Student 2: High Merit
On September eleventh, two-thousand-one, Al Qaeda insurgents hijacked four commercial airliners in the
United States and flew them into the Pentagon and both towers of the World Trade Center. These actions
stunned the world as one of the direst acts of modern terrorism. The 9/11 attacks, as they have come to be
known, have had dramatic international repercussions. New Zealand has not been left untouched by these
events. In the wake of 9/11, The New Zealand Parliament passed anti- terrorism legislation and has participated
in US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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New Zealand's participation in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and its lack of serious commitment
throughout the US-led war in Iraq have helped to clarify New Zealand's political stance towards largely foreign
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wars as cautious. New Zealand has made clear that it supports multilateralism and is not prepared to follow
large countries blindly into wars that do not appear justified in the eyes of New Zealand.
In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the US government started to organize sending troops to Afghanistan. In 9
December 2001, the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), a multilateral coalition to be led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The first NZSAS troops
to arrive in Afghanistan arrived on December 16th, 2OO1, at Kandahar, Afghanistan. 'The Labour government
supported sending troops to Afghanistan under a multi-national initiative.
However, when the NZSAS troops arrived, they found themselves largely unused. The missions they were sent 10
on were low-key and generally only for reconnaissance purposes, with the NZ troops only rarely seeing combat.
In Nicky Hager's Other People's Words: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war on terror, Hager describes
the minimal amount and insignificance of the NZSAS missions in Afghanistan. According to Hager, the New
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Zealand contingency was deprived of access to Coalition Forces intelligence and communication networks and
were thus not able to organize and execute their own missions independently.
Over roughly the next four years, New Zealand SAS troops would go into further deployments in Afghanistan. 11
They would receive more missions, and many of these would be much higher profile. In early 20O2, regular New
Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) personnel would arrive in Kabul to support a force of primarily British troops.
New Zealand armed forces would take part in Operation Anaconda, a joint operation by the ISAF against Taliban
and Al Qaeda forces in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains, in March, 2OO2.
However, NZSAS troops would not be out of Afghanistan permanently. In 2009, the National Party government
sent back a fourth deployment of 71 SAS personnel. These soldiers remain in Afghanistan to this day.
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The US-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, although preparations had been made well in advance. In
April 2002, Tony Blair, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, and his family stayed at George W Bush's
Texas ranch, talks went on about the possibility of invading Iraq. Soon after Blair's return to the UK, he and
many other Commonwealth leaders attended the funeral of the Queen Mother of England. In Hager's book, an
episode at this event, allegedly relayed by a confidential New Zealand government official during an interview, is
described. Supposedly, Blair approached Helen Clark, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and Australian
Prime Minister John Howard and explained to them that the US was going to war in Iraq and that the UK was 2
supporting this action. He then asked for support from these three Commonwealth leaders. According to
Hager, Howard agreed to help the UK and the USA in Iraq. However, Clark and Chrétien questioned this decision
and refused to send troops on the grounds of the war not being sanctioned by the United Nations. While the
reliability of this information is questionable, as Hager cites his source for this as a confidential "New Zealand 5
government official," the story was more or less confirmed by Clark in a 2008 article in the New Zealand Herald.
Throughout the rest of 2002, the US and the UK would plan the invasion of Iraq for March 2002. As the plans for
war reached greater publicity, anti-war demonstrations throughout the world began protesting against the
invasion. These protests would reach New Zealand in early 2003. The 15th of February, there was a major
international wave of protests against the war. Many New Zealanders took part in this international day of
protest.
While Labour was maintaining opposition to serious New Zealand participation in the war, the National Party
and ACT supported sending combat troops. National MP Wayne Mapp was particularly vocal on the Iraq issue.
He asserted that, with Australia, the UK, and the USA being some of New Zealand's closest and oldest allies, New
Zealand had a responsibility to support Operation lraqi Freedom, the operation for the invasion and occupation
of Iraq: "...the New Zealand government should remind itself that Britain, Australia, and the United States are
our most long standing allies before making any decision." However, the Labour government held that
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preserving relations with solely with the US government would not be worth the cost of participating in the war.
In Labour's view, New Zealand had no sufficient reason for participating in an entirely US-led war. As David
Parker says, "...the important thing there is that not a UN resolution but rather than a unilateral resolution, or
indeed multilateral but without UN sanction, response has occurred in Iraq, which we stayed out of because it
wasn't UN-sanctioned."
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New Zealand's contributions to the invasion of Iraq were minimal, to say the least. In December, 2002, the NZ
frigate Te Kaha would arrive at Bahrain, where it would be attached to a Canadian task force under US
command. The Te Kaha was replaced by another NZ frigate, the Te Mana, in February, 2003. In May, 2003, a
New Zealand P-3 Orion aircraft arrived at Minhad, an airbase in the United Arab Emirates. It would begin
carrying out reconnaissance missions in the Persian Gulf within days of its arrival.
The margin between New Zealand's participation in Iraq and Afghanistan is a large one. The main reason for this
is, as previously mentioned, that the US led the invasion of Iraq with no real sanction by the UN Security Council,
whereas the ISAF, the organization in Afghanistan in which the New Zealand government participated, was
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established by a Security Council resolution. The way in which the Labour government reacted during this phase
of the war on terror, a direct consequence of the 9/11-attacks, has reinforced New Zealand's attitude of
moderately independent, yet still slightly submissive, foreign policy.
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After more than a decade of 9/11's repercussions throughout the world, it is important to review how the
September 11 attacks have affected New Zealand. In having created diplomatic crises for New Zealand and the
rest of the world in the form of two wars and having affected New Zealand's domestic policy by way of the
Terrorism Suppression Act, the September 11 attacks have, if anything reinforced the notion of New Zealand's
relative independence from the actions of larger nations. New Zealand has acted in conjunction with the United
Nations in Afghanistan, but has avoided the Iraq quagmire almost entirely. In this way, New Zealand has
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reaffirmed its status as an avid participant in UN action, but has made it clear that it will not seriously commit
itself in military conflicts that have not been sanctioned by the United Nations. Domestic policy also sustained
very few serious changes and has remained relatively independent from the choices of other government. The
TSA passed, but was not changed significantly and still held the issue of terrorism financing as its main focus.
September 11, 2OO1 has been one of the most influential days of the twentieth century. It has created a
serious challenge to the independence of foreign and domestic policy of small nations. However, New Zealand
has been one of the fortunate few developed countries to surpass this challenge.