Kiwis’ efforts not all in vain

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has been so distressing that it has been easy to overlook legitimate causes for solace, and possibly hope. For all that has gone so terribly wrong, New Zealand military personnel who served there have made the valid point that their work is by no means doomed to prove inconsequential.

Education does not evaporate because situations deteriorate, even in alarmingly swift and dramatic fashion. And as veterans like Kane Te Tai and Craig Wilson have rightly sought to remind us, the past two decades did bring transformational education for Afghans.

President Joe Biden says the US mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. The goal was not so ambitious as to create a unified, centralised democracy, but to prevent further terrorist attacks on the US in the manner of September 11, 2001.

However, New Zealand’s peacekeeping presence there did, as Te Tai told Stuff, end up being more of a human story. They helped bring advances like education and plumbing to the community. This was by no means a literate society, but now an entire generation has had access to at least basic education, which in turn informs understanding of human rights.

Wilson tells of a child whom villagers were readying to cast from their midst because they thought there was a devilish reason for his ailment – a mere fungal foot infection, which the troops were able to show to be easily treatable.

When people have been taught to read, to access the internet, and ‘‘to think for themselves’’, Wilson says, it’s knowledge that cannot be stripped from them.

Of course, none of this takes away the upset that the 3500 personnel who hazarded their own safety on deployment to Afghanistan now collectively feel at the resurgence of the Taliban.

It must be especially hard for some veterans who have been directly contacted by Afghans for help fleeing their country. None of us should be surprised that soldiers might still have such personal contacts. Inglorious but rare cases aside, New Zealand’s essentially honourable history of peacekeeping efforts has been notable for its forces’ ability to relate to local people and avoid perceptions of arrogance.

Furthermore, our military being practical souls, Wilson would have us consider whether we should regard the shocking speed of the Taliban takeover as preferable to the alternative of a prolonged civil war, the brutalising effects of which might serve to heighten appetites for reprisal.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that the prospects for peaceable compromise are enhanced.

Education doesn’t tend to make the citizenry more biddable; it can serve to stiffen the spine of resistance.

Much is being made of the extent to which the Taliban, which professes to being a reformed movement, may or may not prove less hideously oppressive, particularly to women, than the brutal regime it previously was, banning girls from attending school, prohibiting women from the paid workforce, and holding weekly executions and amputations at Kabul football stadium.

As yet there’s scant reason, if any, for optimism on that score. Equally in question now is how Afghans who have experienced 20 years of betterfunctioning (though it has still pulled up well short of being well-functioning) civil society will react to new overlords. Or the extent to which other countries will line up in support of either side.

It must be especially hard for veterans directly contacted by Afghans for help fleeing their country.