportedly reached Denmark safely since then through the assistance of Copenhagen-based group  International Media Support.)

In the meantime, the Taliban have been getting to know reporters who are still there.

Charlotte Bellis told RNZ’s Sunday Morning she was sticking around to cover what happens next in Afghanistan and build relationships  with the Taliban — and even give them advice.

“I told them … if you’re going to run the country you need to build trust and you need to be transparent and authentic – and do as much media as you can to try and reassure people that they don’t need to be scared of you,” she said.

It helps that Al Jazeera is based in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office.

Earlier this month, the Taliban’s slick spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi told Charlotte Bellis they were grateful for New Zealand offering financial aid to Afghanistan.

But that money is for the UN agencies and the Red Cross and Red Crescent operations — and not an endorsement of the Taliban takeover.

That prompted the former chief of the UN Development Programme – Helen Clark – to call in to Newstalk ZB to say the media had been spun.

“They’ve cottoned on to the fact they can use social media for propaganda,” she told Newstalk ZB.

“When journalists run these stories it implies that governments are supporting the Taliban when nothing could be further from the truth,” Clark said.

How should the media deal with an outfit which turfed the recognised government out of power — and whose real intentions are not yet known?

The Taliban’s governing cabinet named last week has several hardliners — and no women.

Will reporters really be able to report under the Taliban from now on?

Peter Greste was the BBC’s correspondent in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s when the Taliban was poised to take over the first time — and he is now the UNESCO chair in journalism at the University of Queensland.

“We need to make it abundantly clear to the Taliban that they need to stick to their promises to protect journalists and media workers — and let them continue to work. The Taliban‘s words and actions don’t always align but at the very least we need to start with that,” Greste said.

“And we need to give refuge and visas to media workers who want to get out,” he said.

“Watching the way they treat journalists is going to be an important barometer of the way they plan to operate,” said Greste, who is working with the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom to monitor abuses and to create an online “Afghan media freedom tracker”.

“There’s been an obvious gap between the spokespeople who say they are prepared to let journalists operate and women continue to work — and the troubling reports of attacks by Taliban fighters on the ground, going door-to-door looking for journalists and their families,” he said.

“We need to maintain communications with them. We need to use all the tools we can to make sure we are across where all the people are. Afghanistan’s borders are like Swiss cheese. It’s not always easy to get across — but it is possible,” he said.

Peter Greste said the translators and fixers the international journalists rely on are absolutely critical to international media.

“Good translators don’t just translate the words– but help you understand the context. To simply give refuge just to the people who have their faces in their stories and names on bylines is not fair,” Greste said.

Greste was jailed for months in Egypt on trumped-up charges in 2014 along with local colleagues when the regime there decided it didn’t like their reporting for Al Jazeera.

It triggered a remarkable campaign in which rival media outlets banded together to demand their release under the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”.

Does he fear for journalists if the Taliban resort to old ways of handling the media?

Will we even know if they make life impossible for media and journalists outside the capital in the future?

“The country has mobile phone networks now it has social media networks. It is possible to find out what’s going on in those regions and it’s going to be difficult for the Taliban to uphold that mirage – if that’s what it is,” he said.

“I’m not prepared at this point to write them off as an workable and we need to acknowledge the realities of what just happened in Afghanistan,” he said.

When Greste first arrived in Afghanistan for the BBC in 1994 there was no reliable electricity supply even in the capital city — let alone local television like TOLO news.

“One of the great successes of the last decade or two has been the flowering of local media. Western organisations and donors and Afghans have understood that having a free media is one of the most important aspects of having a functioning society,” he said.

Afghans have really taken to that with real enthusiasm. The number of outlets and journalists has been phenomenal. You can’t put that genie back in his bottle without some serious consequences,” Greste told Mediawatch.

The regime in Egypt wasn’t afraid to imprison him and his colleagues back in 2014. Does he fear for international reporters like Charlotte Bellis and her colleagues?

“Al Jazeera will have a lot of security in place to make sure the operation is protected,” Greste said.

“But of course I worry for Charlotte — and also the staff at work with her. As a foreign correspondent though, I think you enjoy more protection than most other journos locally,” Greste said.

“If my name had been Mohammed and not Peter and if I’d been Egyptian and not Australian or a foreigner there wouldn’t have been anywhere near the kind of outrage and consequences for the government,” Greste said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

When I arrived at my office at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji on the morning of 12 September 2001 (9/11, NY Time), I was oblivious to reality.

I had dragged myself home to bed a few hours earlier at 2am as usual, after another long day working on our students’ Wansolwara Online website providing coverage of the Fiji general election.

One day after being sworn in as the country’s fifth real (elected) prime minister, it seemed that Laisenia Qarase was playing another dirty trick on Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour Party, which had earned the constitutional right to be included in the multi-party government supposed to lead the country back to democracy.

• READ MORE: 9/11 killed it, but 20 years on global justice movement is poised for revival
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Stepping into my office, I encountered a colleague. He looked wild-eyed and said: “It’s the end of the world.”

Naively, I replied, thinking of the 1987 military coups,  “Yes, how can legality and constitutionality be cast aside so blatantly yet again?”

“No, not Fiji politics,” he said. “That’s nothing. I mean New York. Terrorists have destroyed the financial heart of the Western world.”

It was a chilling moment, comparable to how I had felt as a 17-year-old forestry science trainee in a logging camp at Kaingaroa Forest the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated — 22 November 1963.

Wansolwara newsroom
Over the next few hours, it seemed that half the Laucala campus descended on our Wansolwara newsroom to watch the latest BBC, TVNZ one and Fiji TV One coverage of the shocking and devastating tragedy.

While a handful of student journalists struggled to provide coverage of local angles — such as the tightening of security around the US Embassy in Suva and shock among the Laucala intelligentsia — most students remained glued to the TV, stunned into immobility by the suicide jetliner terrorists.

Inevitably, global jingoism and xenophobia followed, the assaults on Sikhs merely because they an “Arab look”, the attacks on mosques — in Fiji copies of the Koran were burned — and the abuse directed towards Afghan refugees were par for the course.

Freedom of speech in the United States also quickly became a casualty of this new “war on terrorism”. Columnists were fired for their critical views, television host Bill Maher was denounced by the White House, Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau dropped his “featherweight Bush” cartoons and so-called “unpatriotic” songs were dropped from radio playlists. Wrote Maureen Dowd of The New York Times:

Even as the White House preaches tolerance toward Muslims and Sikhs, it is practising intolerance, signalling that anyone who challenges the leaders of embattled America is cynical, political and – isn’t this the subtext? – unpatriotic.

But while much of the West lined up as political parrots alongside the United States, ready to exact a terrible vengeance, contrasting perspectives were apparent in many developing nations.

In the Pacific, for example, while people empathised with the survivors of the terrible toll — 2977 people were killed (including the 125 at the Pentagon), 19 hijackers committed murder-suicide, and more than 6000 people injured — there was often a more critical view of the consequences of American foreign policy and a sense of dread about the future.

Twin Towers reflections
Less than a week after the Twin Towers tragedy, I asked my final-year students to compile some notes recalling the circumstances of when they heard the news of the four aircraft slamming into the World Trade Centre Twin Towers and the Pentagon (one plane was taken over by the passengers and it dived into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania) and their responses.

One, a mature age student from Fiji who had worked for several years as a radio journalist, said:

I was in bed and woke up about 2.30am. I have a habit of having the BBC running on radio and, half-asleep, I caught the news being broadcast. I pulled myself out of bed and tuned into BBC on Sky TV. The second plane had just hit the second tower, and I ended staying up the rest of the night to watch the unfolding events.

On his impressions, he warned about scapegoats and the media:

The relevance to us here in the Pacific is that terrorists can strike anywhere to get revenge. This conflict could evolve into war, and wars affect everyone. Americans already think Osama bin Laden is the terrorist. Where is the evidence? Americans are looking to get someone quickly, and the media is leading the way.

Another student wrote:

Good, they [US] paid dearly for trying to intervene in Muslim countries … Bin Laden is portrayed as the culprit even though it is not clear who did it. The media is portraying the whole Muslim world as responsible, but actually this is not the case.

A practical joke?
Recalled one:

I was sleeping and my mother woke me up at 6.30am to tell me the news. I was shocked and, still sleepy, I thought my mother was doing one of her practical jokes to get me out of bed … If there is World War Three, it will have a big impact on the Pacific.

America still has some form of control over various Pacific Island countries, and once again it will recruit Pacific Islanders. Pacific Islands are relatively weak and still trying to be developed. Another hiccup could send our economies to the dogs.

Yet another:

I was at home having breakfast, listening to the news on Bula 100FM. My first reaction was disbelief, horror … Ethically, there is a need to remember the people involved and the amount of bloodshed and death. It would be necessary to censor material that would be emotionally upsetting.

One student was

really surprised to see TVNZ instead of the usual Chinese CCTV. The sound was mute so I couldn’t really get what was being said. I was about to turn it off when they showed the South Tower of the World Trade Centre collapse. I thought it was a short piece from the movie Independence Day.

Sad, it may seem, but the first thing I thought about as a journalist was that reporters will have a field day … Phrases such as “historical day the world over” and “America under siege” popped up in my head as possible headlines.

I got out my notebook and began writing down the number of people estimated to have died, the extent of the damage, an excerpts from President Bush’s speech. Practically anything that involves the US also affects many people throughout the world.

Inevitably, some commentators began drawing parallels between the terrorism in New York in mid-September 2001 at one end of the continuum of hate and rogue businessman and George Speight’s brief terrorist rule in Fiji during mid-2000 at the other end.

Terrorism as a political tool
Politics associate professor Scott MacWilliam, for example, highlighted how terrorism becomes a political tool deployed by a nation state to support its foreign and domestic policy objectives. He pointed out that many of the fundamentalist groups which now carried out terrorism were “nurtured, trained, financed and incorporated” into the Western security apparatus.

One might ask what had this terrible urban graveyard created by fanaticism got to do with the South Pacific. In a sense, there is a disturbing relationship.

Politics in the region, especially at that time, was increasingly being determined by terrorism, particularly in Melanesia, and much of it by the state. And with this situation comes a greater demand on the region’s media and journalists, for more training and professionalism.

At the time of  the 9/11 tragedy, Dr David Robie was head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific. This article has been extracted from a keynote speech that he made at the inaugural conference of the Pacific Islands Media Association (PIMA), “Navigating the Future”, at Auckland University of Technology on 5-6 October 2001. The full address was published by Pacific Journalism Review, No. 8.

Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September  2001 — now known as 9/11 —  the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.

New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.

It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.

• READ MORE: ‘Fortress USA’: How 9/11 produced a military industrial juggernaut
• 9/11 should have led to a criminal investigation, not a war
• Other 9/11 reports

Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.

They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.

Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.

The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.

Poorest country debts
In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.

Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.

“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.

“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”

But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.

Targeted sanctions
“One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.

“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.

When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.

“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.

“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.

Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.

“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.

Palestinian refugee lessons
Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.

“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.

“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.

Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.

“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.

“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.

”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”

Social movements reviving
Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.

“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.

“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.

“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.

There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.

But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.

Asian social inequities
“Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.

“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”

Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.

“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.

“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.

Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.

Since the September 11 terror attacks, there has been no hiding from the increased militarisation of the United States. Everyday life is suffused with policing and surveillance.

This ranges from the inconvenient, such as removing shoes at the airport, to the dystopian, such as local police departments equipped with decommissioned tanks too big to use on regular roads.

This process of militarisation did not begin with 9/11. The American state has always relied on force combined with the de-personalisation of its victims.

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• Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars and years
• Police with lots of military gear kill civilians more often than less-militarised officers

The army, after all, dispossessed First Nations peoples of their land as settlers pushed westward. Expanding the American empire to places such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti also relied on force, based on racist justifications.

The military also ensured American supremacy in the wake of the Second World War. As historian Nikhil Pal Singh writes, about 8 million people were killed in US-led or sponsored wars from 1945–2019 — and this is a conservative estimate.

When Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and former military general, left the presidency in 1961, he famously warned against the growing “military-industrial complex” in the US. His warning went unheeded and the protracted conflict in Vietnam was the result.

The 9/11 attacks then intensified US militarisation, both at home and abroad. George W. Bush was elected in late 2000 after campaigning to reduce US foreign interventions.

The new president discovered, however, that by adopting the persona of a tough, pro-military leader, he could sweep away lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his election.

Waging war on Afghanistan within a month of the Twin Towers falling, Bush’s popularity soared to 90 percent. War in Iraq, based on the dubious assertion of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, soon followed.

The military industrial juggernaut
Investment in the military state is immense. 9/11 ushered in the federal, cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, with an initial budget in 2001-02 of US$16 billion. Annual budgets for the agency peaked at US$74 billion in 2009-10 and is now around US$50 billion.

This super-department vacuumed up bureaucracies previously managed by a range of other agencies, including justice, transportation, energy, agriculture, and health and human services.

Centralising services under the banner of security has enabled gross miscarriages of justice. These include the separation of tens of thousands of children from parents at the nation’s southern border, done in the guise of protecting the country from so-called illegal immigrants.

More than 300 of the some 1000 children taken from parents during the Trump administration have still not been reunited with family.

The post-9/11 Patriot Act also gave spying agencies paramilitary powers. The act reduced barriers between the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA) to permit the acquiring and sharing of Americans’ private communications.

These ranged from telephone records to web searches. All of this was justified in an atmosphere of near-hysterical and enduring anti-Muslim fervour.

Only in 2013 did most Americans realise the extent of this surveillance network. Edward Snowden, a contractor working at the NSA, leaked documents that revealed a secret US$52 billion budget for 16 spying agencies and over 100,000 employees.

Normalisation of the security state
Despite the long objections of civil liberties groups and disquiet among many private citizens, especially after Snowden’s leaks, it has proven difficult to wind back the industrialised security state.

This is for two reasons: the extent of the investment, and because its targets, both domestically and internationally, are usually not white and not powerful.

Domestically, the 2015 Freedom Act renewed almost all of the Patriot Act’s provisions. Legislation in 2020 that might have stemmed some of these powers stalled in Congress.

And recent reports suggest President Joe Biden’s election has done little to alter the detention of children at the border.

Militarisation is now so commonplace that local police departments and sheriff’s offices have received some US$7 billion worth of military gear (including grenade launchers and armoured vehicles) since 1997, underwritten by federal government programmes.

Militarised police kill civilians at a high rate — and the targets for all aspects of policing and incarceration are disproportionately people of colour. And yet, while the sight of excessively armed police forces during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests shocked many Americans, it will take a phenomenal effort to reverse this trend.

The heavy cost of the war on terror
The juggernaut of the militarised state keeps the United States at war abroad, no matter if Republicans or Democrats are in power.

Since 9/11, the US “war on terror” has cost more than US$8 trillion and led to the loss of up to 929,000 lives.

The effects on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan have been devastating, and with the US involvement in Somalia, Libya, the Philippines, Mali, and Kenya included, these conflicts have resulted in the displacement of some 38 million people.

These wars have become self-perpetuating, spawning new terror threats such as the Islamic State and now perhaps ISIS-K.

Those who serve in the US forces have suffered greatly. Roughly 2.9 million living veterans served in post-9/11 conflicts abroad. Of the some 2 million deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps 36 percent are experiencing PTSD.

Training can be utterly brutal. The military may still offer opportunities, but the lives of those who serve remain expendable.

Life must be precious
Towards the end of his life, Robert McNamara, the hard-nosed Ford Motor Company president and architect of the United States’ disastrous military efforts in Vietnam, came to regret deeply his part in the military-industrial juggernaut.

In his 1995 memoir, he judged his own conduct to be morally repugnant. He wrote,

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.

In interviews with the filmmaker Errol Morris, McNamara admitted, obliquely, to losing sight of the simple fact the victims of the militarised American state were, in fact, human beings.

As McNamara realised far too late, the solution to reversing American militarisation is straightforward. We must recognise, in the words of activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, that “life is precious”. That simple philosophy also underlies the call to acknowledge Black Lives Matter.

The best chance to reverse the militarisation of the US state is policy guided by the radical proposal that life — regardless of race, gender, status, sexuality, nationality, location or age — is indeed precious.

As we reflect on how the United States has changed since 9/11, it is clear the country has moved further away from this basic premise, not closer to it.

Dr Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Taliban to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of women journalists in Afghanistan, where a new media landscape is emerging from which they are missing.

This is in spite of Taliban assurances that press freedom would be respected and women journalists would be allowed to keep working.

The Taliban has announced an all-male caretaker government three weeks after taking over Kabul and the move has been criticised by UN Women as sending “the wrong signal” for a promised inclusive administration.

• READ MORE: UN agency decries exclusion of women from government
• How I left Afghanistan, with a Taliban escort to the airport
• Other Afghanistan reports

What with incidents involving Afghan women journalists since the Taliban takeover on August 15 and orders to respect Islamic laws, an RSF investigation has established that fewer than 100 women journalists are still formally working in privately-owned radio and TV stations in the Afghan capital.

According to a survey by RSF and its partner organisation, the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ), Kabul had 108 media outlets with a total of 4940 employees in 2020.

They included 1080 female employees, of whom 700 were journalists.

Of the 510 women who used to work for eight of the biggest media outlets and press groups, only 76 (including 39 journalists) are still currently working.

Disappearing from Kabul
In other words, women journalists are in the process of disappearing from the capital.

“Taliban respect for the fundamental right of women, including women journalists, to work and to practice their profession is a key issue,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“Women journalists must be able to resume working without being harassed as soon as possible, because it is their most basic right, because it is essential for their livelihood, and also because their absence from the media landscape would have the effect of silencing all Afghan women.

“We urge the Taliban leadership to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of women journalists.”

Most women journalists have been forced to stop working in the provinces, where almost all privately-owned media outlets ceased operating as the Taliban forces advanced.

A handful of these women journalists are still more or less managing to work from home, but there is no comparison with 2020, when the survey by RSF and the CPAWJ established that more than 1700 women were working for media outlets in three provinces (the provinces of Kabul, Herat and Balkh, in the east, west and north of the country).

The illusion of normality lasted only a few days. Forty-eight hours after the Taliban took control of the capital, women reporters with privately-owned TV channels such as Tolonews, Ariana News, Kabul News, Shamshad TV and Khurshid TV had dared to resume talking on the air and going out to cover events.

Media executives harassed
But media executives quickly found that they were being harassed. Nahid Bashardost, a reporter for the independent news agency Pajhwok, was beaten by Taliban while doing a report near Kabul airport on 25 August.

Other tearful women journalists described how Taliban guards stationed outside their media prevented them from going out to cover stories.

Women journalists speaking on the air in the studio are tolerated almost as little as they are reporting in the field.

A woman journalist working for a radio station in the southeastern province of Ghazni said that, two days after the Taliban took control of her province, they visited the station and warned: “You are a privately-owned radio station. You can continue, but without any woman’s voice and without music.”

It is the same in Kabul. A Taliban has replaced a female anchor at state-owned Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), who was told to “stay at home for a few days.”

Another female anchor was denied entry to the building. RTA employed 140 women journalists until mid-August.

Now, none of them dares to go back to work at the state TV channels, which are now under Taliban control.

Stay-at-home advice
Executives and editors with privately-owned media outlets that have not already decided to stop operating confirm that, under pressure, they have advised their women journalist to stay at home.

Zan TV (Dari for “Woman TV”) and Bano TV (Dari for “Mrs TV”) have ceased all activity since August 15.

These two privately owned TV channels employed 35 and 47 women journalists, respectively.

One of these journalists said: “It was the perfect job for me. I wanted to help women. Now I don’t know if I will ever be able to go back to work.”

Deprived of her job and salary, she now faces the prospect of extreme economic hardship, like many other women journalists.

Despite undertakings from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that women would be able to “return to work in a few days,” no measure to this effect has been announced, forcing hundreds of women journalists to stay at home, dreading an uncertain future.

On August 24, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said: “A fundamental red line will be the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls, and respect for their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, education, self-expression and employment, guided by international human rights norms.”

Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index that RSF published in April.

Asia Pacific Report collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population with 270 million, has not yet determined its stance towards the Taliban leadership after seizing power in Afghanistan.

It is also the most populous Muslim country.

The Director-General for Asia Pacific and Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Kadir Jailani, said the same attitude was also being shown by other countries.

• READ MORE: Qatar jet carrying technical team lands in Kabul
• ‘I’ll stay in Afghanistan as long as I can,’ says reporter Charlotte Bellis
• Other Afghanistan reports

“Why haven’t many countries taken a definitive stance, because the situation is still fluid and (the Taliban) have not yet formed a legitimate government,” said Abdul Kadir in the webinar ‘Post-Conflict Afghanistan: Fall or Rise?’ this week.

According to Jailani, Taliban officials are negotiating with a number of figures in Afghanistan in a bid to form a new government.

In addition to the formation of government, Indonesia is also still waiting for the status of the Taliban in the international community.

Jailani said a common view was needed about the status of the Taliban.

“This understanding is very important, so we can get faster information to determine our attitude towards the Taliban and its government later,” he added.

He said the Indonesian government was also careful in determining its stance because the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan received a “quite warm” and mixed reaction from within Indonesia.

Jailani stressed that Indonesia’s definitive stance would only be conveyed when the situation in Afghanistan became clearer.

The Taliban seized control of the civilian government in Afghanistan on August 15 without any resistance. A few days ago, the Taliban claimed to have pocketed a number of names of figures who would later fill the new government.

Unlike in the 1996-2001 era, the Taliban claimed to be forming an inclusive government that involved all elements and ethnicities in Afghanistan.

RNZ News

New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis, who works for Al Jazeera, has been visiting Kabul International Airport – until last Monday the only access point into and out of Afghanistan.

While locals and foreign nationals alike scrambled to leave the country for the past two weeks after the Taliban takeover, Bellis says she will be sticking around for as long as she can.

• READ MORE: Taliban says formation of new Afghan government in its final stages
• After US withdrawal, few answers for Afghans left behind
• Other Afghanistan reports
• LISTEN TO RNZ SUNDAY MORNING: The full interview with Charlotte Bellis

Bellis tells Jim Mora she was on the New Zealand evacuation list and saw first-hand how Western nations were trying to manage the chaotic situation.

“Most days you get an email saying, ‘okay, if you’re going to try to get out today, go to the North Gate’, then you get an email saying, ‘no, it’s dangerous, go to the South Gate’, and then an email saying, ‘no, don’t go at all, it’s too dangerous, we’ll get back to you’.

“And then finally an email saying, ‘I’m sorry the mission is over, if you didn’t make it, please email us and we’ll do our best to get you out somehow’.”

The danger reached a peak on August 26 and members of the media then agreed not to return to Kabul Airport, she says.

“A few hours later, there were the explosions.

“Even before that, the Taliban were in charge of guarding a perimeter. They were very tense, and firing in the air a lot, and beating people. I saw them running around with machetes… quite a few people left bloodied,” she says.

“A lot of people were scared off and decided not to even try to reach the airport even those who had the correct paperwork.”

Most people heading for the airport were aware of the security issues, Bellis says, but nevertheless many were that desperate to flee.

“A lot of the alerts we got were in English that were circulated in the expat community. Whether or not that filtered down to everyday Afghans trying to get out, I don’t know,” she said.

“There was a lot of confusion about who should’ve been allowed on the flight. You can imagine Taliban fighters who may or may not speak various languages, trying to read paperwork, I mean it was just an absolute mare.”

The last frontier against Taliban forces at Kabul airport was a group of CIA-funded militia known as 01 Units which have a “terrible reputation” in Afghanistan, Bellis says.

This group was also due to leave, she says.

“[Afghan president] Ashraf Ghani’s brother told me that [this militia group] are essentially bounty hunters. The Americans gave them a list of names of people they wanted killed and they did it, they did night raids and killed people from their homes.

“There’s been quite a few stories about them over the years, but they were incredibly secretive … they were running security on the north side of the airport for the last two weeks, I went down there and talked to them.”

The Taliban say Kabul Airport will continue to operate, but without air traffic controllers they have asked Turkey for “technical personnel”, Bellis says.

“But whether the Turkish airlines, Emirates, the companies that usually fly in and out, trust them enough to run the airport is another question.”

‘I will stay here for as long as I can’

Charlotte says that working for Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar where negotiations with the Taliban happened, puts her in a better position than journalists working for American news services.

She has also built media relationships with the Taliban. The group have come to know her now, she says, and have even said they would help her safely evacuate if need be.

Being from New Zealand – a country the Taliban does not have major issues with – also helps, Bellis says.

She says she has told the Taliban she will keep asking questions about their actions.

“They’ve said go for it, as long as you’re objective and fair. We welcome criticism, we want to improve and if you ever have any problems, call us,” she says.

“Hopefully that all plays out and I will stay here for as long as I can.”

While the Taliban have claimed they will give women rights, Bellis was one of the first to speak up at their first press conference to ask about this.

“I’ve said to the Taliban, you’ve got a real problem here, because if you’re going to be successful in running the country you need people to trust you and you need to build that trust and you need to be transparent … I think only time will tell.”

The perception of the Taliban in the West is quite flawed, Bellis says.

“We think of them as this inhumane terrorist organisation when in fact, in the leadership at least, there are quite a lot of educated people, they’re quite rational. There’s also groups who just want to fight, then there’s also politicians who will just tell you what you want to hear.

“It depends on who ends up holding the reigns of the organisation.

“Hopefully it is some of the people who I’ve had dealings with, who are more objective, rational, willing to work with the West, and make compromises on certain things and aren’t as conservative as others.”

Challenges to governing

Lack of money and the departure of skilled workers are just a couple of the obstacles facing Afghanistan now, Charlotte says, as the IMF and World Bank hold off funds,” Bellis says.

“They’ve essentially put a stop to any money coming in … this country ran on donations and has done for 20 years and now that has stopped.

“Everyone is holding their money back and saying to the Taliban you have to play ball, we’re not going to give you money and then watch you close down girls’ schools.

“But the problem is how long will it take for them to trust the Taliban? Because in the meantime people aren’t getting paid and the economy is being run into the ground.”

Meanwhile, it appears the Taliban has been building a behind-the-scenes relationship with China for a few years now, Bellis says.

“There’s been a lot of little things happening, that signalled they are ready to build a relationship together. The Chinese, even before the Taliban took over, were preparing to recognise the Taliban as a government.

“The Chinese have had the rights to minerals here for some time, but they haven’t been able to mine because of the war and security. They’ve had reason to want to see the war end.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

To cover up the humiliating defeat for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, the Anglo-American media is spinning tales of a great “humanitarian” airlift to save Afghani women from assumed brutality when the Taliban consolidate their power across Afghanistan.

But, at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, last week the Chinese changed the narrative, calling for the US, UK, Australia and other NATO countries to be held accountable for alleged violations of human rights committed during the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

“Under the banner of democracy and human rights the US and other countries carry out military interventions in other sovereign states and impose their own model on countries with vastly different history, culture and national conditions [which has] brought severe disasters to their people,” China’s ambassador in Geneva Cheng Xu told the council.

• READ MORE: Other Afghanistan reports

“United States, the United Kingdom and Australia must be held accountable for their violations of human rights in Afghanistan, and the resolution of this Special Session should cover this issue,” he added.

Amnesty International and a host of other civil society speakers have also called for the creation of a robust investigative mechanism that would allow for monitoring and reporting on human rights violations and abuses, including grave crimes under international law.

They have also asked for the mechanism to assist in holding those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in fair trials.

However, they were looking at the future rather than the past.

Adopted by consensus
The UNHRC member states adopted by consensus a resolution which merely requests further reports and an update by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in March 2022.

China was extraordinarily critical of Australia in May this year when the so-called Brereton Report was released by the Australian government into a four-year investigation of possible war crimes in Afghanistan by Australian forces.

The findings revealed that some of Australia’s most elite soldiers in the SAS (Special Air Services) had been involved in unlawful killing, blood lust, a warrior culture and cover-up of their alleged atrocities.

It came as a surprise to an Australian public, which believes that Australian military engagement in Afghanistan was designed to keep the world safe from terrorists.

Today, Australians and the rest of the world are fed by a news narrative that the West saved Afghani women from the brutality of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime, and now they need to be airlifted by Western forces to save them from falling into the hands of the Taliban again.

Rather than airlifting Afghans out of the country, China’s ambassador Xu told UNHRC: “We  will continue developing a good neighbourly, friendly and cooperative relationship with Afghanistan and continue our constructive role in its process of peace and reconstruction.”

Reporting this, Yahoo Australia pointed out that Afghanistan was sitting on precious mineral deposits estimated to be worth US$1 trillion and the country also had vast supplies of iron ore, copper and gold. Is believed to be home to one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium.

The report suggested that China was eyeing these resources.

Accountability for the West
However, such suspicions should not come in the way of calling for the West to be accountable for its war crimes in Afghanistan, which have been well documented even by such organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The UNHRC has not taken up these issues so far, fearing US retaliation.

Speaking on Sri Lankan Sirasa TV’s Pathikade programme, Professor Prathiba Mahanamahewa, a former member of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission who went to Afghanistan on a fact-finding mission on the invitation of the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission in 2014, argued that Western nations had been instrumental in creating terrorist groups around the world like the Taliban to destabilise governing systems in countries.

“At the core of the Taliban is the idea of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and they have inspired similar movements in the region; thus, it is a big threat to countries in Asia, especially in South Asia,” argued Professor Mahanamahewa.

“There are parties that pump a lot of funds to the Taliban.”

He said that in 2018, Sri Lanka (with several other countries) fought at the UNHRC to come up with a treaty to stop these financial flows to terrorist groups.

“Until today, nothing has been done,” said Professor Mahanamahewa.

Producer of opium and hashish
He added that Afghanistan was a large producer of opium and hashish, and the West was a big market for it, thus “Talibans would obviously like to have some form of relations with the West”.

In April 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected its prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s November 2017 request to open an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity during Afghanistan’s brutal armed conflict.

Such an investigation would have investigated war crimes and brutality of both the Taliban and the US-led forces and activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The panel of judges concluded that since the countries concerned had not taken any action over the perpetrators of possible “war crimes”, ICC could not act because it was a court of last resort.

In March 2011, the Rolling Stones magazine carried a lengthy investigative report on how war crimes by US forces were covered up by the Pentagon.

After extensive interviews with members of a group within the US forces called Bravo Company, they described how they were focused on killings Afghan civilians like going to the forests to hunt animals, and how these killings of innocent villages who were sometimes working in the fields were camouflaged as a terror attack by Taliban.

The soldiers involved were not disciplined or punished and US army aggressively moved to frame the incidents as the work of a “rogue unit”. The Pentagon clamped down on information about these killings, and soldiers in the Bravo Company were barred from speaking to the media.

Documented incidents
While the US occupation continued, many human rights organisations have documented incidents like these and called for independent international investigations, which have met with lukewarm response.

Only a few were punished with light sentences that did not reflect the gravity of the crime.

After losing the elections, in November 2020 President Trump pardoned two US army officials who were accused and jailed for war crimes in Afghanistan. While some Pentagon leaders expressed concern that this action would damage military discipline, Trump tweeted “we train our boys to be killing machines, then persecute them when they kill”.

It is perhaps now time that the US indulged in some soul-searching about their culture of killing, rather than using a narrative of “saving Afghani women” to cover up barbaric killing when the US-led forces were involved in Afghanistan.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of one of India’s top think-tanks, the Centre Policy Research, argued in an Indian Express article that terrorist groups like the Taliban or ISIS were “products of modern imperial politics” that was unsettling local societies, encouraging violence, supported fundamentalism, thus breaking up state structures.

He listed 7 sins of the US Empire that contributed to the debacle in Afghanistan. These included corruption that drives war; self-deception like what happened in Vietnam and now Afghanistan; lack of morality where the empire drives lawlessness; and hypocrisy, a cult of violence and racism.

It is interesting that the Rolling Stones feature reflected the last two points in the way the Bravo Company went about picking up innocent villages for killing. But Mehta argued that “the modality of US withdrawal exuded the fundamental sin of empire. Its reinforcement of race and hierarchy”.

‘Common humanity’
He noted: “Suddenly, the pretext of common humanity, and universal liberation, which was the pretext of empire, turned into the worst kind of cultural essentialism. It is their culture, these medieval tribalists who are incapable of liberty”.

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University, writing on the Al Jazeera website asked: “What can the Taliban do to Afghanistan that it and the US, and their European allies have already not done to it?”

He described the Doha deal between the US and the Taliban as a deal to hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban.

“As for Afghan women and girls, they are far better off fighting the fanaticism and stupidity of the Taliban on their own and not under the shadow of US military barracks,” argued Professor Dabashi.

“Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish and Arab women have been fighting similar, if not identical, patriarchal thuggery right in their neighbourhood, so will Afghan women.”

Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.

Publicly, the Taliban have undertaken to protect journalists and respect press freedom but the reality in Afghanistan is completely different, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The new authorities are already imposing very harsh constraints on the news media even if they are not yet official, reports RSF on its website.

The list of new obligations for journalists is getting longer by the day. Less than a week after their spokesman pledged to respect freedom of the press “because media reporting will be useful to society,” the Taliban are subjecting journalists to harassment, threats and sometimes violence.

• READ MORE: Pacific lawyer tells of call to respect humanitarian law in Afghanistan
• Other Afghanistan reports

“Officially, the new Afghan authorities have not issued any regulations, but the media and reporters are being treated in an arbitrary manner,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“Are the Taliban already dropping their masks? We ask them to guarantee conditions for journalism worthy of the name.”

Privately-owned Afghan TV channels that are still broadcasting in the capital are now being subjected to threats on a daily basis.

Reporters branded ‘takfiri’
A producer* working for one privately-owned national channel said: “In the past week, the Taliban have beaten five of our channel’s reporters and camera operators and have called them ‘takfiri’ [tantamount to calling them ‘unbelievers’, in this context].

“They control everything we broadcast. In the field, the Taliban commanders systematically take the numbers of our reporters and tell them: ‘When you prepare this story, you will say this and say that.’

“If they say something else, they are threatened.”

Many broadcasters have been forced to suspend part of their programming because Kabul’s new masters have ordered them to respect the Sharia — Islamic law.

“Series and broadcasts about society have been stopped and instead we are just broadcasting short news bulletins and documentaries from the archives,” said a commercial TV channel representative, who has started to let his beard grow as a precaution and now wears traditional dress.

The owner of a privately-owned radio station north of Kabul confirmed that the Taliban are progressively and quickly extending their control over news coverage.

‘They began “guiding” us’
“A week ago, they told us: ‘You can work freely as long as you respect Islamic rules’ [no music and no women], but then they began ‘guiding’ us about the news that we could or could not broadcast and what they regard as ‘fair’ reporting,” said the owner, who ended up closing his radio station and going into hiding.

Two journalists working for the privately-owned TV channel Shamshad were prevented by a Taliban guard from doing a report outside the French embassy because they lacked a permit signed by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

But when they asked the guard where they should go or who they should ask for such a permit, he said, “I don’t know.”

In the past few days, the Taliban have ordered the most influential Afghan broadcast media to broadcast Taliban propaganda video and audio clips.

When media outlets object, “the Taliban say it is just publicity and they are ready to pay for it to be broadcast, and then they insist, referring to our national or Islamic duty,” a journalist said.

Incidents are meanwhile being reported in the field, and at least 10 journalists have been subjected to violence or threats while working in the streets of Kabul and Jalalabad in the past week.

The Taliban spokesman announced on Twitter on August 21 that a tripartite committee would be created to “reassure the media”. Consisting of representatives of the Cultural Commission and journalists’ associations, and a senior Kabul police officer, the committee’s official purpose will be to “address the problems of the media in Kabul.”

What will its real purpose be?

100 private media outlets suspend operations
The pressure is even greater in the provinces, far from the capital. Around 100 privately-owned local media outlets have suspended operations since the Taliban takeover.

All privately-owned Tolonews TV’s local bureaus have closed.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth largest city, journalists have been forced to stop working and the situation is very tense.

One national radio station’s terrified correspondent said: “Here in the south, I have to work all the time under threat from the Taliban, who comment on everything I do. ‘Why did you do that story? And why didn’t you ask us for our opinion?’ they say. They want comment on all the stories.”

The head of a radio station in Herat province that had many listeners before the Taliban takeover said the same.

He also reported that, at meeting with media representatives on August 17, the province’s new governor told them he was not their enemy and that they would define the new way of working together.

While all the journalists remained silent, the governor then quoted a phrase from the Sharia that that sums up Islam’s basic practices. He said: “The Sharia defines everything: ‘Command what is good, forbid what is evil.’ You just have to apply it.”

The radio station director added: “After that, most of my colleagues left the city and those of us who stayed must constantly prove that what we broadcast commands what is good and forbids what is evil.”

Foreign correspondents work ‘normally‘
Foreign correspondents still in Kabul have not yet been subjected to these dictates and are managing to work in an almost normal manner. But for how much longer?

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Youth and Information Department issued this message to foreign journalists on August 21: “Before going into the field and recording interviews with IEA fighters and the local population, they should coordinate with the IEA or otherwise face arrest.”

“There are no clear rules at the moment and we have no idea what will happen in the future,” said a Swiss freelancer who has stayed in Kabul.

Another foreign reporter said: “The honeymoon is not yet over. We are benefitting from the fact that the Taliban are still seeking some legitimacy, and the arrival of the big international TV stations in the past few days is protecting us.

“The real problems will start when we are on our own again.”

*The anonymity of all Afghan and foreign journalists quoted in this RSF news release has been preserved at their request and for security reasons, given the climate of fear currently reigning in Afghanistan. Many of the journalists contacted by RSF said they did not want to be quoted at all, because they have no way of leaving Afghanistan.

An International Criminal Court official in the Pacific is calling on all parties in the Afghanistan conflict to respect humanitarian law.

Thousands of foreign nationals, including Afghanis who worked for international agencies, are fleeing the conflict as Taliban forces seized control of the country.

Suicide bombers struck the crowded gates of Kabul airport with at least two explosions on Thursday, causing a bloodbath among civilians, shutting down the Western airlift of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban regime.

• READ MORE: Other Afghanistan reports

The death toll from the attack is at least 175, including 13 US soldiers, according to media reports.

The attacks came amid ongoing chaos around the airport amid the American withdrawal after 20 years in the region.

Fijian lawyer Ana Tuiketei-Bolabiu has reiterated the Hague Court’s call for all parties to the hostilities to fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, including by ensuring the protection of civilians.

She said the ICC may exercise jurisdiction over any genocide, crime against humanity or war crime committed in Afghanistan since the country joined the court in 2003.

First woman counsel
Tuiketei-Bolabiu became the first woman counsel appointed to the Hague Court in April last year. In September, she was elected to the Defence and Membership Committee of the ICC’s Bar Association.

She told RNZ Pacific she is concerned about reports of revenge killings and persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan.

“It’s just an evolving and deteriorating situation in Afghanistan,” she said.

“The UN Security met in New York to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and what was interesting to hear from the Afghani UN ambassador Ghulam Isaczai confirming his concerns on human rights violations for girls, women and human rights defenders, and journalists, including the internally displaced people.

“He also elaborated on the fear of the Kabul residents from the house-to-house search carried out by the Taliban, registering of names and the hunt for people.

“The UN meeting also discussed safety, security, dignity and peace but also trying to protect the lives and the movement of women and children, the international community, displaced people and even the food and all the other humanitarian care that is supposed to be given to the people there.

“We’re hoping that the international human rights laws will actually be observed.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres has also called for an end to the fighting in Afghanistan.

Challenges for prosecutor
Tuiketei-Bolabiu said challenges lay ahead for the Hague Court’s new prosecutor, Karim Khan, who replaced Fatou Bensouda in June this year.

Khan inherits the long-running investigation by his predecessor into possible crimes committed in Afghanistan since 2003.

Those included alleged killings of civilians by the Taliban, as well as the alleged torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities, and by American forces and the CIA in 2003-2004.

Tuiketei-Bolabiu said the ICC only approved a formal investigation in March 2020, which prompted then US President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Bensouda.

“In May, Afghanistan pleaded with Bensouda for a deferral of the ICC prosecution investigation, arguing that the government was already conducting its own inquiries, mostly focusing on alleged Taliban crimes,” she said.

“Under ICC rules, the court only has power to prosecute crimes committed on the territory of member states when they are unwilling or unable to do so themselves.”

It is not yet clear how the ICC will proceed with the current investigation.

Interests of justice
But Tuiketei-Bolabiu is adamant justice will prevail.

“In March last year, the ICC appeals chamber judges found that in the interest of justice investigations should proceed by the prosecution on war crimes since 2003 including armed conflicts and other serious crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of the courts and that includes the Taliban, Afghan national police, other security forces and the CIA,” she said.

“What’s interesting now is the ICC does not have a police force so it solely relies on member states for arrests and investigations. Now the political landscape in Afghanistan has extremely changed.

“The cooperation with the ICC prosecutions office to support the court’s independence will become a bigger challenge in the future.”

UN Human Rights Council meets
The UN Human Rights Council held a special session this week to address the serious human rights concerns and the situatiation in Afghanistan.

The meeting was called by the council’s Afghanistan and Pakistan members.

Discussions were centred on the appointment of a committee to investigate crimes against humanity.

Tuiketei-Bolabiu said any evidence from the human rights council would help the court’s investigations.

But Amnesty International said the UN council has failed the people of Afghanistan.

In a statement, Amnesty said the meeting neglected to establish an independent mechanism to monitor ongoing crimes under international law and human rights violations and abuses in Afghanistan.

“Such a mechanism would allow for monitoring and reporting on human rights violations and abuses, including grave crimes under international law, and to assist in holding those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in fair trials.”

However, the calls were ignored by UNHRC member states, who adopted by consensus a weak resolution which merely requests further reports and an update by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in March 2022, which adds little to the oversight process already in place.

“The UN Human Rights Council special session has failed to deliver a credible response to the escalating human rights crisis in Afghanistan. Member states have ignored clear and consistent calls by civil society and UN actors for a robust monitoring mechanism,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general.

“Many people in Afghanistan are already at grave risk of reprisal attacks. The international community must not betray them, and must urgently increase efforts to ensure the safe evacuation of those wishing to leave,” she said.

Amnesty International said member states must now move beyond handwringing, and take meaningful action to protect those feeling the conflict in Afghanistan.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A suicide bombing near Kabul airport on Thursday added another dimension to the chaos in Afghanistan as Western forces rush to complete their evacuation.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts that killed at least 175 people, including 13 US soldiers, challenging the Taliban’s hold on the capital.

Either group is bad news for Afghan women and girls, and anyone with links to the former government or exiting armies.

• READ MORE: Afghanistan at risk of hunger amid drought and Taliban takeover
• Other Taliban takeover articles

Taliban officials are on a charm offensive in international media, with one suggesting to Newsweek the group could contribute to fighting climate change if formally recognised by other governments.

Don’t expect the Taliban to consign coal to history any time soon, though. The militant group gets a surprisingly large share of its revenue from mining — more than from the opium trade — and could scale up coal exports to pay salaries as it seeks to govern.

Afghan people could certainly use support to cope with the impacts of climate change. The UN estimates more than 10 million are at risk of hunger due to the interplay of conflict and drought.

Water scarcity
Water scarcity has compounded instability in the country for decades, arguably helping the Taliban to recruit desperate farmers.

There was not enough investment in irrigation and water management during periods of relative peace.

One adaptation tactic was to switch crops from thirsty wheat to drought-resistant opium poppies — but that brought its own problems.

The question for the international community is: who gets to represent Afghans’ climate interests?

If the Taliban is serious about climate engagement as a route to legitimacy, Cop26 will be an early test.

Megan Darby is editor of Climate Change News.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the final New Zealand Defence Force evacuation flight from Afghanistan landed back in the United Arab Emirates last night, before the bomb attacks killing at least 12 US soldiers and 60 Afghans at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

One hundred people, including New Zealanders and Australians, were on the flight. It is not yet clear how many of those people are destined for New Zealand.

So far, 276 New Zealand nationals and permanent residents, their families, and other visa holders have been evacuated.

• READ MORE: 12 US military personnel killed in bomb attacks at Kabul airport
• Fijians stranded in Afghanistan evacuated to Kazakhstan – Govt
• More Afghanistan crisis reports

There were no New Zealand Defence Force personnel in Kabul and no New Zealand evacuees at the airport at the time of the explosions.

Ardern described the attacks as “appalling” and said the country’s thoughts were with all of those in Afghanistan who had been killed or injured.

“We strongly condemn what is a despicable attack on many innocent families and individuals who were simply seeking safety from the incredibly difficult and fragile situation in Afghanistan,” she said in a statement.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade remained in close contact with New Zealand citizens and permanent residents in Afghanistan who had previously registered on SafeTravel or otherwise made contact.

‘High threat of terrorist attack’
Yesterday, all those known to have been in Afghanistan were advised by MFAT of the “ongoing and very high threat of terrorist attack” and warned not to go to Hamid Karzai International Airport and to leave the airport if they were nearby.

At this stage, there have been no requests for assistance from New Zealanders or other visa holders in Afghanistan related to the explosion. MFAT are trying to contact all those known to be in the region.

Ardern said the situation at Kabul’s airport had been so difficult for both people trying to get out, and those undertaking the evacuations that there would be no more flights into the city.

Over the course of the mission, the NZDF aircraft was able to undertake three flights out of Kabul and had successfully brought out hundreds of evacuees who are destined for both New Zealand and Australia.

Australia also brought out a number of those destined for New Zealand.

Defence Minister Peeni Henare said as well as those who have already arrived in the country, more people eligible for relocation are in transit. Some are being processed at bases outside Afghanistan, so it is still too early to know the total numbers of people who will be returned to Aotearoa, he said.

Ardern said those who remained were in an incredibly difficult position.

Afghanistan situation “complex, fragile”
“The situation in Afghanistan is incredibly complex and fragile and continues to change rapidly. Our next job is to consider what can be done for those who remain in Afghanistan still. That will not be a quick or easy task,” she said.

She also praised those Defence Force personnel who undertook the mission.

“I want to thank our Defence Force personnel who have worked hard to bring those in need home, by establishing a presence on the ground both at the airport in Kabul, and in the United Arab Emirates alongside other government agencies.”

She also thanked New Zealand’s partners, especially Australia, the US and the United Arab Emirates.

It has not yet been confirmed when NZDF personnel and the C-130 aircraft will arrive back in New Zealand.

Fiji evacuations
ABC’s Pacific Beat reports that five Fijian workers have been evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country, three being flown to Kazhakstan.

One Fiji security contractor said a humanitarian crisis is looming with major challenges ahead for the country.

It is believed about five others had chosen to stay in Afghanistan for the time being.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

In this this week’s episode of A View from Afar today, Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan are joined by Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie to examine instability in the Pacific  – specifically to identify what is going on in New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa.

This is the second part of a two-part Pacific special.

In the second half, Buchanan and Manning analyse the latest developments on Afghanistan and consider whether the humiliating withdrawal of the US suggests an end to liberal internationalism.

• VIEW MORE: The first part of the two-part Pacific special of A View From Afar
• More on Afghanistan with A View From Afar

Specifically the first half of this episode looks at:

• New Caledonia where there will be a third and final referendum on Kanaky independence;
• Samoa where there has been a new government installed — the first in four decades — but only after the old guard attempted to resist democratic change, a move that has caused a constitutional crisis; and
• Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has had a new addition to his political headaches — the question of how Fiji gets its NGO and aid workers out of Afghanistan.

In the second half of this episode Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning dig deep into the latest from Afghanistan.

The deadline for Western personnel to have withdrawn from Afghanistan is looming. The Taliban leadership states it will not extend the negotiated deadline of August 31, and US President Joe Biden insists that the US will not request nor assert an extension.

But Biden has instructed his military leaders to prepare for a contingency plan. 

• What does this humiliating withdrawal indicate to the world?
• Is this the realisation of a diminishing United States, a superpower in decline?
• Can the US reassert itself as the world’s policeman, or does Afghanistan confirm the US is in retreat and signal an end of liberal internationalism?

Watch this podcast on video-on-demand on YouTube and see earlier episodes at EveningReport.nz or subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

A collaboration between EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz.

Five Fijians who are based in Afghanistan say they are safe and well.

Speaking to FBC News, one of them who is living in the capital Kabul, said they kept tabs on each other and shared information on the Taliban takeover.

They say that they will only leave Afghanistan if the situation worsens.

• READ MORE: Fijians among those to be evacuated from Afghanistan
• Other Afghanistan crisis reports

The Fijian national spoke under the condition of anonymity and said he and three others were in Kabul while the others were in Mazar and Khandahar.

They said the situation was calm in the the three cities.

The man said he has been out and about in Kabul conducting assessment and supporting the UN evacuation flights in the last couple of days.

He had noticed that the usual traffic congestion had decreased significantly as most people were staying home.

Every 15 minutes
He said there was an evacuation flight almost every 15 minutes. However, movement within the country was challenging at times.

One other Fijian in Kabul was expected to relocate to Almaty in Kazakhstan.

• LISTEN: Afghanistan: Lawyer worried for evacuees stuck there

Meanwhile, RNZ News reports that the first group of New Zealand citizens, their families and other visa holders evacuated arrived yesterday in New Zealand.

New Zealand lawyer Claudia Elliott has worked across Afghanistan with the United Nations and is now trying to get visas to get at risk Afghani professionals to also be evacuated to New Zealand.

She says seeing the Taliban’s takeover has been traumatising – she is worried about how those who are given visas to New Zealand will actually be able to get out of Afghanistan.

Was at Kabul airport today for a few hours and saw flights taking off about every 15 minutes… https://t.co/gg9cc80bDm

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) August 23, 2021

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the Taliban to immediately cease harassing and attacking journalists for their work, allow women journalists to broadcast the news, and permit the media to operate freely and independently.

Since August 15, members of the Taliban have barred at least two female journalists from their jobs at the public broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan, and have attacked at least two members of the press while they covered a protest in the eastern Nangarhar province, according to news reports and journalists who spoke with New York-based CPJ.

“Stripping public media of prominent women news presenters is an ominous sign that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have no intention of living up their promise of respecting women’s rights, in the media or elsewhere,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in a statement.

• READ MORE: Taliban offers amnesty, promises women’s rights and media freedom
• New Zealand should never have joined the war in Afghanistan
• Other Taliban takeover reports

“The Taliban should let women news anchors return to work, and allow all journalists to work safely and without interference.”

On August 15, the day the Taliban entered Kabul, members of the group arrived at Radio Television Afghanistan’s station and a male Taliban official took the place of Khadija Amin, an anchor with the network, according to news reports and Amin, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.

When Amin returned to the station yesterday, a Taliban member who took over leadership of the station told her to “stay at home for a few more days”.

He added that the group would inform her when she could return to work, she said.

‘Regime has changed’
Taliban members also denied Shabnam Dawran, a news presenter with Radio Television Afghanistan, entry to the outlet, saying that “the regime has changed” and she should “go home”, according to news reports and Dawran, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Male employees were permitted entry into the station, but she was denied, according to those sources.

Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, media freedom at first media conference in Kabul. Video: Al Jazeera

On August 17, a Taliban-appointed newscaster took her place and relayed statements from the group’s leadership, according to those reports.

Separately, Taliban militants yesterday beat Babrak Amirzada, a video reporter with the privately owned news agency Pajhwok Afghan News, and Mahmood Naeemi, a camera operator with the privately owned news and entertainment broadcaster Ariana News, while they covered a protest in the city of Jalalabad, in eastern Nangarhar province, according to news reports and both journalists, who spoke with CPJ via phone and messaging app.

At about 10 am, a group of Taliban militants arrived at a demonstration of people gathering in support of the Afghan national flag, which Amirzada and Naeemi were covering, and beat up protesters and fired gunshots into the air to disperse the crowd, the journalists told CPJ.

Amirzada and Naeemi said that Taliban fighters shoved them both to the ground, beat Amirzada on his head, hands, chest, feet, and legs, and hit Naeemi on his legs and feet with the bottoms of their rifles.

CPJ could not immediately determine the extent of the journalists’ injuries.

Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment via messaging app.

CPJ is also investigating a report today by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Taliban militants searched the home of one of the outlet’s editors in western Afghanistan, shot and killed one of their family members, and seriously injured another.

The militants were searching for the journalist, who has escaped to Germany, according to that report.

Taliban militants have also raided the homes of at least four media workers since taking power in the country earlier this week, according to CPJ reporting.

After the fall of Kabul, the obvious question for New Zealanders is whether we should ever have joined the American war in Afghanistan. Labour and National politicians, who sent our Special Forces there, will say yes.

The Greens, who opposed the war from the start, will say no.

Back in 2001, we were the only party to vote against a parliamentary motion to send an SAS contingent to Afghanistan. As Green foreign affairs spokesperson during the first decade of the war I was often accused by Labour and National MPs of helping the Taliban.

• READ MORE: NZ mission to rescue people stuck in Afghanistan begins
• PODCAST: Buchanan and Manning on Afghanistan – Were US intelligence failures a prelude to a Taliban takeover
• Other Afghanistan stories on Asia Pacific Report

By their reasoning you either supported the American war effort, or you were on the side of the Taliban.

To the contrary, I said, New Zealand was helping the Taliban by sending troops. It was handing the Taliban a major recruiting tool, that of Afghans fighting for their national honour against a foreign military force.

And so it has proved to be. The Taliban didn’t win because of the popularity of its repressive theocracy. Its ideology is deeply unpopular, particularly in the Afghan cities.

But what about the rampant corruption in the Afghan political system? Wasn’t that a big factor in the Taliban rise to power? Yes, but that corruption was enhanced by the presence of the Western forces and all the largess they were spreading around.

Both sides committed war crimes
Then there was the conduct of the war. Both sides committed war crimes, and it has been documented that our SAS handed over prisoners to probable torture by the Afghan National Directorate of Security.

Western air power helped the government side, but it was also counterproductive, as more innocent villagers were killed or wounded by air strikes.

In the end all the most sophisticated American warfighting gear couldn’t uproot a lightly armed insurgent force.

Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, press freedom. Reported by New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis for Al Jazeera. Video: AJ English

There was another course America (and New Zealand) could have taken. Back in 2001 the Greens (and others in the international community) were pushing for a peaceful resolution whereby the Taliban would hand over Osama bin Laden to justice. The Taliban were not ruling that out.

But America was bent on revenge for the attack on the World Trade Centre, and quickly went to war. Ostensibly it was a war against terrorism, but Osama bin Laden quickly decamped to Pakistan, so it became simply a war to overthrow the Taliban government and then to stop it returning to power.

The war had this exclusively anti-Taliban character when New Zealand’s SAS force arrived in December 2001. The war would grind on for 20 years causing so much death and destruction for the Afghan people.

The peaceful way of putting pressure on the Taliban, which could have been adopted back in 2001, is similar to how the world community is likely to relate to the new Taliban government.

Pressure on the Taliban
That is, there will be considerable diplomatic and economic pressure on the Taliban to give Afghan people (particularly Afghan women) more freedom than it has to date. How successful this will be is yet to be determined.

It depends on the strength and unity of the international community. Even without much unity, international pressure is having some (if limited) effect on another strongly anti-women regime, namely Saudi Arabia.

The Labour and National governments that sent our SAS to Afghanistan cannot escape responsibility for the casualties and post-traumatic stress suffered by our soldiers. Their line of defence may be that they didn’t know it would turn out this way.

However, that is not a good argument when you look at the repeated failure of Western interventions in nearby Middle Eastern countries.

America has intervened militarily (or supported foreign intervention) in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia and Libya. All of these peoples are now worse off than they were before those interventions.

“Civilising missions”, spearheaded by the American military, are not the answer, and New Zealand shouldn’t get involved. We should have learnt that 50 years ago in Vietnam, but perhaps we’ll learn it now.

Former Green MP Keith Locke was the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. He writes occasional pieces for Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Immigration Secretary Yogesh Karan has confirmed that 13 Fijians who are currently stuck in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover last Sunday are safe and officials are working to repatriate them as soon as possible.

Karan said two worked for private contractors and the other 11 were with international organisations.

He said they had had a discussion with the Australian High Commission which gave an assurance that they would make every effort to “include our people in the evacuation flight”.

• READ MORE: Former PM Helen Clark says Taliban control ‘massive step backwards’
• Other Afghanistan reports

Karan said it was very difficult to contact them because Fiji did not have a mission in Afghanistan and they are trying to contact them via New Delhi.

He added Fiji was also working with UN agencies and the Indian government to get them out of there as quickly as possible.

Karan was also requesting anyone who had contacts with anyone in Afghanistan to let the ministry know so they could note their details.

NZ promises repatriation
RNZ News reports that people promised help in getting out of Afghanistan were desperate for information, saying they did not know where they should be or who to contact.

New Zealand citizens and at least 200 Afghans who helped New Zealand’s efforts in the country were expected to be repatriated.

Diamond Kazimi, a former interpreter for the NZ Defence Force in Afghanistan, who now lives in New Zealand, has been getting calls from those who helped the military and wanted to know when help is coming.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to 104 New Zealanders in Afghanistan but would not say where they were, what advice they were being given, or how they planned to make sure they were on the repatriation flight.

As the Taliban has taken control of the country, Afghanistan has again become an extremely dangerous place to be a woman.

Even before the fall of Kabul on Sunday, the situation was rapidly deteriorating, exacerbated by the planned withdrawal of all foreign military personnel and declining international aid.

In the past few weeks alone, there have been many reports of casualties and violence. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.

• READ MORE: Afghan government collapses, Taliban seize control: 5 essential reads
• Taliban ‘has not changed,’ say women facing subjugation in areas of Afghanistan under its extremist rule
• JERAA calls for urgent action to support Afghan journalists, female reporters

The United Nations Refugee Agency says about 80 percent of those who have fled since the end of May are women and children.

What does the return of the Taliban mean for women and girls?

The history of the Taliban
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, enforcing harsh conditions and rules following their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Under their rule, women had to cover themselves and only leave the house in the company of a male relative. The Taliban also banned girls from attending school, and women from working outside the home. They were also banned from voting.

Women were subject to cruel punishments for disobeying these rules, including being beaten and flogged, and stoned to death if found guilty of adultery. Afghanistan had the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.

The past 20 years
With the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the situation for women and girls vastly improved, although these gains were partial and fragile.

Women now hold positions as ambassadors, ministers, governors, and police and security force members. In 2003, the new government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which requires states to incorporate gender equality into their domestic law.

The 2004 Afghan Constitution holds that “citizens of Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law”. Meanwhile, a 2009 law was introduced to protect women from forced and under-age marriage, and violence.

According to Human Rights Watch, the law saw a rise in the reporting, investigation and, to a lesser extent, conviction, of violent crimes against women and girls.

While the country has gone from having almost no girls at school to tens of thousands at university, the progress has been slow and unstable. UNICEF reports of the 3.7 million Afghan children out of school some 60 percent are girls.

A return to dark days
Officially, Taliban leaders have said they want to grant women’s rights “according to Islam”. But this has been met with great scepticism, including by women leaders in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the Taliban has given every indication they will reimpose their repressive regime.

In July, the United Nations reported the number of women and girls killed and injured in the first six months of the year nearly doubled compared to the same period the year before.

In the areas again under Taliban control, girls have been banned from school and their freedom of movement restricted. There have also been reports of forced marriages.

Women are putting burqas back on and speak of destroying evidence of their education and life outside the home to protect themselves from the Taliban.

As one anonymous Afghan woman writes in The Guardian:

“I did not expect that we would be deprived of all our basic rights again and travel back to 20 years ago. That after 20 years of fighting for our rights and freedom, we should be hunting for burqas and hiding our identity.”

Many Afghans are angered by the return of the Taliban and what they see as their abandonment by the international community. There have been protests in the streets. Women have even taken up guns in a rare show of defiance.

But this alone will not be enough to protect women and girls.

The world looks the other way
Currently, the US and its allies are engaged in frantic rescue operations to get their citizens and staff out of Afghanistan. But what of Afghan citizens and their future?

US President Joe Biden remained largely unmoved by the Taliban’s advance and the worsening humanitarian crisis. In an August 14 statement, he said:

“an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

And yet, the US and its allies — including Australia — went to Afghanistan 20 years ago on the premise of removing the Taliban and protecting women’s rights. However, most Afghans do not believe they have experienced peace in their lifetimes.

Now that the Taliban has reasserted complete control over the country, the achievements of the past 20 years, especially those made to protect women’s rights and equality, are at risk if the international community once again abandons Afghanistan.

Women and girls are pleading for help. We hope the world will listen.

Azadah Raz Mohammad, PhD student, The University of Melbourne and Dr Jenna Sapiano, Australia Research Council postdoctoral research associate and lecturer, Monash Gender Peace & Security Centre, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Journalism Research and Education Association of Australia (JERAA) has urged the Australian government to make a strong commitment to supporting journalists and media personnel in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of international forces.

JERAA said in a statement today it had endorsed the calls of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for urgent action to provide humanitarian visas and other support to those attempting to flee the country.

In the current upheaval, it is difficult to obtain figures on how many journalists have been attacked, but the Afghan Independent Journalist Association and Afghanistan’s National Journalists Union express grave concerns for the well-being of journalists and media personnel.

• READ MORE: RSF visits Afghanistan, proposes “urgent actions” to protect its journalists
• Taliban says it will respect women’s rights, press feedom- Al Jazeera

Nai, an Afghan organisation supporting independent media, released figures indicating that by late July, at least 30 media workers had been killed, wounded or tortured in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2021.

UNESCO has recorded five deaths of journalists in Afghanistan in 2021, making it the country with the world’s greatest number of journalists’ deaths this year. Four have been women, reflecting the higher risk of attacks on female journalists.

Current figures are likely to be incomplete due to the challenges of obtaining information. They do not include deaths of professionals in related industries, such as the murder of the Head of Afghan government Media and Information Centre on August 6.

The Taliban has a long-established pattern of striking out against journalists.

A Human Rights Watch report, released in April 2021, in the lead up to the United States and NATO troop withdrawal, noted that Taliban forces had already established a practice of targeting journalists and other media workers.

Journalists are intimidated, harassed and attacked routinely by the Taliban, which regularly accuses them of being aligned with the Afghan government or international military forces or being spies.

Female journalists face a higher level of threats, especially if they have appeared on television and radio.

International Press Institute figures, released in May 2021 at the start of the troop withdrawals, also showed that Afghanistan had the highest rate of deaths of journalists in the world.

The IPI expressed concern about an intensification of attacks on journalists and the future of the news media in Afghanistan.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark says the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan shows “a catastrophic failure of intelligence in Western foreign policy” and to say that she is pessimistic about the country’s future would be an understatement.

Taliban insurgents have entered Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani has fled Afghanistan, bringing the Islamist militants close to taking over the country two decades after they were overthrown by a US-led invasion.

Clark has also served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for eight years and has advocated globally for Afghan girls and women.

• READ MORE: New Zealanders, at-risk Afghan nationals being helped to leave Afghanistan
• NZ ramps up efforts to get 30 citizens out of Kabul as Taliban take capital
• LISTEN: ‘This is just such a massive step backwards’ – Helen Clark

She sent New Zealand troops to Afghanistan in 2001 during her term as prime minister and said it was surreal to see what had happened.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today after the cabinet meeting this afternoon that the government had offered 53 New Zealand citizens in Afghanistan consular support.

“We are working through this with the utmost urgency,” she said.

The government was also aware of 37 individuals who had helped the NZ Defence Force (NZDF).

Gains for women, girls
Clark said today: “Twenty years of change there with so many gains for women and girls in society at large and to see what amounts to people motivated by medieval theocracy walk back in and take power and start issuing the same kinds of statements about constraints on women, and saying that stonings and amputations are for the courts – I mean this is just such a massive step backwards. It’s hard to digest.”

Clark said to find out what had gone wrong it was necessary to look back a couple of decades and it was not long after the Taliban had left that the US administration started to look away from Afghanistan, turning instead towards its intervention in Iraq.

“With the gaze off Afghanistan the Taliban started to come back. When I was at UNDP I would meet ambassadors from the region around Afghanistan and they would say ‘look 60 percent of the country is in effect controlled by the Taliban now’ and I’m going back four or five years, six years in saying that.”

Helen Clark is extremely dubious that this is “a new reformed Taliban”. Photo: 2018 Anadolu Agency

Clark said at that time the Taliban did not have the ability to capture and hold district and provincial capitals, but the Taliban was waiting for an opportunity and that came when former US president Donald Trump indicated they would withdraw troops from Afghanistan and current US President Joe Biden then followed through on that.

“Looking at it from my perspective I think the thought of negotiating a transition with the Taliban was naive and I think the failure of intelligence as to how strong the Taliban actually were on the ground is, as a number of American commentators are saying, equivalent to the failure of intelligence around the Tet Offensive in 1968 in Vietnam – I mean this is a catastrophic failure of intelligence in Western foreign policy,” she said.

Clark said the Taliban would be under pressure from Western powers to do anything if it was able to enlist the support of other powers.

Pessimistic about Afghanistan’s future
She said to say she was pessimistic about Afghanistan’s future would be an understatement and there were already reports of women being treated very badly in regions where the Taliban has taken over.

“We’re hearing stories from some of the district and provincial capitals that they’ve captured where women have been beaten for wearing sandals which expose their feet, we’re hearing of one woman who turned up to a university class who was told to go home, this wasn’t for them, women who were told to go away from the workplace because this wasn’t for them.”

Clark said she very much doubted that this was “a new reformed Taliban”, an idea that was accepted by some negotiators in Doha.

She said she did not expect that the UN Security Council would be able to do anything to improve the situation.

Clark said it met about Afghanistan within the last couple of weeks and the Afghanistan permanent representative pleaded on behalf of his elected government for support but there was no support forthcoming.

Clark said the UN Security Council was unlikely to get any results and the UN would likely then say that it needed humanitarian access.

Catastrophic hunger
“Because these developments create catastrophic hunger, flight of people, illness — but you know the UN will be left putting a bandage over the wounds and there will be nothing more constructive that comes out of it.”

Clark said Afghanistan’s problems were never going to be solved in 20 years.

“I understand that the Americans are sick of endless wars, we all are. But on the other hand they’ve kept a 50,000 strong garrison in Korea since 1953 in much greater numbers at times, they maintain 30,000 troops in the Gulf. They were in effect being asked to maintain a very small garrison which more or less kept the place stable enough for it to inch ahead, build its institutions and roll out education and health, when that commitment to do that failed then the whole project collapsed.

“This is not so much a Taliban takeover as simply a surrender by the government and by forces who felt it wasn’t worth fighting for it.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says work to get New Zealanders out of Afghanistan has ramped up, as commercial options become unavailable.

Yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware of 17 New Zealanders who were in Afghanistan, but Ardern said that number is now believed to be closer to 30 when citizens and family members were taken into account.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been actively trying to contact those that they believe may be in Afghanistan and working to get people out,” she said.

• READ MORE: Taliban militants have secured control over all major cities in Afghanistan
• LISTEN: ‘Things are moving very very quickly’ – Jacinda Ardern

“Previously there have been commercial options for people to leave on if they’re able to get to the point of departure. That will increasingly, if not already, no longer be an option,”

She said that was when the government would step up the work it was doing to try to get them out.

Ardern said that the situation was moving fast and quick decisions would need to be made in terms of those New Zealanders in Afghanistan.

“That is something we’ve been working on, as you can imagine, in a very changeable environment for the past, wee while and is something we will continue to work on.

Additional consideration
“There’s also for us … the additional consideration of those who may have who may have historically worked to support the New Zealand Defence Force or who may have been on the ground over many years in Afghanistan their safety situation, so that’s also something we’re moving as quickly as we can on,” she said.

Ardern said New Zealand had been working with partners to try and determine a safe passage for these New Zealanders, but would not give details about which other countries had been approached.

“There will be security issues around me giving much more detail than I’ve given now, but I can tell you we are working at the highest level alongside our partners to support those New Zealanders who may be on the ground.”

Interpreters contact NZ government
Cabinet is meeting today to consider whether New Zealand can evacuate Afghanistan nationals who supported our military efforts there. The situation is urgent, with civilian lives believed to be in danger.

A small group of people who were not eligible for the Afghan interpreters package in 2012 have now made contact with the New Zealand government, Ardern said.

She said fewer than 40 people, have identified themselves as having worked alongside New Zealand forces, but the majority of these cases are historic and they were not eligible under the previous National government’s “interpreter package”.

Ardern said at that time they were not seen as directly affected or at risk from the Taliban but the current situation has changed dramatically.

“It was basically interpreters at that time who were brought over as they were considered to have the strongest, or face to strongest risk at that time, there were others who weren’t eligible for that who have subsequently made contact.

“Cabinet will be discussing today what more needs to be done to ensure the safety of those who are directly connected to them.”

Ardern said they would need to ensure that these people were in fact working directly alongside the NZ Defence Force and that would be considered by Cabinet today.

Focused on security
She said it was too soon to look ahead with the international community to what would be done regarding the Afghanistan situation.

“We’re quite focused on the security situation on the ground right now, getting those who need to get out out, and doing what we can to support those who supported us, so that’s our immediate consideration I think then we’ll be looking over the horizon to what next with the international community.”

Ardern said it was devastating to see what was happening in Afghanistan now, but that did not diminish the roles of those New Zealanders who served there.

“Everyone makes the best decisions they can at the time they’re made … and in the environment in which they’re made and all I would say to our New Zealand troops who were in there, they would have seen for themselves the difference that they made at that time,” she said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Afghanis who say they have witnessed torture and murder at the hands of Australian soldiers want the chance to testify in court as well as compensation, a journalist says.

Australia’s Defence Force Chief Angus Campbell announced yesterday that there is information to substantiate 23 incidents of alleged unlawful killing of 39 people by 25 special forces personnel in Afghanistan.

He was commenting on a four-year inquiry that found “credible information” supporting allegations of war crimes by the country’s special forces.

• READ MORE: Afghans recall days when Australians unleashed dogs, gunfire
• Australia funds evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan inquiry

Major-General Paul Brereton’s report also said junior soldiers were often required by their patrol commanders to shoot prisoners to get their first kill in a practice known as “blooding”.

The inquiry also found evidence soldiers gloated about their actions, kept kill counts and planted phones and weapons on corpses to justify their actions.

One victim had told him four of his family had been killed – two brothers and two cousins.

In another village he spoke to a number of victims about their bad experiences and they described “murders after murders”.

“One man did say to me that he wanted to look up in the eyes of these killers and ask them why did they kill so many innocent Afghans.”

Another man he interviewed could not stop crying as he likened the sound of bullets from a gun with a silencer to “drops of water”.

“These families… have been telling me that they want to get justice, that they want to make sure this is a transparent process and that those responsible are brought to justice.”

They have asked him if those directly affected will get the chance to fly to Australia to give evidence in courtrooms there, Sarwary said.

Many of the people involved were very poor and they had also asked him about their chances of receiving compensation from Australia.

Sarwary said that the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission has demanded that Australia adopts a transparent process as it lays charges against the perpetrators and there should be compensation for victims.

‘We crossed a very bad line’ – ex-soldier
The Brereton inquiry heard from more than 400 witnesses, including former SAS paramedic Dusty Miller, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.

He told the ABC he witnessed a number of unlawful killings and has since struggled with “psychological wounds”.

He said he felt vindicated after reading the report and was in no doubt that some of the soldiers needed to go to jail for their crimes. It might be hard for the Australian public to accept such behaviour had occurred, he said.

“We’ve got this proud ANZAC tradition that we’re trying to uphold but unfortunately it’s like finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real.

“We crossed a very bad line and we crossed it for a number of years and we need to pay that price now.”

The report also warned that more killings would be revealed in the future and Miller said he was sure that is true.

Some soldiers’ lives had been ruined by what they had witnessed in Afghanistan. It also meant the end of his own military career, Miller said.

‘Everybody knew what was going on’
“Everybody knew what was going on. It was a day-to-day occurrence. We normalised it… you certainly had to go along with what was happening because the alternative would have been professional suicide. You’d have been ostracised.

“There was no way you would have flagged this with the commanders or speak up – that would have been unthinkable.”

Miller said the commanders must have known what was happening especially as they had debriefs after every mission.

However, it was “a minority group” who acted badly and the majority of men he served with were “honourable” although they operated in a “dog eat dog” aggressive environment.

Clear differences between NZ and Australian troops, says author
Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson, the co-author of Hit and Run, the book which led to the Operation Burnham Inquiry, said there was a difference between the way Australian forces behaved and the conduct of New Zealand forces.

“It’s clear that for Operation Burnham the allegations concerned civilian casualties but they weren’t deliberate. The New Zealand forces were involved in an action in Afghanistan that led to civilian casualties but they didn’t intend for those people to die,” Stephenson told Morning Report.

“Whereas in the Australian case, there’s a clear difference, in that they deliberately planned and carried out unlawful actions, alleged war crimes – shooting people who were in their custody and posed no threat or civilians.”

Australian and New Zealand troops worked together in some places, such as headquarters, but they did not go out in large numbers on missions together.

After New Zealand troops had bad experiences working with the US in Afghanistan a decision was made that New Zealand troops would operate as independently as possible so they would not be “contaminated” by some of the behaviour they saw.

In some cases they did support missions, but generally they acted on their own or with the Afghans, Stephenson said.

Australian federal police will investigate the specifics and decisions will be made about which troopers should be prosecuted over the 39 alleged murders. This process may take years, he said.

“It would be my expectation, based on what I’ve heard, and the people I’ve spoken to, that there will definitely be a large number of prosecutions.

“It’s inconceivable to me given that, for example, people have been shown on camera shooting unarmed young men in a field who posed no threat, that there will not be successful prosecutions, convictions and some people will serve serious jail time.”

Defence Force chief General Angus Campbell identified a significant problem with what he called “toxic warrior culture” in Australian forces and this was not seen in the New Zealand forces.

However, Stephenson said it is important for New Zealanders to consider if their troops had served as many rotations in the same same high intensity conflict areas and had lost as many troops in conflicts as the Australians did whether such a culture might evolve.

He believes that NZ troops would not have resorted to this type of behaviour.

“I think there are significant cultural problems in the Australian military. They have got a very different attitude towards indigenous people than our troopers have.

“That’s not to say that our forces have acted impeccably at all times, but I do think there are significant cultural differences, training differences between New Zealand and Australia.”

With New Zealand’s smaller numbers it was also easier to identify bad behaviour.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

By Democracy Now!

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. Last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report The Afghan Files that found Australian special forces soldiers may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The raid came on Wednesday, one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper.

Democracy Now! speaks to Australian journalism professor Joseph Fernandez – correspondent of Reporters Without Borders and Pacific Journalism Review – and Peter Greste, founding director of the Brisbane-based Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

Greste was imprisoned for 400 days in 2013 to 2014 while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

READ MORE: Asia Pacific Report stories on the police ABC raids

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Press freedom groups in Australia are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. On Wednesday last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report that found Australian special forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

ABC investigations executive editor John Lyons spoke on his own network just minutes after police served a warrant naming a news director and the two reporters who broke the story.

JOHN LYONS: They have downloaded 9,214 documents. I counted them. And they are now going through them. They’ve set up a huge screen, and they’re going through, email by email. It’s quite extraordinary.

And I feel—as a journalist, I feel it’s a real violation, because these are emails between this particular journalist and his boss, her boss, its drafts, its scripts of stories.

I’ve never seen an assault on the media as savage as this one we’re seeing today at the ABC. … And the chilling message is not so much for the journalists, but it’s also for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Wednesday’s raid on the ABC came one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper. Police served a warrant related to Smethurst’s reporting on a secret effort by an Australian intelligence service to expand its surveillance capabilities, including against Australian nationals.

Australia’s acting Federal Police Commissioner Neil Gaughan defended the raids, saying journalists could face prison time for holding classified information.

COMMISSIONER NEIL GAUGHAN: No sector of the community should be immune for this type of activity or evidence collection, more broadly. This includes law enforcement itself, the media or, indeed, even politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests in Australia. With us from Brisbane is Peter Greste. He is the UNESCO chair in journalism and communications at University of Queensland. He is founding director of Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

He was imprisoned for over a year, for 400 days, in 2013 to 2014, while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

And joining us from Perth, Australia, Professor Joseph Fernandez is with us, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Fernandez, let’s begin with you. Lay out exactly what happened and when it took place, all the details as you know them, both the raiding of ABC and the journalist’s home.

At her home, the Australian Federal Police spent seven-and-a-half hours going through every nook and cranny of her belongings, including the rubbish bin outside the house. And they sought to access her email messages, phone messages and anything they could lay their hands on, including what she might have kept away in her undies drawer.

Annika obviously was very traumatised by this, but she has held her head up high, in the knowledge that the story about which she was being investigated was really something very arguably and very strongly in the public interest or of legitimate public concern.

The second raid, the following day …

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Sorry. Can you say that again, please?

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was, Joseph?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: The story was that there was a discussion, a discussion about a plan to expand state surveillance, that would have possibly included surveillance of ordinary citizens. And this was quite an unprecedented idea.

And the objective of such a plan was obviously going to be justified on the premise of protecting national security.

The second raid happened at the headquarters of the national broadcaster ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sydney. And police officers entered the premises armed with a warrant with an exhaustive inventory of things that they were looking for.

And as you have noted, they scoured hundreds and thousands of documents and materials, and left with a small collection of materials in a sealed package, with the agreement not to use them until a possible challenge is considered in the days ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Fernandez, these raids coming within a day of each other, was there any coordination, or were these related in any way?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: That’s an interesting question. One of the first questions that sprung into people’s minds was whether they were related, whether this was instigated by the government. The prime minister quickly moved to distance himself and his government from the raids, claiming that the two agencies and the police were acting entirely of their own accord.

And the police themselves are on record as saying that the two events are unrelated. And so, it’s left to be seen, you know, whether new light will be shed on the real circumstances that led to these raids. It’s quite hard to accept, without inquiry as to whether there was absolutely no notice given, whether informally or formally, to the bosses in government.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people to understand, I mean, the ABC is the leading broadcaster throughout Australia. I wanted to bring Peter Greste into this conversation. We had you here in our studio after you were imprisoned for well over for year by Egypt with your two Al Jazeera colleagues.

You were working with Al Jazeera at the time. You certainly knew what it meant to be arrested, to not have rights, not to be even told at the beginning why the Egyptian authorities were holding you. Now you see the situation in Australia.

And I was wondering if you can talk about the laws around press freedom, if you have them in Australia. Amazingly, in this warrant, the warrant gave the police wide-ranging authority to view, seize, edit and destroy virtually any document it saw fit.

PETER GRESTE: Yeah, that’s right. Look, there are a whole host of questions in there, Amy, but let me deal with the very beginning of it, and that’s the way I felt when I heard about the news, because it did—I mean, even now I can feel my skin pricking up, thinking about the raids and what that would have felt like, because I know exactly what it was like to have agents burst into your room looking for evidence, and all of the confusion that surrounds that, the outrage that surrounds that.

But I never really honestly expected to see it take place here in Australia. And it seems to me that even though I’m not suggesting Australia is about to become an authoritarian state like Egypt anytime soon, I think that we are being pushed in the same direction by the same kind of imperatives around national security, the prioritising of national security over the human rights and democratic rights of citizens, largely because it’s much easier to make the political case for national security legislation, particularly when you see attacks in the streets and the consequences of that, but much harder to make the more abstract case for human rights and citizens’ rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on, until you see what that means in practical terms.

And that’s what we saw last week with these two raids. I think it’s very, very concerning to me, and I’m deeply worried.

Now, as you mentioned, we don’t have in Australia any explicit protection for press freedom written into the law, nothing about freedom of speech. Australia has no bill of rights. All we have is an implied right of political communications, that the High Court decided that was there as a function of our democracy.

They said that we live in a representative democracy, and you can’t have an effective representative democracy without political communication, therefore, that right is somehow inferred in the Constitution.

But without anything like the First Amendment in the United States here in Australia, without any explicit protection for press freedom, what we’re seeing is a lot of scope for our legislators to draft laws that really intrude on press freedom in all sorts of deeply troubling ways that make it much harder for journalists to protect their sources, make it much harder even for journalists to contact sources within government.

And so, what we’re seeing is a vast web of interconnected national security laws that, in all sorts of ways, make these kinds of raids that we saw last week possible.

I’m not so critical of the Federal Police for carrying out the raids. I accept that they were probably doing their jobs. And as we’ve been hearing, there may well have been some kind of political involvement in there.

But let’s take what the Federal Police have been saying at face value, that there was nothing political. If there was nothing political, if they were simply fulfilling their duties under the law, then, clearly, the law needs to change. And that’s what we need to start talking about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter Greste, we have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of—who determines the violations of state secrets? Is there one centralised agency, or can various federal agencies decide to conduct these kinds of raids in Australia?

PETER GRESTE: No. Look, it’s quite difficult to know quite how the laws come into effect or come into force. I mean, let’s take a look at the data retention laws, the metadata. In any number of more than 20 agencies, government agencies can look into any Australian’s metadata without a warrant.

Now, they need to apply for a special journalist warrant if they want to investigate journalists’ metadata in a search for sources, but, otherwise, there is no—there is no warrant system. They can look anywhere, anywhere that they want.

And I think that’s the kind of scope that we’re talking about. That’s overreach. You talk to any lawyer, any civil rights activist, anyone who knows about the way the law operates, and they’ll acknowledge that that’s overreach. And we need to really start a vigorous conversation within this country about the limits of state power and the kind of ways that we need to encourage and support press freedom, and also the protection of whistleblowers, because, ultimately, these raids were in the hunt for the sources of these stories, for the journalists’ sources, for the whistleblowers that felt that these stories needed to be told.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to wrap up right now, but we want to continue the vigorous discussion, and we’re going to bring folks Part 2 at democracynow.org under web exclusives.

Peter Greste, we want to thank you, UNESCO chair in journalism and communications, University of Queensland, founding director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, imprisoned for more than 400 days.

Also, Joseph Fernandez, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders. Stay with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

• This Democracy Now! transcript is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
• The Afghan Files: Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces

Military forces on peacekeeping duties often face dilemmas that are difficult to resolve, says a retired colonel who is now an education consultant.

Colonel Richard Hall, who retired from the British Army after 25 years’ service, peacekeeping roles in several countries, and led a New Zealand mission to Afghanistan in 2008/9, told an audience at Auckland University of Technology he had faced a challenge when a local tribal chief asked for security for young schoolchildren.

The chief was running a small school where he was teaching young children, but he was getting death threats from the Taliban who wanted him to stop teaching.

READ MORE: 10 years, eight lives, and $300 in Bamiyan – was New Zealand’s time in Afghanistan worth it?

Colonel Hall had to decline the request.

“Sadly, I couldn’t,” he said.

This kind of dilemma was rather common for military officers, especially when they were engaged in an operation with limited military resources or mandate that did not allow such activity, said Hall.

He was speaking at a public event organised by the Auckland branch of the United Nations Association of New Zealand on the theme “peacekeeping and the use of force”.

‘Victors’ peace’
Hall said World War 2 was a “victors’ peace” and the United Nations Charter was heavily influenced by the Allies who had won the war – China, France, United Kingdom, United States and the Soviet Union.

They “preserved” their power through enabling a veto in the Security Council. That gave them the ability to influence their “common interest”.

“It wasn’t long before the political divide between the East and West came out,” he said.

This was when the permanent members were often in complete disagreement with each other.

The common interest became difficult, and often it led to the creation of “mandates” by the UN.

“Those [mandates] were a compromise, they were weakly worded to avoid a veto,” Hall said.

This was a major concern as it caused lots of difficulties for the people on the ground, including confusion over the role of UN peacekeeping force.

The public generally confused the UN’s role with providing security to the host country, but that was incorrect.

Impartial role
The key aspect of peacekeeping operation was the UN being totally impartial.

It was not about taking sides – except for two exceptions; the Korean War in 1950 and the invasion of Iraq in 1990. However, these were examples of peace enforcement operations (under chapter 7 of the Charter) as distinct from peacekeeping operations.

The UN tried to bring various sides of a conflict together through a political process to reach a peace agreement – while the military worked in the background facilitating the process.

UN Charter’s chapter six is devoted to the peaceful settlements of disputes.

“Political negotiation between warring parties were the preeminent way of resolving conflicts”, Hall said.

Some roles for the military in peacekeeping tended to be completely unarmed or lightly armed troops doing a “couple of things”.

Hall said the UN military might be observers ensuring there was going to be a ceasefire agreement, or they might be creating a buffer zone between warring factions to prevent the conflict reigniting due to breach of a ceasefire.

Health impact
UN peacekeeping soldiers also suffered seriously from post-traumatic stress disorder as they were not allowed to intervene.

According to the United Nations (UN) Principles of Peacekeeping, there are three basic principles that set UN peacekeeping operations apart as a tool for maintaining international peace and security – consent of the parties, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defence, and defence of the mandate.

UN peacekeeping forces were not allowed to engage in any kind of offensive, unless it is for self-defence which created a huge problem for their mental well-being, Hall said.

Soldiers witness “killing and raping” and they could not do anything about it and that caused more psychological distress.

Hall said that if the public did not support the mission, that was demoralising for soldiers.

“They feel they have been committed to an operation and there is no political, moral support from the government of the day and also the general population,” he said.

Responding to a question from the audience, Hall said: “Although not a peacekeeping operation, an example of a lack of support was the Vietnam War: the New Zealand soldiers experienced the trauma of war and on their return were badly let down by the government and public.

“It wasn’t their fault that they were there, they were fulfilling a commitment made the New Zealand government of the day.”

Hall has been decorated with the New Zealand Order of Merit and has had a distinguished military career with service in Bosnia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Middle East and Northern Ireland as well as Afghanistan.

He was seconded to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to establish regional peacekeeping centres in Africa, working extensively with local military, politicians and NGOs.

Hall’s book A Long Road to Progress: Dispatches from a Kiwi Commander in Afghanistan is an autobiographical account.

Currently he is a senior educational consultant in the deputy vice-chancellor’s office at Auckland University of Technology.

• United Nations Association of New Zealand

By David Robie in Paris

When Reporters Without Borders chief Christophe Deloire introduced the Paris-based global media watchdog’s Asia-Pacific press freedom defenders to his overview last week, it was grim listening.

First up in RSF’s catalogue of crimes and threats against the global media was Czech President Miloš Zeman’s macabre press conference stunt late last year.

However, Zeman’s sick joke angered the media when he brandished a dummy Kalashnikov AK47 with the words “for journalists” carved into the wood stock at the October press   conference in Prague and with a bottle of alcohol attached instead of an ammunition clip.

Zeman has never been cosy with journalists but this gun stunt and a recent threat about “liquidating” journalists (another joke?) rank him alongside US President Donald Trump and the Philippines leader, Rodrigo Duterte, for their alleged hate speech against the media.

Deloire cited the Zeman incident to highlight global and Asia-Pacific political threats against the media. He pointed out that the threat came just a week after leading Maltese investigative journalist – widely dubbed as the “one-woman Wikileaks” – was killed in a car bomb blast.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated outside her home in Bidnija on 16 October 2017 after exposing Maltese links in the Panama Papers and her relentless corruption inquiries implicated her country’s prime minister and other key politicians.

Although arrests have been made and three men face trial for her killing, RSF recently published a statement calling for “full justice’” – including prosecution of those behind the murder.

Harshly critical
While noting the positive response by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to the journalists’ safety initiative by RSF and other media freedom bodies, Deloire was harshly critical of many political leaders, including Philippines President Duterte, over their attitude towards crimes with impunity against journalists.

In the Philippines, for example, there is still no justice for the 32 journalists brutally slain – along with 26 other victims – on 23 November 2009 by a local warlord’s militia in to so-called Ampatuan massacre, an unsuccessful bid to retain political power for their boss in national elections due the following year.

Rappler published a report last year updating the painfully slow progress in the investigations and concluded that “eight years and three presidential administrations later, no convictions have been made”.

Ironically, Rappler itself – hated by President Dutertre – has also been the subject of an RSF campaign in an effort to block the administration’s cynical and ruthless attempt to close down the most dynamic and successful online publication in the Philippines (133rd in the RSF World Media Freedom Index – a drop of six places).

Founded by ex-CNN investigative journalist Maria Ressa, Rappler has continued to challenge the government, described by RSF last year as the “most dangerous” country for journalists in Asia.

Duterte’s continuous attacks against the media were primarily responsible for the downward trend for the Philippines in the latest RSF Index, with RSF saying: “The dynamism of the media has also been checked by athe emergence of a leader who wants to show he is all powerful.”

The media watchdog also stressed that the Duterte administration had “developed several methods for pressuring and silencing journalists who criticise his notorious war on drugs”.

Test case
The revocation of Rappler’s licence by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is regarded as a test case for media freedom in the Philippines.

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines advocate Jhoanna Ballaran says the situation is very worrying.

The RSF consultation with some of its Asia-Pacific researchers and advocates in the field has followed a similar successful one in South America. It is believed that this is the first time the watchdog has hosted such an Asia Pacific-wide event.

Twenty three correspondents from 17 countries or territories — Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Hongkong, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Tibet — took part in the consultation plus a team of Paris-based RSF advocates.

Asia Pacific head Daniel Bastard says the consultation is part of a new strategy making better use of the correspondents’ network to make the impact of advocacy work faster and even more effectively than in the past.

The Pacific delegation – Associate Professor Joseph Fernandez, a journalist and media law academic who is head of journalism at Curtin University of Australia (19th on the RSF Index), AUT Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie of New Zealand (8th) and former PNG Post-Courier chief executive and media consultant Bob Howarth of Papua New Guinea (53rd) – made lively interventions even though most media freedom issues “pale into insignificance” compared with many countries in the region where journalists are regularly killed or persecuted.

Nauru’s controversial ban on the ABC from covering the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) this September was soundly condemned and the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree in Fiji (57th) and efforts by Pacific governments to introduce the repressive “China model” to curb the independence of Facebook and other social media were also strongly criticised. (Nauru is unranked and China is 176th, four places above the worst country – North Korea at 180th).

Media highlights
Highlights of the three-day consultation included a visit to the multimedia Agence France-Presse, one of the world’s “big two” news agencies, and workshops on online security and sources protection and gender issues.

No sooner had the consultation ended when RSF was on the ball with another protest over two detained local journalists in Myanmar working for Reuters news agency.

An RSF statement condemned Monday’s decision by a Yangon judge to go ahead with the trial of the journalists on a trumped up charge of possessing secrets and again demanded their immediate release.

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, have already been detained for more than 200 days with months of preliminary hearings.

They now face a possible 14-year prison sentence for investigating an army massacre of Rohingya civilians in Inn Din, a village near the Bangladeshi border in Rakhine state, in September 2017.

RSF secretary-general Deloire says: “The refusal to dismiss the case against the journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo is indicative of a judicial system that follows orders and a failed transition to democracy in Myanmar.”

The chances of seeing an independent press emerge in Myanmar have now “declined significantly”.

The Pacific Media Centre’s David Robie was in Paris for the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific consultation. Dr Robie is also convenor of PMC’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2018
• Who murdered Malta’s most famous journalist?
• ABC ban: News Corp rejects media boycott of Nauru forum

Czech President Miloš Zeman’s “joke” threat against journalists. Video: The Young Turks

For journalists who cover Afghanistan, the bombing that killed nine local reporters last week in Kabul was a sober reminder of the dangers the media continue to face in the country’s seemingly endless conflict.

The victims were not well-known foreign correspondents, but a group of courageous Afghan photographers, reporters and cameramen who had gone to report on another bomb blast that had exploded about 40 minutes earlier.

They included a photographer from the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as contributors to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several local media companies.

READ MORE: Free media week killings underscore crimes of impunity against journalists

Elsewhere on the same day, a 10th journalist was shot dead – a reporter for the BBC’s Pashto service, Ahmad Shah.

According to Reporters Without Borders, it was the deadliest single day for journalists in the country since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

The principal way we receive news from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq is via eyewitnesses on social media and the global news agencies – AFP, Associated Press and Reuters. Agency reporters are often the first “media responders” to deadly incidents like suicide bombings and terror attacks. They also negotiate with local reporters on the ground to secure the best pictures, which then get relayed to the thousands of media companies around the world who subscribe to their services.

To feed this beast of global 24/7 news coverage, there is still an expectation that agency journalists will dare to tread where others will not.

Journalists as targets
Increasingly, this has become even more dangerous, as extremist groups like the Islamic State have shifted tactics to specifically target journalists.

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee warned of “an unprecedented increase in threats and violence against journalists” in a 2017 report:

Increased threats from DAESH to media and journalists have created a new wave of concerns about the security of journalists and media. What is seriously worrying is the group’s direct attacks against media, which in 2017 is responsible for the vast majority of journalists’ deaths.

Reporters Without Borders says 34 journalists and media workers have died in attacks by the Islamic State and Taliban in Afghanistan since the start of 2016. The situation has become so dire that the group has called on the United Nations to appoint a special representative dedicated to protecting the lives of journalists. The proposal has been backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Parliament.

Without adequate security provisions, journalists have also been abandoning countries that have become too dangerous, Reporters Without Borders notes in its 2017 annual report on reporters killed in the line of duty.

AFP continues to operate with a team of two or three foreign journalists in Kabul, backed up by seven full-time Afghan journalists and various stringers working across the country. Reuters employs just one foreign correspondent and one local journalist in Kabul, and AP has two local reporters and two local photographers.

Former BBC journalist Bilal Sarwary, who now works as a freelancer, tells me there are very few Western journalists left in Afghanistan because “Iraq and then Syria have commanded their attention” in recent years. He said The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post still have reporters based in the country, but now rely almost entirely on freelance photographers.

Responding to the new reality
Under global news director Michèle Léridon, AFP has been highly innovative at adapting to news gathering challenges, but also strict in its policy of not being made stooges by terrorists. According to Phil Chetwynd, AFP’s global editor-in-chief, the company is constantly evaluating its security procedures.

We have always been cautious about rushing to the scene of attacks. We have moved our office several times in Kabul to find a better location as the threat level has changed. We have sent security experts to review our procedures and to recommend physical reinforcements and measures to our buildings.

We have also sent reporters on hostile environment courses and sent trainers to Kabul to train all staff including non-journalists. The message to all our reporters remains that security comes first.

Chetwynd notes the suicide bomber who killed the nine Afghan journalists in Kabul last week – a group that included AFP photographer Shah Marai – had apparently been posing as a fellow reporter, a new tactic by terror groups.

“We are already changing and reacting to this appalling new reality,” he says.

It’s clear that all media organisations need to constantly rethink their strategies when it comes to reporting in conflict zones.

Media scholars, too, are tackling the issue. At the upcoming International Communications Association conference in Prague later this month, I will be joining other academics on a panel titled “Voices in journalism: Local news staff producing international news” to discuss the latest research examining the working conditions of stringers, fixers and local journalists.

Researched challenges
One of the panellists, Saumava Mitra, has researched the work of photojournalists in Afghanistan and co-authored an essay last week on the challenges they face:

We have seen that local journalists usually have much poorer access to hostile-environment training, work-hazard insurance or even medical benefits from their employers. They face different threats and risks than those who parachute into the conflict and have nowhere to go if the situation escalates.

They are also much more prone to reprisals. The first step to help prevent their deaths is to acknowledge that the news we consume is often produced by journalists working under precarious conditions in hostile places.

Marai, for one, always knew the dangers of working in Kabul, as his blog on the AFP website so devastatingly shows. In it, he recounts how life changed for the worse when the Taliban returned to stage attacks in Kabul in the mid-2000s:

“I don’t dare to take my children for a walk. I have five and they spend their time cooped up inside the house. Every morning as I go to the office and every evening when I return home, all I think of are cars that can be booby-trapped, or of suicide bombers coming out of a crowd. I can’t take the risk. So we don’t go out.

“I have never felt life to have so little prospects and I don’t see a way out. It’s a time of anxiety.”

Dr Colleen Murrell is undergraduate coordinator for journalism at Monash University, Melbourne, and the author of Foreign Correspondents and International Newsgathering: The role of fixers.This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished on Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons licence.

• Journalists in war zones tread a fine line between safety and freedom of speech

Investigative journalist and author Nicky Hager has taken journalism students inside the process behind the controversial book Hit & Run, outlining an example of investigative journalism.

He described Hit & Run as a book which “reconstructs a crime scene” five or six years after a botched raid by New Zealand’s SAS allegedly killed six and wounded 15 innocent civilians, as opposed to the fighters believed responsible for killing a fellow soldier in a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2010.

But more importantly, Hager told students and staff at Auckland University of Technology last week, Hit & Run — co-authored with independent journalist Jon Stephenson — concerned “local business”.

“This is about us as New Zealanders and our military, that we pay for, and works on our behalf, whether it is sticking up for the values and beliefs and playing the role that we would want our country playing in the world, which we’ve got every right as New Zealanders to have opinions about, and feel strongly about,” he said.

“This is our business.”

1000-piece jigsaw puzzle
Hager described investigative journalism as a “related trade” to more traditional, everyday journalism, which is the “bloodstream of democracy”.

Hager told the third-year journalism students investigative journalism – sometimes a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle – could take “weeks, months, years” and explained it differed from regular journalism due to a few, key “ingredients”.

“Investigative journalism is actually just the people who put the time into chasing up that issue and sticking with it until they crack it.

“In other words, there’s no reason why anybody can’t be doing the work I’m talking about. Who has that public interest motivation, who likes research, and has some determination to stick at something until they crack it. Those are the ingredients.”

Hager also said drawing information together “is one of the vital components of investigative journalism”.

“It’s trying to crack the facts.”

More importantly, Hager stressed, investigative journalism is about protecting sources.

‘Am I hiding my sources?’
“When I’m writing, I’m always asking myself: ‘Am I hiding my sources well enough?’ Half my brain is in source-protection mode.”

This was true of Hit & Run, Hager said.

“From the very first meetings, I had to make sure that there were no connections between us, so for when the inevitable witchhunt came, nobody would be able to find a connection. No metadata.

“There is no story which is worth ruining someone’s life for.”

Speaking with Asia Pacific Report after the talk, Hager said this was highly important in New Zealand, where a culture of persecuting whistleblowers exists.

“New Zealand is very unkind to whistleblowers. Apart from an occasional, very brave, determined person, hopefully near the end of their career who speaks up, I usually would never recommend someone to be a whistleblower in the sense of being open.

‘We’re going to skin them alive’
“I think it’s much safer for people to leak. We’re a small society where the ‘old boys’ network’ can punish people too much.”

Hager said this was disappointing, given New Zealand’s “long and honourable history” in which people from every sector of society quietly talk to journalists and politicians.

But the ‘old boys’ network’ will not be a deterrent, Hager affirmed.

“As long as we’ve got a country where people want information, there will be people leaking information, that’s guaranteed. We’ll keep going.”

However, he added the military’s actions after the release of Hit & Run prove it has every intention to “punish whistleblowers”.

“They’re having an inquiry right now and the inquiry’s called: ‘Which bastards spoke to them, and we’re going to skin them alive.”

Hager said Hit & Run was the “real story” behind New Zealand’s military role in Afghanistan, in which the SAS had been involved in a “misguided, disastrous raid”.

‘Unscrupulously covered up’
“It struck me that if we could take one incident from a war, out of all the incidents, and write it really carefully and fully, then somebody who bothered to read that would actually – hopefully – get what a war is like: Real people, in a real situation, where people are fighting on sides and trying to kill each other. Who are these people?”

He also told Asia Pacific Report his thoughts on the military’s decision to hold no inquiry on the claims made in Hit & Run, the origins of which have been “unscrupulously covered up”.

“The military’s reaction to Hit & Run is nothing more than a continuation of a cover-up. This is what a cover-up looks like. They are dodging and weaving. Their arguments are weak, but there’s an underlying determination not to be scrutinised.

“In a normal government world, if someone had been accused of serious things, which they thought weren’t true, they’d want there to be an inquiry, they’d want someone to look at the facts and say, ‘those scurrilous authors were wrong and our reputations have been impugned’. But they don’t want that because we’re right. So what we’re seeing is them desperately trying to avoid being caught out.”

More importantly, the claims made in Hit & Run, Hager said, reveal a problem at the heart of the New Zealand military — secrecy.

“We’re seeing the inevitable results of an organisation which is too secretive. That believes it can keep all of its activities secret. This comes out in all sorts of dodgy, and petty, behaviour inside the Defence Force, because they’ve got used to never being properly scrutinised.

“We’re seeing a systemic problem in a secretive organisation which shouldn’t be so secret.”

On a more positive note, however, Hager closed his talk with a final piece of advice for the aspiring journalists in the room:

“We should be absolutely trustworthy.”

• Innovation and collaboration key to success: Nicky Hager
• Authors of new book call for full inquiry into SAS ‘betrayal’ claim
• SAS soldier backs up Afghan raid claims – Herald calls for inquiry
• Hit & Run review – a painstaking and dangerous book challenge
• Hit & Run reply: This is what a military cover-up looks like

Al Jazeera’s report on the attack on the National Radio Television of Afghanistan office in Jalalabad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has strongly condemned the attack on a state television station in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, reports Pacific Media Watch.

The four-hour attack on the Jalalabad office of National Radio Television of Afghanistan (RTA) yesterday killed at least six people and injured at least 18 others, according to media reports.

For the purpose of this analysis, we examine the statements and claims of the Chief of New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), Lieutenant-General Tim Keating, made before journalists during his press conference on Monday, 27 March 2017. We also understand, that the claims put by the general form the basis of a briefing by NZDF’s top ranking officer to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Bill English.

It appears the official account , if true, underscores a probable breach of legal obligations – not necessarily placing culpability solely on the New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) commandos on the ground, but rather on the officers who commanded their actions, ordered their movements, their tasks and priorities prior to, during, and after Operation Burnham.

READ MORE: No inquiry – ‘It is the next step in the seven-year cover-up’

*******

According to the New Zealand Defence Force’s official statement, Operation Burnham “aimed to detain Taliban insurgent leaders who were threatening the security and stability of Bamyan Province and to disrupt their operational network”. (ref. NZDF rebuttal)

We are to understand Operation Burnham’s objective was to identify, capture, or kill (should this be justified under NZDF rules of engagement), those insurgents who were named on a Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) that NZDF intelligence suggested were responsible for the death of NZDF soldier Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell.

When delivering NZDF’s official account of Operation Burnham before media, Lieutenant General Tim Keating said:

“After the attack on the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZPRT), which killed Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell, the NZPRT operating in Bamyan Province did everything it could to reduce the target profile of our people operating up the Shakera Valley and into the north-east of Bamyan Province.

“We adjusted our routine, reduced movements to an absolute minimum, maximised night driving, and minimised time on site in threat areas.

“The one thing the PRT [NZPRT] couldn’t do was to have an effect on the individuals that attacked Lieutenant O’Donnell’s patrol. For the first time, the insurgents had a major success — and they were well positioned to do so again.”

For the purpose of a counter-strike, intelligence was sought and Lieutenant-General Keating said: “We knew in a matter of days from local and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) intelligence who had attacked our patrol [where and when Lt. O’Donnell was killed].”

The intelligence specified the villages where the alleged insurgents were suspected of coming from and Leutenant-General Keating said: “This group had previously attacked Afghan Security Forces and elements of the German and Hungarian PRTs.”

The New Zealand government authorised permission for the Kabul-based NZSAS troops to be used in Operation Burnham.

“What followed was 14 days of reliable and corroborated intelligence collection that provided confirmation and justification for subsequent actions. Based on the intelligence, deliberate and detailed planning was conducted,” Lieutenant-General Keating said.

Revenge, Keating said, was never a motivation. Rather, according to him, the concern was for the security of New Zealand’s reconstruction and security efforts in Bamyan province.

As stated above, Operation Burnham’s primary objective was to identify, capture or kill Taliban insurgent leaders named in the intelligence data.

We know, from the New Zealand Defence Force’s own account, Operation Burnham failed to achieve that goal.

Analysis of the NZDF official account
The official account of events that occurred in the early hours of 22 August 2010, describe how Taliban insurgents, realising coalition forces were preparing to raid the area (marked as “Operation Burnham Area of Operation” in a map (slide 3) declasified and released to media on 27 March 2017), formed a tactical maneuver using civilians (women, children and elderly) as a human shield.

Despite the official account placing this group within a building, within a small hamlet, within the area of operation, within Tirgiran Valley, there is no clear definitive official account yet given of what happened to either the civilians or the insurgents.

This appears to be an obvious void in the official record, but one that has failed so far to be scrutinised.

To follow the logic of Lieutenant-General Tim Keating’s account (detailed below), is to discover our defence personnel, who were in charge of the ground and air operation during Operation Burnham, failed to identify what had become of those civilians (women, children, and the elderly), and also importantly the suspected insurgents who Lt. General Keating said during his briefing used the villagers as a human shield.

We know from the Chief of Defence Force’s notes as provided on 27 March 2017, that as Operation Burnham began, NZDF was in command of United States manned aircraft (including helicopters and possibly a AC-130). The aircraft were swarming above the Tirgiran Valley.

From the NZDF account, an NZDF joint terminal air controller was in charge of the air attack against those NZDF had defined as insurgents.

Lieutenant-General Keating stated the alleged insurgents were armed and a NZDF commander authorised the US manned aircraft to commence firing. Weapons-fire then began to rain down on the valley from above.

Meanwhile, NZSAS ground force soldiers prepared to secure their positions and to defend themselves against any potential enemy counter-attack.

Lieutenant-General Keating stated the insurgents responded: “The insurgents, the guerrilla force, the tactic is mixed in with the civilian population, if you like, the term used is a human shield. So they use civilians as a shield.”

He added: “What occurred, is a helicopter was engaging a group of insurgents outside the village, on the outskirts of the village. During that engagement, it was noted by the ground forces there – the SAS ground forces – that some of the rounds [from the US manned aircraft] were falling short, and went into a building where it was believed there were civilians as well as armed insurgents.”

To be clear, from this account, Lieutenant-General Keating stated a group of insurgents were being tracked, targeted, and fired upon by the US manned aircraft and under the command of a New Zealand Defence Force terminal air controller.

Meanwhile, according to the NZDF record, one of the airborne helicopter’s weapon’s sights were not calibrated correctly, and, according to Lieutenant-General Keating, 30mm projectiles went into a building where it was believed there were civilians as well as armed insurgents – remember these 30mm projectiles are capable of penetrating the side of a tank.

For accuracy, Lieutenant-General Keating restated his account: “It is noted, the building, there were armed insurgents in there, but it is believed that there may have been civilians in the building.”

He then added: “There’s no confirmation that any casualties occurred, but there may have been.”

He restated again: “There were civilians in that building.”

Now, this is where the Chief of Defence Force’s account fails to further explain what occurred after that point.

To summarise, the official position of the New Zealand Defence Force is:

• There were civilians in a building within the village that was fired upon by an armor piercing aircraft weapon
• That it was believed insurgents were also in that building
• That civilian casualties or deaths “may have been” or occurred inside the building.

At this juncture, we must consider whether the New Zealand Defence Force ground commanders had a responsibility to determine whether there were Taliban insurgents in the building? And if so, whether they were the individuals listed on the JPEL list, those deemed responsible for the death of Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell? And what of the ground commanders’ legal requirements, the duty of care with respect to civilians, were NZDF commanders on the ground or back in Kabul compelled by law to confirm the status of the civilians, whether they were injured or killed?

When asked by a journalist at the 27 March 2017 press conference: “If there may have been civilian casualties, why not have an inquiry to find out?”

Lieutenant-General Keating replied: “Even if there was, as far as the New Zealand Defence Force has heard, the coalition investigation has, um, said that uh, if there were casualties, the fault of those casualties was a mechanical failure of a piece of equipment.”

This reply does not appear to consider the legal requirements under:

• Second Protocol to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, Article 7: the obligation to provide medical assistance to all wounded, whether or not they have taken part in the armed conflict
• Second Protocol to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, Article 8: the obligation to search for and collect the wounded and to ensure their adequate care
• Second Protocol to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, Article 13: the obligation to protect the civilian population against dangers arising from military operations
• Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971, section 102. This section provides that the commanding officer of a person alleged to have committed an offence under that Act must initiate proceedings in the form of a charge or refer the allegation to civil authorities, unless the commanding officer considers the allegation is not well-founded. While little legal guidance is provided, it cannot be accepted that preliminary inquiries to determine whether an allegation is well-founded can be considered adequate where they fail to obtain evidence from the injured parties, determine their identities or even verify that they exist
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 28
• The NZDF Manual of Armed Forces Law provides that there are three types of inquiry in the NZDF: a preliminary inquiry, a court of inquiry and a command investigation. (It appears however the ISAF investigation cited by the Chief of Defence Force was not any of the above forms of inquiry).

Specifically, if you analyse Lieutenant-General Keating’s account, the New Zealand Defence Force commanders failed to identify whether any insurgents were inside the building and whether there were dead or wounded civilians.

Why was this the case? It seems reasonable to suggest, this is an abandonment of logic. It does not make sense.

We know from official NZDF documents the soldiers arrived at the scene of Operation Burnham at 0030 hours on 22 August 2010 and left at 0345 hours, that’s the official record.

To clarify, the NZSAS commandos were in the area of operation for 3 hours 15 minutes. Lieutenant-General Keating stated, near the conclusion of the raid: “The ground force commander chose at that time that there was no longer a threat and they were leaving.”

How could that rationally be the case unless the suspected insurgents inside that building had been checked? Was it not suspected that there were insurgents in that building?

Surely the ground force commanders would be compelled to seek and identify the inhabitants of that building to see if they matched the names/descriptions on the JPEL list? After all, the manhunt for Taliban leadership was the purpose of the raid that night.

Also, logic would suggest, the people inside the building were in part civilians including women and probably children – by Lieutenant-General Keating’s account the group likely included wounded civilians and probably a dead child.

Also, it is reasonable to suggest, considering the events over those 3 hours 15 minutes, the survivors would have been crying, weeping, even howling, and the wounded would likely have been in agony.

It defies belief that the ground force commanders, and their counterparts back in Kabul, were not aware of this building, that the NZDF account states was housing suspected Taliban, and included a group of civilian victims that had been used as a human shield.

The entire area of operation specific to Operation Burnham is a skewed rectangle approximately 500 metres wide by 1 kilometre long, with an intensified operation plan focusing on two small hamlets, each approximately 50×200 metres in area [based on the scale measures of the NZDF map] – named Objective 1 and Objective 2 in the NZDF released material.

To state it simply, the official silence surrounding the above-mentioned building, and the fate of the people inside, speaks volumes. It leaves one to consider at worst whether a crime was committed by New Zealand Defence Force commanders that night – whether by failing in their duty to care for the injured they were in breach of Articles 8, 9 and 13 of the Second Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.

Additional note:

• The Statute of the International Criminal Court defines war crimes as, inter alia, “serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict” and “serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in an armed conflict not of an international character”. (Ref. IHL Definition of war crimes, page 1 (pdf) – ICC Statute, Article 8 (cited in Vol. II, Ch. 44, § 3))
• “The Statute defines as within the scope of the law, the “launching an attack without attempting to aim properly at a military target or in such a manner as to hit civilians without any thought or care as to the likely extent of death or injury amounts to an indiscriminate attack”.
• War crimes can consist of acts or omissions. Examples of the latter include failure to provide a fair trial and failure to provide food or necessary medical care to persons in the power of the adversary.’

At best, if NZDF’s official account is to be relied upon, we are to believe the NZSAS ground commanders failed to ensure the Taliban insurgents they sought were not holed up in a building that had sustained damage from coalition force aircraft. If this assumption is incorrect, at what point had the suspected insurgents left the building? And what had become of the civilians that had been allegedly used as a human shield? Again, the vacuum of information specific to this aspect of the official account needs to be explained, including an explanation as to why NZDF’s account remains vague after six years since Operation Burnham was conducted.

It appears reasonable to assert that this single issue, notwithstanding the irregularities of official NZDF stated “facts”, warrants further official and independent investigation.

As it is, at this juncture, we are left to consider a series of unanswered questions that to date the New Zealand Chief of Defence Force has failed to satisfy. Here are some of them.

Key unanswered questions:

• What were the specific definitions of an insurgent that were used by NZDF for the purposes of evaluation during Operation Burnham and for the purpose of post-operation official analysis? For example; was it deemed that anyone who was male and of a fighting age was defined to be an insurgent?
• Were NZDF soldiers fired upon by individuals (villagers or insurgents) located within the confines of the villages or surrounding area during Operation Burnham?
• Was the individual who was killed by a NZSAS soldier or NZDF personnel carrying a weapon at the time of this shooting? If so, had he fired or attempted to fire his weapon in an attempt to kill or wound NZDF personnel?
• How long in minutes were the coalition forces’ helicopters, and any other airborne craft, firing their weapons on the villages and surrounding region during Operation Burnham?
  How long in minutes were NZSAS soldiers involved in securing the operational area from real or potential insurgent attack?
• Did NZDF personnel at anytime seek to identify individuals (and their status, injured, killed, or otherwise) who were located inside or near the building that Lt. General Keating said had suffered damage from an alleged mis-aimed firing from an airborne coalition aircraft?
• Were those who were injured or killed within sight of NZDF personnel before, during, and/or after the alleged mis-aimed firing?
• How many individuals did the NZDF personnel suspect were inside the building?
• How many of these people did the NZDF personnel suspect were civilians?
• How many were suspected of being women?
• How many were suspected of being children?
• Lieutenant-General Keating suggested that one of the individuals that may have been killed during Operation Burnham was a six year-old child. What was the gender of this child?
• Was their any attempt to identify this six year-old victim?
• Was this child Fatima, the three year-old child identified in the Hit & Run [ISBN 978 0 947503 39 0] book? If not, then who was this child?
• What actions did NZDF personnel do to exercise their duty of care obligations to the injured and to civilians?
• What reports, cautions, evaluations were written and/or submitted regarding Operation Burnham to NZDF by the NZDF legal officer who was on the ground during Operation Burnham?

The twisting turning official account – is this smoke and mirrors?
As a consequence of the Hit & Run book [ISBN 978 0 947503 39 0] being published, New Zealand Defence Force’s top ranking soldier, Lieutenant-General Tim Keating admitted civilians “may have been” killed during the operation.

Up until 27 March 2017, for the past six years, New Zealand Defence Force has insisted that no civilians were killed during Operation Burnham on 22 August 2010.

But on Monday, under questioning from the media, at the March 27 press conference, Lietenant-General Keating stated that the NZDF’s new “official line” regarding civilian deaths was “there may have been”.

He then attempted to suggest that NZDF’s previously stated position – that claims of civilian deaths were “unfounded” – was basically the same thing.

“I’m not going to get cute here and say it’s a twist on words, it’s the same thing, ‘unfounded’, ‘there may have been’. The official line is that there may have been casualties,” Lieutenant-General Keating said.

A journalist then challenged him further suggesting: “They’re different things, one means they didn’t happen and one mean might’ve done.”

Lieutenant-General Keating then replied: “You’re right…the, the, the official line is that civilian casualties may have occurred, but not corroborated.”

When asked how many insurgents were killed, Lieutenant-General Keating replied: “A significant number of insurgents, identified insurgents, were killed during Operation Burnham.”

When asked again how many were killed, Lt. General Keating stated: “Nine.”

When asked if NZDF had the names of the insurgents that were killed, he replied: “No, we do not have names of insurgents.”

This trajectory, inching toward a truth, occurred under tight questioning by a journalist, over just a few minutes.

What further truths will become relevant to understanding what occurred that night in Khak Khuday Dad and Naik villages should a commission of inquiry be established?

The inconsistencies – a summary
In evaluation, it is reasonable to assert the official government inconsistencies observed along a six-year timeline offer the appearance of a military hierarchy that has being dragged, by degrees, (mainly by the work of Jon Stephenson, an investigative journalist specialising in war and conflict reportage) into an arena where the floodlight of public interest ought to shed light on secrets long since filed into a dark place.

However, considering the above, rather than responding openly to the challenge of meeting its responsibilities to the New Zealand Minister of Defence and public, the New Zealand Defence Force appears resistant to its obligations toward open and accurate disclosure of non-classified fact.

In conclusion, if this is true, this conduct exhibited by the officials of New Zealand Defence Force and its Chief Lieutenant-General Tim Keating is hardly a defining benchmark of “exemplary” standards.

Actually, the admissions of relevant information, that is forthcoming only when lanced from the New Zealand Defence Force under questioning, offers the impression of a smoke and mirrors operation – it may appear churlish to suggest, but perhaps the post-Operation Burnham aftermath ought to be referred to as Operation Desert Road (bleak, cold, inhospitable, proceed with caution).

The public deserves to know the whole truth, not spin or part-truths – both the public interest and the national interest depends on it.

By the New Zealand Defence Force’s own account, it appears reasonable to suggest that the commanders overseeing Operation Burnham had legal obligations to civilians; that they were potentially negligent when considered against their stated rules of engagement, rules of conduct, obligations to international human rights law and international humanitarian law – negligent of their obligations to laws covering war and armed conflict, notwithstanding their obligations as representatives of the people and government of New Zealand to observe the Bill of Rights Act.

It is also reasonable to suggest; there are significant established facts as mentioned above, as put by the New Zealand Defence Force, that require an official investigative response from the New Zealand government.

It is also reasonable to insist that the matter of an absence of consistent fact emitting from the New Zealand Defence Force upon which a reliable opinion can be draw, adds weight to the burden on the Government to establish an inquiry into this matter.

If the New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English elects not to act then it will likely become a matter of political leadership or lack thereof.

If Bill English does not care to act on his office’s public interest obligations, then, it is reasonable to suggest he consider the empirical facts underlying this matter and the impact the matter has on New Zealand’s national interest. Should he fail to do so, this matter potentially could be argued before the International Criminal Court.

*****

Background relevancies
Were NZDF officials and Hit & Run authors describing the same raid? Let’s compare.

“It seems to me,” Lieutenant-General Tim Keating stressed, “that one of the fundamentals, a start point if you like, of any investigation into a crime is to tie the alleged perpetrators of a crime to the scene. Then we would examine the motive and means, and other scene evidence.” – Lieutenant General Tim Keating, 27 March 2017.

On Monday, 27 March 2017 both the Prime Minister Bill English and the Chief of New Zealand Defence Force Lieutenant-General Tim Keating countered details revealed in the book Hit & Run and argued facts stated in the work could not be relied upon because the authors “incorrectly” alleged Operation Burnham took place in Khak Khuday Dad Village and Naik Village deep in the mountainous Baghlan province of Afghanistan – two locations the Defence Force chief insisted his soldiers had never been to.

Lieutenant-General Keating asserted that the New Zealand Defence Force had never been to the two villages (Khak Khuday Dad and Naik) and insisted Operation Burnham took place 2.2 kilometres to the south of where the authors Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson had marked the location of the villages (specifically on a map published in the book Hit & Run).

Lieutenant-General Keating said: “As you will note from the book, the authors have been precise in locating these villages with geo reference points — so I have no doubt they are very accurate in the villages they are taking their allegations from.

“The villages lie in the Tirgiran Valley some 2 kilometres north from Tirgiran Village. In straight distance this is like comparing the distance from Te Papa to Wellington Hospital. However, if you overlay the elevated terrain, you will see we are talking about two very separated, distinct settlements,” Lieutenant-General Keating said.

Beyond the obvious, it was a staggering claim, especially for those aware the New Zealand Defence Force had insisted one week prior, that its official position remained the same as stated in a media release dated 20 April 2011 that: “On 22 August 2010 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) elements, operating as part of a Coalition Force in Bamyan province, Afghanistan, conducted an operation against an insurgent group.”

NZDF’s earlier position asserted New Zealand soldiers had not been in Baghlan province on or near 22 August 2010 the night of Operation Burnham. Now, the chief of New Zealand’s armed forces was admitting that they had.

At the press conference on Monday, 27 March 2017, the Chief of New Zealand Defence Force prepared to stake his claim that the book could not be relied on as a factual reference.

Before around 30 journalists, Lieutenant-General Tim Keating pointed to four relevant bullet-points underlying key claims of fact in the book:

• Helicopter landing sites
• Location of houses that were destroyed
• Locations of where civilians were allegedly killed
• Presumed location of an SAS sniper with evidence presented of SAS ammunition and water bottles which were found at the site.

A relationship was drawn between the sniper location and the alleged killing of the individual Islamuddin, the school teacher.

He acknowledged that the book contained a detailed list of those alleged to have been killed or wounded during a military operation in Khak Khuday Dad and Naik villages and a detailed list of the houses destroyed at the two locations.

Lieutenant-General Keating then drove his point home that: “The underlying premise of the book is that New Zealand’s SAS soldiers conducted an operation on Khak Khuday Dad Village and Naik Village…”

“It seems to me,” he stressed, “that one of the fundamentals, a start point if you like, of any investigation into a crime is to tie the alleged perpetrators of a crime to the scene. Then we would examine the motive and means, and other scene evidence.”

Lieutenant-General Keating pivoted. “Let me now talk about the ISAF Operation Burnham in Tirgiran Village.”

The premise of the Chief of Defence Force’s position was; the book Hit & Run described events that may or may not have occurred in Khak Khuday Dad and Naik villages, but that these alleged events had nothing to do with New Zealand Defence Force soldiers as they had never been to the two locations as marked in the book.

Likewise, the Prime Minister, Bill English, said the book got it wrong, that the New Zealand Defence Force had never been to either Khak Khuday Dad Village and Naik Village.

The Prime Minister added: “We believe in the integrity of the Defence Force more than a book that picks the wrong villages.”

For some, it appeared the raid that night as described by the authors could have been committed by another force. For others, it seemed the authors had got a major fact wrong so therefore the remaining claims in the book were moot.

By mid-Wednesday morning, the government and the public found out there was more to it, that the Chief of New Zealand Defence Force was also wrong with regard to his geography.

Unpicking the official line began in earnest late on Tuesday night (28 March 2017) when the lawyers representing the alleged victims of Operation Burnham contacted their clients back in Afghanistan. The purpose of the contact was to identify the exact location of Khak Khuday Dad Village and Naik Village; to confirm or otherwise disprove the existence of “Tirgiran Village” (the NZDF stated official location of Operation Burnham), and to identify and confirm what village or villages are located at the exact co-ordinates as provided by Lieutenant-General Tim Keating in his briefing to New Zealand media.

The lawyers’ clients, represented by a doctor from the region, stated categorically that “Tirgiran Village” (as stated by Lieutenant-General Keating) does not exist. That the region is known as Tirgiran Valley.

The lawyers evaluated from the new information, that to refer to the location of Operation Burnham as Tirgiran Village is like insisting an operation had occurred in Otago City (obviously Otago is a region and a city of that name does not exist, and as such would fail to offer an exact point of reference on a map).

Importantly, the lawyers confirmed, New Zealand Defence Force co-ordinates of where Operation Burnham took place were correct – but that the location was not as the NZDF had stated as “Tirgiran Village” (an incorrect reference to a village that does not exist) but rather marks the geo-locations of where Khak Khuday Dad Village and Naik Village are located.

Specifically, the villagers confirmed the red-rectangle as marked on the NZDF map provided by the Lt. General on Monday, March 27, and referred to as the area specific to Operation Burnham, frames the exact positions of where Khak Khuday Dad and Naik villages are located.

So simply, the book contained a map that placed Khak Khuday Dad and Naik 2.2 kilometres north of their specific real locations. And, the NZDF got it wrong by stating that those two villages were located where the book suggested, and that the village at the centre of Operation Burnham was a different village called Tirgiran Village (again, a place-name that does not exist).

So it turns out, according to those that live in the Tirgiran Valley, the Chief of Defence Force’s statement is incorrect or false; that when NZDF stated as a categorical fact that the New Zealand SAS commandos had never been to Khak Khuday Dad Village nor Naik Village, that that information was false.

At this point politically, it is inescapable that the Prime Minister’s stated position ought to have taken a hit.

Remember back to the Prime Minister’s statement to media on Monday, March 27, 2017 where he pitched his rationale: “We believe in the integrity of the Defence Force more than a book that picks the wrong villages.”

Surely, the same measure that was applied to the authors of Hit & Run now ought to be applied in equal measure to the New Zealand Defence Force chief and his officials. After all, they also got their geography wrong.

Since then, there has been stated unease about the whole issue by Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne (the minister who would have to sign off and authorise the costs of an inquiry should the Prime Minister order an inquiry be established). By Thursday, 30 March 201,7 Dunne, through media, called for an inquiry into the whole affair. (ref. Stuff.co.nz )

Also on Thursday, the Minister of Defence at the time of the raid, Dr Wayne Mapp, wrote of his unease about Operation Burnham in a piece published on the Pundit website. (ref. Pundit )

Dr Mapp argued that the government’s position, and that of the New Zealand Defence Force, cannot be the end of it.

“Part of protecting their [the SAS’] reputation is also finding out what happened, particularly if there is an allegation that civilian casualties may have been accidentally caused. In that way we both honour the soldiers, and also demonstrate to the Afghans that we hold ourselves to the highest ideals of respect of life, even in circumstances of military conflict,” wrote Dr Mapp.

Common statements of fact
The descriptions of Operation Burnham, in both the book, and, as stated by the New Zealand Defence Force, do mirror each account with precision on numerous vital points, including:

• The time of night Operation Burnham took place
• That New Zealand Defence Force was commanding and leading the operation (both on the ground and in the air)
• That the helicopters were manned by United States military personnel under New Zealand’s command
• That the purpose of the operation was to kill or capture those named as having been part of a Taliban insurgent raid that killed Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell
• That buildings were destroyed during the operation
• That people were killed at the villages.

However, anyone who has reasonably assessed the issue can see there is much more information to be revealed.

Conclusion
In concluding this analysis, it is an imperative that due to the highest levels of public and national interest concerning the alleged conduct, the seriousness of allegations, and the variables relating to the official account, that the matter be subjected to an independent commission of inquiry.

Selwyn Manning is editor of EveningReport.nz. This analysis was first published on Kiwipolitico.com and on Evening Report and is republished on the sister website Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

• No basis for probe into Hager book allegations, says English
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The Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant-General Tim Keating presented the NZ Defence Force response to the book Hit & Run at a press conference on Monday, 27 March 2017. For 45 minutes he and his colleagues suggested that everything in the book was incorrect.

The Hit and Run authors have now had time to study the defence chief’s statements. Our conclusion is that the NZDF criticisms are wrong – with one exception – and that they have failed to address almost everything of substance in the book.

This is what a cover up looks like.

READ MORE: Villagers say both NZDF and authors wrong on village names – but confirm civilian deaths

1. The raid described in the book “is not an operation NZSAS conducted”: INCORRECT

The information presented in Keating’s press conference leaves no doubt that the book and the defence chief are talking about the same raid. Keating gave the name of the raid (Operation Burnham), the times and date (12.30-3.45am on 22 August 2010), the location in the Tirgiran Valley, and said the SAS arrived in two Chinook helicopters, used SAS snipers, found a quantity of ammunition in one building and had one SAS trooper injured by falling debris.

All of these are details of the SAS raid publicised first in chapter 3 of the book. There were not two different raids with the same operation name at the same time in the same valley. It is obviously the same raid.

An NZDF power point presentation shown in the press conference showed three main SAS objectives in the valley called A1, A2 and A3. The book had already identified the SAS’s main targets as being the house and guest house of an insurgent named Abdullah Kalta and the house of an insurgent named Naimatullah, neither of whom were present during the raid.

The NZDF objectives A1 and A2 are the buildings belonging to Abdullah Kalta seen in a photo on p. 60 of the book and NZDF objective A3 is the house of Nematullah shown on pp. 39 and 60 of the book.

2. The SAS raid was in a different village with a different name: INCORRECT

The defence force claimed that the SAS raid occurred in a village called Tirgiran, not the villages of Naik and Khak Khuday Dad named in the book. This is not true. The locals know the names of their own villages and they are called Naik and Khak Khuday Dad. The raid occurred there.

3. The SAS raid was about two kilometres from the position we gave in the book: CORRECT, BUT DOES NOT CHANGE THE STORY IN ANY SIGNIFICANT WAY

After the NZDF press conference, Nicky Hager said that the authors stood by the whole story and that at most the NZDF denials might mean that the events in the book occurred two kilometres from where we thought they were, ie. a slightly different location in the isolated mountain valley.

We have checked the NZDF maps shown at the press conference and it appears the location of the raid and the villages is indeed slightly different to what our local sources told us. But the villages at that location are definitely called Naik and Khak Khuday Dad, and all the rest of the story in the book is unchanged.

Likewise the photos in the book of the villages attacked in the raid are correct, as are the photos of the victims and destroyed houses.

The Defence Force leapt on this and tried to sow doubt about the rest of the book. Keating said the “central premise” of the book was incorrect; that there were “major inaccuracies – the main one being the location”.

But the location is a minor detail, difficult to establish in mountains with no roads or detailed maps (there are no known maps of the valley that include the locations and names of the villages along it).

Contrary to what Keating said, the central premise of the book is that the actions of the SAS and its allies in the villages of Naik and Khak Khuday Dad led to civilian deaths and injuries, destruction of houses, neglect of wounded people and then a cover up – and none of that has changed.

4. The NZDF has now replied to the allegations in the book: INCORRECT

The defence force has not replied to most allegations in the book. Most strikingly, Keating’s presentation did not address the deaths and injuries suffered by children, mothers and elderly people who were obviously not insurgents – which are the most important allegations in the book.

The allegations that the defence force has avoided or answered inadequately to date are:

• SAS-controlled attack helicopters fired at civilians in Khak Khuday Dad village with many casualties, including the three-year-old child Fatima;
• SAS snipers appear to have shot at least one civilian, a recently graduated school teacher home on holiday;
• SAS-controlled attack helicopters pursued two farmers who opposed the Taliban along the valley and killed them;
• Twelve houses were destroyed despite there being no military necessity to do so;
• No assistance was given to the wounded at the time, including in houses that Defence now says it knew might have contained civilians;
• Nor did the SAS go back to render assistance later, despite knowing that civilians were likely to have been injured;
• The SAS returned for a second raid on the village Naik and blew up a house or houses;
• A bound and blindfolded prisoner was beaten by an SAS trooper while his colleagues looked on and did nothing;
• The prisoner was then handed over to the Afghan secret police who were known to have a notorious reputation for torturing prisoners;
• That prisoner was then tortured by the Afghan secret police and when the defence force learned about this it kept it secret;
• The SAS arranged the extra-judicial killing of some other insurgent suspects; and
• The NZDF repeatedly denied and covered up what the SAS have done, and continue to do so to this day.

5. An ISAF investigation has already occurred, there is no need for another inquiry: A WEAK SELF-SERVING ARGUMENT

First it is important to explain about the investigation done in August 2010 by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition headquarters, which was cited repeatedly during the NZDF press conference. In 2010 the subject of civilian deaths was very sensitive in Afghanistan and so ISAF was attempting to investigate all suspected cases of civilians being killed by ISAF forces. But these “assessments” were very far from being full or independent.

The ISAF investigation into the 22 August 2010 raid was completed in less than a week and did not involve anyone going to the area or talking to the affected villagers. It included a review of attack helicopter weapons system video and concluded that several “errant rounds”, caused by a gun sight malfunction, “may have resulted in civilian casualties”.

However reports from SAS members and local people interviewed for the book describe multiple heavy attacks that wounded and killed civilians in different locations. Thus the hastily-conducted ISAF review appears far from being adequate. It is silent on most of the allegations in the book.

There is no need for New Zealand to rely on the brief and inadequate ISAF review. Most of the information needed to confirm whether or not the allegations in the book are correct is located here in New Zealand, in the SAS files. The best option is an independent inquiry where this information can be gathered and assessed.

6. Keating said the insurgents may have used civilians as human shields; aircraft video showed insurgents were killed; the conduct of the New Zealand ground forces was “exemplary”; and so on: UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS AND SELECTIVE INFORMATION

Much of Keating’s presentation was unsubstantiated assertions. This does not help the public find the truth since the defence force has an obvious interest in avoiding bad news about itself. He also said that the book claimed the SAS “deliberately killed civilians”, which we did not say. If we are correct that bad things are being covered up, we cannot expect the people at the heart of the cover up to provide impartial information.

Once again, this means that the only acceptable option is a full and independent inquiry.

7. Lieutenant General Tim Keating told the press conference: “The ground force commander was an NZSAS Officer who controlled both the ground activities and provided clearance, after the appropriate criteria had been met, for any involvement of the aircraft. These elements were co-ordinated by an air controller in his location.” CORRECT AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This statement contradicts earlier statements by the government (in 2014) where ministers suggested that if there had been any civilian deaths they were the responsibility of the US pilots, not the New Zealand SAS. It confirms what we said in the book: that the SAS commanders in charge of the raid have responsibility for deaths and injuries caused by the US attack helicopters, which they controlled and had requested to be part of the raid.

8. Finally, Keating told the press that there were legal complications for having an inquiry: INCORRECT

This is not correct. We are not proposing an inquiry by the Defence Force about itself. The government has the power to launch a full and independent inquiry at any time. We believe the NZDF is trying to avoid a full and independent inquiry precisely because some officers are scared of what it will show. But the issue will continue to fester, as it has for years, until that happens.

This article was first published in The Daily Blog.

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