Journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson at the launch of the book Hit & Run. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson at the launch of the book Hit & Run. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion: In breaking news, more slapdash madness from our military leadership with the galling incompetence spreading out of NZ Defence Force headquarters into the Beehive.
This is specifically in relation to the August 2010 raid by the NZSAS in Afghanistan which may - or may not - have left sixdead civilians behind, along with 15 others who were wounded.
Yet it is hard to summon the confidence the mess that followed was a lightning strike and was contained to this single operation, going by evidence emerging from the Inquiry into Operation Burnham.
At this stage, the NZSAS troops on the ground have been largely untouched by the embarrassing evidence.
This is significant because they had been accused of war crimes and blundering about the Afghan village. Evidence has yet to emerge to show the NZSAS troops on the ground acted in any way inappropriately.
Instead, the support structures that are meant to enable those troopers have been found to be wanting at almost every level.
Low and high command were left red-faced at evidence showing inaccurate assurances were given to the Prime Minister, and others, over the aftermath of the NZSAS raid.
And now Dr Wayne Mapp, former Minister of Defence, has been shamed.
Mapp was a journalistic source for the authors of the Hit & Run book that set this inquiry in motion. He was apparently driven to do so by his discovery in 2014 that there may have been civilian casualties.
It would have been a shocking discovery, partly because he was one of those who approved the mission that may have cost the life of, among others, a child called Fatima. It must be a terrible thing to discover a decision you made may have killed a 3-year-old.
Former defence minister Dr Wayne Mapp, who forgot he had been told civilians could have died during an NZSAS raid. Photo / File
It would also have been shocking because Mapp assured the New Zealand public in April 2011 there had been no civilian casualties.
Except now we know Mapp was told about the possibility of civilian casualties in September 2011. He was told after NZDF obtained a secret investigation report that stated this - a report it then went on to forget it had, misleading the public by omission for at least another three years.
The report went from NZDF to Mapp's office on September 1 2011. NZSAS veteran and Special Operations commander Colonel Jim Blackwell, it seems, briefed Mapp around that time. Mapp cannot recall ever seeing the report but now remembers the briefing.
Mapp's statement to the inquiry said: "I now have a fragmentary memory of being told by Colonel (Jim) Blackwell (NZSAS veteran and Special Operations commander) there was no evidence of civilian casualties but that it was possible that civilian casualties may have been caused during Operation Burnham due to a misaligned gun on the United States Apache helicopter."
A year earlier, Mapp had been told the same possibility existed. Then he was told an International Security Assistance Force inquiry found categorically there were no civilian casualties. The same assurance was given to the Prime Minister, and then the public.
Now having been told the possibility was live again, and that it had been raised in ISAF report previously (incorrectly) relied on, Mapp promptly and with great alacrity did … nothing.
"I did not inform the Prime Minister's office, discuss the matter with my political advisor … or discuss it with the Minister of Foreign Affairs who I worked closely with on Afghanistan issues."
He also felt no need to correct the incorrect statement he had made publicly on television because "there was no actual evidence that civilians had been killed or injured".
When the Hit & Run book was published, Mapp said it was always possible civilian casualties might occur in military operations.
He said: "For me, it is not enough to say there might have been civilian casualties. As a nation we owe it to ourselves to find out, to the extent reasonably possible, if civilian causalities did occur, and if they did, to properly acknowledge that."
Mapp's knowledge in 2011 excuses none of NZDF's bumbling, which went on to forget it had the ISAF report until 2014 when Mapp's successor as minister, Jonathan Coleman, found it in a briefing bundle supplied to his office.
Angry and surprised, he told NZDF he wanted to know where it had come from, yet never received an answer.
That 2014 emergence was linked to reporting by Jon Stephenson, who co-wrote Hit & Run with Nicky Hager. Coleman, to a degree, corrected the record then but NZDF didn't bother doing so.
The book's publication saw NZDF obfuscate again, briefly, before conceding the possibility of civilian casualties but it has hardly shown itself to be accountable and transparent on the issue since.
NZDF needs oversight. It needs an Inspector-General with independence and a determination to pursue nominated and own-motion inquiries.
This sorry debacle may not have happened, and would not have dragged on, if an oversight body had investigated in 2010, or in the years that followed.
