KEY POINTS:
The first time he was ambushed in Afghanistan, Karl Maddaford's army training kicked in.
"I remember the first ambush, I got down out of the cab of the truck and I walked back to the anti-aircraft gun that was our primary defensive weapon. I walked because I remember eons ago when I was at officer cadet school, being told 'officers don't run, it panics the troops'. But I was absolutely terrified at the time."
The former Auckland policeman thinks he was lucky.
"There are a number of people who I have known personally that have been killed while I was there. There a number of people who I have known...who have been horribly maimed," Maddaford, 38, says.
He is back from more than four years working in Afghanistan, some of the time with his wife Rebecca. They worked at the sharp end: Maddaford at first supervising the disarming of Taleban fighters, then turning to the reconstruction of the war-wrecked country.
Rebecca, 39, a nurse who assisted the New Zealand Army in East Timor, and worked with orphans in Romania, joined her partner in 2005 to work on a shoestring budget with an Italian-funded surgical hospital in Kabul.
She witnessed on a daily basis the horrific results of the violence across the country.
"Mostly people locked up in the back of cars, mine injuries, gunshots. Children, women, men."
For all the horrors, she says it was the most rewarding job she ever had. Aside from treating patients, she worked to improve whatever services to the Afghan people she could.
The people were eternally grateful and "they really wanted the international community there - just so long as one day they leave".
One hospital patient was a Taleban commander admitted with broken bones after a road accident.
"Every time I walked in the room he would kind of snap his fingers and say 'Rebecca, come here'. He was quite fond of me I have to say."
She had to explain to him he would not get any special treatment from her.
"The nurses came up to me and said 'oh Rebecca. He can eat seven chickens in one sitting'. So obviously that was a sign of wealth. And 'Rebecca, he has killed hundreds of people'."
"But it was not my job to judge the patients who came into the hospital."
Maddaford found his niche in Afghanistan with the United Nations. His police and military background ensured he got a job dealing with disarmament in 2004, though at the time it meant saying goodbye to fiancee Rebecca, who he had only met a few months earlier.
Maddaford's role was dealing with heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery that were confiscated from Taleban or other fighting forces.
The weaponry was either destroyed or serviced and handed to the Afghan National Army.
"Like Rebecca said, it was just not right that a man should have this fun and be paid for it. It's the original boy's own adventure. Sending emails back to friends in the army, saying I now command more tanks than the New Zealand Army."
Maddaford was able to use his connections to find an opportunity for Rebecca to join him in Afghanistan.
The work, they say, was hard. Temperatures soared to 50C in the summer and fell to - 30C in winter. Threats of attack were constant. They became used to going to and from work in flak jackets, with armed guards around, and hearing explosions around them.
Rebecca fell pregnant with her first child during her stay of almost a year, and an increased kidnapping threat against female hospital workers prompted her to leave for the safer environment of Cyprus.
"Karl pretty much said 'there is the door, you are out, going, gone'. And it was the only decision."
In 2005, Maddaford was tasked with overseeing voting in half of the country's parliamentary election, based in a compound in Kabul and "working hand in glove with the international
military".
He recalls the morning of the election being chaotic as the Taleban tried its best to disrupt the process.
"It was full-on. Incident reports were coming in from all around the country of attacks on polling stations."
The Kabul compound where he was based came under attack, and Quick Reaction Force (QRF) teams comprised of the Afghan National Army and international military were constantly responding to attempts to disrupt the voting.
"I just remember at one point - at like nine in the morning - we were running out of QRF teams, our compound had been rocketed with white phosphorus - fortunately it didn't go off - and we were pretty much at our peak.
"I just remember saying to my boss that if this keeps up for another hour, we are going to be in serious trouble. And then it just stopped, like somebody had turned a tap off."
"I think they ran out of steam before we did. It's as simple as that."
A new Afghan government elected, Maddaford went on to join the UN as a
security officer.
Within a few months, he met a former Canadian military colonel named Steve Appleton and joined a programme tasked with building 1000km of roads around Afghanistan, worth about US$367m (NZ$621m).
Maddaford became his second-in-charge, working with mostly other New Zealanders and Australians.
"It was easily the most rewarding professional engagement I have ever had. We worked very, very long hours - 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week, in a warzone. Our compound had a suicide bomber go off outside and I didn't even leave the desk."
Roads were being built in hostile terrain where the access was "little more than goat tracks". Maddaford went into Taleban-controlled areas and sat down with tribal leaders to convince them of the merits of building roads through their land.
He spoke enough of the native Dari language to get by. Wearing Afghani clothes, he would discuss business over cups of chai tea.
"You can talk with them. If you can make your case and convince them it's in their interests what you are doing, they will accept it. Sometimes it will take months before you get the green light."
While the Taleban had its diehard core, most people sided with the movement because it offered them more prosperity, he says.
Whereas the Afghan Government will pay a policeman about US$4 a day, the Taleban will pay at least US$5.
"It might just be a US$1 a day (more), but that's a hell of a lot for Afghanistan."
Towards the end of his time in Afghanistan, Mr Maddaford gave up his "guaranteed work for life" at the UN, and joined an Afghan construction company. He sees this as the way forward - international expertise working in with the Afghan people.
But he feels a lot more is required in the bitter conflict than simply using brute force to subdue a fierce enemy.
"There have been some fundamental errors made in Afghanistan," Maddaford says.
"Afghan national police have been employed to run all over the countryside tracking down Taleban. As opposed to doing what police forces are supposed to be doing.
"And in the vacuum that has been created by this misguided role they have been given, the Taleban in many areas have stepped in and taken over those traditional roles. So in a lot of areas, you will see it's the Taleban that act as a police force and as a judiciary.
"People, generally speaking, will say 'we don't want the Taleban back, but we wouldn't mind the security that came with Taleban rule'."
Despite the massive presence of American-led forces and international reconstruction efforts, Maddaford says Afghanistan is teetering towards chaos as lawless elements take hold. He feels the year ahead will be pivotal. "It is deteriorating. There are a lot of places that I went in 2004 and 2006, that I wouldn't go now."
When he arrived in Afghanistan in 2004 there were no suicide bombers. Now they are prevalent. Washington's answer to the growing problems is a "surge" of an extra 50,000 troops into Afghanistan to try to regain ground like it did in Iraq.
"That may buy some time, but counter-insurgency has to be civilian-led."
Corruption is rife and the civilian administration "is still eons behind".
People needed to see rebuilding taking place, and running water and electricity - which 85 per cent of the country did not have.
"If the man in the street can see he has a chance of getting a job that pays well, where he can put a little money away so he has got a future for his family, he will support you."
After a few brief visits home over the past four years, Maddaford rejoined his family, including sons Oliver, two, and Geordie, eight months, in Christchurch this week.
He is returning to university studies to pursue his interest in solutions for failed states, with a view to making short-term trips back to Afghanistan.
He will also approach New Zealand construction companies about opportunities in Afghanistan.
"We need expertise there. But it needs to be expertise that is integrated with Afghan companies and Afghan people. The model of international companies coming in and isolating themselves doesn't work.
"At the end of the day they still want us there. They are sick of fighting. The vast majority of the young Afghans that I was working with... they expected to die young and die violently."
