New Zealand troops could be out of Afghanistan next year – but are we stumbling out of one ill-considered international military commitment straight into another, and what happens to our reconstruction and development commitment to the country our troops are leaving?
Read MoreNZ SAS
'The Office' – Taliban-style
The Taliban are planning to set up shop in Qatar – but in a good way. They'll have a physical address that could open the door to serious peace talks on Afghanistan and spark hopes of future stability
Read MoreMapp flunks his final Afghan Torture Test
Defence Minister Wayne Mapp flunked his final Afghan Torture Test last Friday when he slid the long awaited New Zealand Defence Force Report on detainee treatment into the public domain under the cover of the Grand Final of the Rugby World Cup.
Read MoreAfghanistan: Our Self-inflicted Wounds
Defence Minister Wayne Mapp and his Chief of Defence Force Rhys Jones stepped up their efforts this week to keep the gloss on New Zealand’s military involvement in Afghanistan. So far, they have succeeded in raising more questions than they have answered.
Afghanistan – alarm bells should be ringing
If the Afghanistan alarm bells were not ringing in Wellington over the last weekend – they should have been
Read MoreTime to say “Bye Bye, Mr Karzai”
Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai has been threatening to join the Taliban. He should be encouraged to do it and we should leave his country quickly
Read MoreSAS – Now you see them, now you don’t
A newspaper photographer catches Willie Apiata walking home from an observation mission. John Key promises a new policy of openness about the SAS. The elite troops get involved in the first major fire fight of their mission. Where does the openness go?
SAS deployment: is the government making it up as it goes along?
Contradicting the convention on SAS deployments... Having no official advice on the Afghanistan elections... is the Key administration out of its depth on foreign policy?
Read MoreAfghanistan – Where is the exit?
As voters head to the polling booths in the United States and New Zealand, Americans are being promised a major review of military strategy in Afghanistan. As partners in that strategy, we should also ask ourselves: where is the exit?
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