18 August 2009 Speech Notes

Urgent debate on sending NZ SAS to Afghanistan

The Progressive Party was established only after a policy disagreement over intervention in Afghanistan. So we have passionate views about this issue.

And today we believe we must continue to support stability in Afghanistan, but the days when we should have combat troops there are over.

In 2002 Progressive supported New Zealand involvement in Afghanistan because the situation there at the time represented a clear and present threat to the civilised world.

Al qaeda had just committed a terrorist atrocity in the United States.

I was acting prime minister the day it happened.

One of those killed in the US attacks was a New Zealand citizen.

I sent a message to the US President saying New Zealand saw the attack as an attack on not only the United States, but on all civilised society. And I promised New Zealand would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in resisting the terrorist attacks, and we kept that promise.

The al qaeda threat was a global threat.

The Taleban responded to those attacks by giving al qaeda shelter.

In the football stadiums where election rallies are being held today, the Taleban were then carrying out mass executions for their perverted political ends.

The world could not stand by and ignore what was being done to civilisation.

The Secretary General of the UN at the time said: “The only way to win against terrorism is to organise a common international action. The main point is that the fight be led within the framework of the United Nations on the basis of the two Security Council resolutions and the General Assembly resolutions.”

That UN agreement to intervene is crucial.

International law makes it clear that the only grounds for military intervention are self-defence or UN-sanction. And so UN authority for the Afghanistan intervention was vital to ensure it complied with international law.

Once that was decided, our involvement was to send provincial reconstruction teams.
We also sent the SAS.
Their work is not soft. Willie Apiata’s Victoria Cross is proof of that.

But you cannot send children to school and sick people to hospital, and you cannot develop economies and end poverty, when terrorists are doing their best to kill and to threaten entire communities.

So I supported SAS involvement in Afghanistan to help reconstruction. My party exists because of it.

But it’s not an open-ended commitment. What we cannot support is involvement that tries to take sides in the feudal infighting in Afghanistan today. There are layers of sides in Afghanistan. We can’t pick one over the other.

We can help the country to clear itself of al qaeda, however. We must have United Nations authority to do so. We must have a firm base in international law.
But we cannot just walk away.

That would give not only Afghanistan, but northern Pakistan to the Taleban and to other ideological extremists.

Pakistan is a nuclear state. I don’t like that it is - but it is. And it is teetering dangerously. The consequences of a nuclear state like Pakistan becoming even more unstable are too dangerous to tolerate. The whole world has a strong interest in making sure that doesn’t happen.

The best contribution we can make is to support stability in Afghanistan. Therefore we should offer to be there and to help.

But I do not support doing so through a continued combat role for the SAS in Afghanistan.

We have pulled our weight there. We have spent over $180 million on military assistance and aid there.

This is a debate about the kind of assistance we offer. Our contribution today has to be towards rebuilding, and helping strengthen the Afghan National Army under democratic control following the elections later this week.

ENDS

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