Monday, September 5, 2011
'Kiwi Camp' (Bamiyan) a CIA base - Hager
By John Armstrong
9:15 AM Thursday Sep 1, 2011
A new report claims Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed. Photo / AFP
A new report claims Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed. Photo / AFP
A new book on the war in Afghanistan reveals that the base which has long housed New Zealand soldiers carrying out reconstruction and aid work is also home to covert operatives from America's Central Intelligence Agency.
Other People's Wars - authored by investigative writer Nicky Hager - says the Defence Force has deliberately kept the public in the dark about the presence of United States intelligence staff at the headquarters of New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team in the Bamiyan province.
Hager says "Kiwi Camp" has been doubling as a secret CIA base - one of several across Afghanistan charged with gathering "actionable intelligence" for use in special forces operations and aerial attacks on insurgents.
The book quotes unidentified former soldiers who have served in Bamiyan during New Zealand's eight-year deployment as saying half a dozen plain clothes American intelligence officers live on the base full-time and are privy to intelligence gathered by New Zealand troops when they go out on patrol across the region.
The book includes a photograph taken last year in Bamiyan of one American intelligence chief with gun and holster.
Under the deal with Washington by which New Zealand took over the base, the CIA operatives receive protection, meals, medical assistance and logistical support courtesy of the Defence Force.
Hager says the camp has also been used by America's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping on electronic communications worldwide.
He also claims that under a secret agreement with the United States, New Zealand intelligence personnel have worked out of Bamiyan following training by the National Security Agency.
Hager - best known for his expose in The Hollow Men of the inner workings of the Don Brash-led National Party - points to what he sees as a glaring gap between the official picture of the provincial reconstruction team's work in Bamiyan and the reality of a deployment long "entangled" with the American military's strategy for countering the Taliban.
New Zealand has had a provincial reconstruction team of up to 140 personnel in Bamiyan since 2003. According to the Defence Force, the team is tasked with maintaining security, providing advice and assistance to the provincial governor and the Afghan National Police, and managing New Zealand aid projects in the region.
Hager, however, accuses the Defence Force of running a continuing public relations campaign concentrated on producing "rosy stories" showing friendly New Zealand soldiers building schools, sinking wells and handing out gifts to smiling children.
He obtained copies of confidential reports which reveal the Defence Force has sought to "generate and maintain public support" for the deployment through a "continuous flow" of positive commentary.
This "pro-active strategy" was considered necessary to assure the New Zealand public that Defence Force personnel were "not going to war", that the focus of the mission was reconstruction and that Kiwi Camp was very much a New Zealand operation.
The book, however, questions just how much successful aid and reconstruction work has been carried out by New Zealand soldiers in Bamiyan, quoting one Army commander as saying there was no long-term view of what the provincial reconstruction team was trying to achieve.
Hager also claims that some of New Zealand's SAS soldiers were privately unhappy about being deployed by the current Government in frontline operations in Kabul against suicide bombers and that being used as a signal of National's "pro-American loyalties".
Hager's latest book, which chronicles New Zealand's near-decade long involvement in Afghanistan as part of the post-September 11 "war on terror" and examines the last Labour Government's struggle to stay out of the Iraq war, is the result of interviews with military officers, defence and foreign affairs officials, Beehive-based political staff, intelligence operatives and other insiders. He also obtained thousands of pages of classified documents from a variety of sources.
The book was delivered to retailers this morning without any prior publicity for fear that authorities might seek a court-imposed injunction to block its sale because of security sensitivities surrounding its contents.
While it is expected that attempts will be made to discredit the book and its author, the veracity of the findings of Hager's previous investigations, which include a landmark expose of New Zealand's security and intelligence organisations in the 1990s, has never come under serious challenge.
His Seeds of Distrust, which covered Labour's political management of the vexed issue of genetic engineering, had a major bearing on the 2002 election campaign.
While both Labour and National may be embarrassed by Hager's findings, Other People's Wars is unlikely to have the same impact on this year's election. The work is instead highly critical of New Zealand's defence and foreign affairs bureaucracy for crossing the line into politics in its desire to see a resumption of the strong security ties the military enjoyed with the United States and Britain prior to New Zealand's adoption of the anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s.
Other notable features of the book include:
* Defence Force staff responsible for the deployment of Orion aircraft and Anzac frigates to the Gulf in the "war against terror" ignored instructions from then prime minister Helen Clark to keep their operations separate from those being conducted by the United States against Iraq. The book quotes unidentified officials and former diplomats as agreeing that Clark - lacking a strong defence minister - fought a lone battle against neverending efforts by the Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries to rewrite Government policy and buy military equipment which would enable New Zealand to build bridges with the United States.
* a New Zealand Defence Force signals intelligence officer
working alongside the Americans at Afghanistan's Bagram air base tracked Taliban insurgents in Pakistan which were later the targets of attacks.
* another New Zealand intelligence officer seconded to Bagram joked on his Facebook page about not finding Osama bin Laden but added he had "widowed a few wives, though".
* New Zealand SAS soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in the early stages of the "war on terror" got fed up with the gung-ho "killing terrorists" mentality of the Americans and their treatment of captured or suspected insurgents.
* the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted a letter on behalf of the Kabul-based government and got it signed by the Afghan president to maintain the pretence that New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team had been "invited" to come to Afghanistan.
* New Zealand diplomats resorted to underhand tricks when they did not get their way with the last Labour Government. For example, when Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials did not like a particular Government policy decision, New Zealand's ambassadors in Washington and Canberra were told to sound out the views of the local bureaucrats. The ministry would then tell Government ministers that the Americans and Australians had made it known they were very concerned and there could be "relationship implications".
* senior officers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars using the Air Force's 757's to fly themselves to international air shows and take part in international study tours.
Source,
NZ Herald
PM rejects claim of secret CIA base (in Bamiyan)
Prime Minister John Key has rubbished claims by writer Nicky Hager that the New Zealand main camp in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, harbours a secret CIA base.
Mr Key said he had not heard anything to suggest United States personnel there had links to the CIA.
Hager makes the claim in his latest book, Other People's Wars, on New Zealand's role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes allegations that military and intelligence officials did not tell politicians the full story.
"Somehow, in spite of media visits and hundreds of soldiers passing through the base, the New Zealand military managed to keep secret the fact that they shared the Bamiyan camp with a US intelligence base," Hager said. "All the evidence" pointed to the US personnel being CIA officers.
Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae, who was formerly head of the Defence Force and the Government Communications and Security Bureau, also rejected the claim that the provincial reconstruction team's Kiwibase camp included a covert CIA base.
"That would be news to me. Certainly what I know - and what advice I gave - that would not support [it]," Sir Jerry said.
"And I've had two jobs where I would expect to know."
He also denied that New Zealanders had been misled over the military's role in Afghanistan. "What has been publicised about New Zealand's role in Bamiyan is exactly what they are doing."
Labour leader Phil Goff said it would be "shock, horror, surprise if we didn't have intelligence facilities designed to keep New Zealand Defence Force personnel safe in an area of deployment".
Mr Key said he had not read the Hager book. "Mr Hager's views on this stuff are well known, so the conclusions he reaches come as no surprise.
"New Zealanders would expect that our forces have the best information they possibly can to protect themselves when they're in a very dangerous and hostile environment," Mr Key said.
"The vast bulk of that intelligence is actually gathered by our own people."
His spokesman said New Zealand worked co-operatively in several spheres with partner countries in Afghanistan, including the Bamiyan base, where there were personnel from many countries such as Malaysia, the European Union and United States.
"In the realm of intelligence, while it is relatively well known we co-operate with our partner nations, particularly to ensure the safety of our troops, we do not go into the details of such arrangements."
Hager said he had been working on the book for five years and had been helped by military, government, intelligence and defence sources including documents. "This . . . is by far the largest leak of military intelligence documents in the history of New Zealand."
Asked if there would be an investigation into the military leak, Mr Key said: "We don't even know if there has been a leak. We just know Nicky Hager's written a book." He said he was not taking it seriously.
Hager said few people outside the military understood what happened in Afghanistan and in New Zealand's part in the "War on Terror".
As well as covering Bamiyan, the book outlined New Zealand's reaction to the 9/11 attacks, the role of the SAS in Afghanistan and the role of Kiwi "peacekeepers" in loading explosives for British paratroopers.
Source
Taranaki Daily News
Mr Key said he had not heard anything to suggest United States personnel there had links to the CIA.
Hager makes the claim in his latest book, Other People's Wars, on New Zealand's role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes allegations that military and intelligence officials did not tell politicians the full story.
"Somehow, in spite of media visits and hundreds of soldiers passing through the base, the New Zealand military managed to keep secret the fact that they shared the Bamiyan camp with a US intelligence base," Hager said. "All the evidence" pointed to the US personnel being CIA officers.
Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae, who was formerly head of the Defence Force and the Government Communications and Security Bureau, also rejected the claim that the provincial reconstruction team's Kiwibase camp included a covert CIA base.
"That would be news to me. Certainly what I know - and what advice I gave - that would not support [it]," Sir Jerry said.
"And I've had two jobs where I would expect to know."
He also denied that New Zealanders had been misled over the military's role in Afghanistan. "What has been publicised about New Zealand's role in Bamiyan is exactly what they are doing."
Labour leader Phil Goff said it would be "shock, horror, surprise if we didn't have intelligence facilities designed to keep New Zealand Defence Force personnel safe in an area of deployment".
Mr Key said he had not read the Hager book. "Mr Hager's views on this stuff are well known, so the conclusions he reaches come as no surprise.
"New Zealanders would expect that our forces have the best information they possibly can to protect themselves when they're in a very dangerous and hostile environment," Mr Key said.
"The vast bulk of that intelligence is actually gathered by our own people."
His spokesman said New Zealand worked co-operatively in several spheres with partner countries in Afghanistan, including the Bamiyan base, where there were personnel from many countries such as Malaysia, the European Union and United States.
"In the realm of intelligence, while it is relatively well known we co-operate with our partner nations, particularly to ensure the safety of our troops, we do not go into the details of such arrangements."
Hager said he had been working on the book for five years and had been helped by military, government, intelligence and defence sources including documents. "This . . . is by far the largest leak of military intelligence documents in the history of New Zealand."
Asked if there would be an investigation into the military leak, Mr Key said: "We don't even know if there has been a leak. We just know Nicky Hager's written a book." He said he was not taking it seriously.
Hager said few people outside the military understood what happened in Afghanistan and in New Zealand's part in the "War on Terror".
As well as covering Bamiyan, the book outlined New Zealand's reaction to the 9/11 attacks, the role of the SAS in Afghanistan and the role of Kiwi "peacekeepers" in loading explosives for British paratroopers.
Source
Taranaki Daily News
A rare glimpse of Afghanistan's beauty
Visions splendid: Kather with some of his photographs. Photo: Justin McManus
A former refugee captured the sights of his war-torn homeland before leaving.
THE two giant Buddhas of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley - unique in the world - stood for more than 1400 years before the mad mullahs of the Taliban destroyed them with explosives in 2001. Carved from the cliff face, one stone Buddha was 38 metres tall, the other 55 metres tall, but all that remains today are the two huge cavities that enclosed them.
On the wall of the Sofitel Hotel's 35th floor, you can see a photograph of this forlorn yet beautiful valley courtesy of an Afghan who sought asylum in Melbourne two years ago. Kather, 25, - he uses only his family name - left kith and kin behind, bringing a computer chip of photographs among his few belongings. ''Many of these places are rarely seen by outsiders,'' says Kather, the son of a businessman. Fifteen of his photographs - billed as the ''first solo exhibition of Afghanistan in Australia'' - are on display at the hotel. He titles it: ''Inside Afghanistan's Beauty''.
Kather is not what you might expect as an asylum-seeker from a war-torn nation. ''I need to go home after work to make sure I present myself properly,'' he had told me and indeed, when we met at the Sofitel around 7pm, he was resplendent in a type of showbiz high-couture. Red jacket, white dress shirt, designer-torn pants, pointy black shoes and the largest set of silver finger-rings since Liberace.
''It is my own contemporary style,'' he said. With fluent English, Kather immediately impresses as an unexpectedly calm and outgoing young man but inquire further and you soon find the scars. ''When I arrived, I was very lonely, sick and depressed.'' he said. ''I thought: what am I doing here? I don't know anyone. I went through many therapies and medications. They literally made me numb. I was living in this misery in hostels. In one year I changed homes seven times, from Cranbourne to Brunswick. No conflict, something always seemed to happen.''
Kather says he had bad dreams for a long time after he arrived in Melbourne, echoes of the violence back home. ''I have experienced horrible things,'' he says. ''Mass murders in front of me, I don't want to get into that. It is too distressing. I was 18.''
Kather, as a member of the minority Hazara community, attended a leading Hazara college, studying computer sciences, but turned to art and photography instead. ''I was in love with art and wanted to express myself. These photos are the remnant of my repertoire [in Afghanistan]. It was not easy, taking them. No one had done it before. I went by car, sometimes by foot, sometimes on my own, sometimes with my mates. A lot of trips, years of work. I would study the situation first, minimise the risk. There were times when people objected, especially when I would take a portrait. But they were my own people. Not as confronting as being seized by your enemy.''
Kather carried his camera through far-flung areas such as the Band-e-Amir lakes, Ghazni, Mazar-i-Sharif and Shar-e-Zohak. ''I was fortunate that my uncle knew a photographer who gave me one-on-one tuition,'' he says.
Since arriving in Australia, he has been painting but it is music that has been the catalyst for his photo collection. On the invitation of a friend, he joined the choir With One Voice, a Creativity Australia venture. The same organisation helped stage his exhibition. Meanwhile, an ill-fated love affair with a Melbourne woman has helped and hindered.
''Very thrilling but complicated,'' he says. ''In the end she totally abandoned me, but I am a lot better than before. The relationship changed me in a better way.''
Kather now works at Crown Casino as a bartender. He says his family is in hiding abroad and fears it will be a decade or more before any of them could visit their homeland.
''Coming here is not like a holiday. Why would anyone leave their country, their inheritance and everything unless they had to? I can't go back unless the situation changes and there is peace.''
Kather says he is still on anti-depressants. ''But not as bad as it used to be. The artwork I've done here has calmed me down a lot. Killed my animosity inside.''
source,
Watoday.com
Refugee tells Afghan story in images
Jim O’Rourke
September 3, 2011
Abdul Karim Hekmat arrived in Australia in 2001, one of 170 asylum seekers crammed onto a leaking fishing boat for a dangerous five-day voyage from Indonesia.
The then 20-year-old Afghan risked the journey to Ashmore Reef, off Australia’s northwest coast, after fleeing Taliban persecution in his homeland.
Mr Hekmat is from the Hazara minority, Shiite Muslims who live in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country. He said the Hazara suffer at the hands of the hardline Taliban as well as enduring political, cultural and economic discrimination from the majority Pashtun and Tajik ethnic groups. Some of his relatives were tortured by the Taliban.
Now an Australian citizen, a youth worker and freelance writer, he has graduated with an honours degree in communications and social inquiry from the University of Technology, Sydney.
To document his people’s ongoing battle for survival, he travelled last year to his home provence of Ghazni, armed with a camera.
An exhibition of his photographs depicting the Hazaras’ personal struggle in coping with their homes, businesses and schools being targeted by the Taliban opens at UTS tomorrow.
Mr Hekmat said the Hazaras are also discriminated against by the Afghan government.
He said the Australian government insists many Hazara do not need protection and in January this year signed an agreement with the Afghan government to repatriate 49 Hazara refugees, including a 15-year-old boy.
There are about 2400 Afghan asylum seekers in detention waiting for final determination of their refugee status.
Mr Hekmat feared many of them would have been sent to Malaysia as part of the government’s refugee swap scheme, and miss out on a chance to settle in Australia.
But the High Court decision last week that the so-called Malaysia solution was unlawful has given him hope they may eventually be able to stay.
‘‘The High Court decision was very welcome news, but we still don’t know where they will end up.
‘‘The Hazara are still being killed by the Taliban. The Afghan government is not passing on the benefits from the billions of dollars it receives in overseas aid. It not is not providing for their basic needs.
‘‘Australia should tear up the agreement with Afghanistan to send the Hazara home.’’
‘‘Unsafe Haven: Hazaras in Afghanistan’’, opens tomorrow, UTS Tower Foyer, Level 4, 15 Broadway, Ultimo.
Source,
The Sydney Morning Herald
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