Watchblog: Other People's Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror

'We got ourselves into habit of saying, "Hmm, what's New Zealand's view?

OK, the first thing we do is ask the Americans, we ask the Canadians,

we ask the Brits, we ask the Australians," and when we've

got all their views we synthesise them into our own view'

-former New Zealand diplomat

The 'war on terror' in Afghanistan and beyond has been the longest foreign war in New Zealand history, yet most New Zealanders know almost nothing about their country's part in it. For ten years, nearly everything controversial or potentially unpopular was kept secret, and obscured by a steady flow of military public relations stories.

Based on thousands of leaked New Zealand military and intelligence documents, extensive interviews with military and intelligence officers and eye-witness accounts from the soldiers on the ground, Nicky Hager tells the story of these years. New Zealand was far more involved than the public realised in this crucial period of world history. He tells how the military and bureaucracy used the war on terror to pursue private agendas, even when this meant misleading and ignoring the decisions of the elected government.
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