Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government has identified 53 New Zealanders who are stranded in Afghanistan after the fall of the government to Taliban forces overnight.
An NZDF plane will be sent to Afghanistan to evacuate New Zealanders and Afghan nationals who worked with NZ forces after the fall of the government to Taliban forces overnight.
At a post-Cabinet press briefing this afternoon, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said 53 New Zealanders and 37 Afghan nationals who had worked alongside the NZDF were still in Afghanistan.
The Government was "very concerned" about the situation.
A C-130 military transport aircraft and around 40 NZDF personnel would be sent to Afghanistan to assist with evacuations, Chief of Defence Force Kevin Short said. The deployment was expected to last for a month.
There was no expectation the security situation in Afghanistan would deteriorate as quickly as it had, Ardern said. What had happened in days had been expected to take two to three months.
Ardern said the criteria that had been used since 2012 around defining those who had worked with New Zealand meant the 37 Afghan nationals did not qualify when they applied on July 5. That criteria had now been overridden by Cabinet.
The Operation Burnham inquiry had also added a degree of risk for Afghan nationals who had assisted NZ, Ardern said.
Short said a number of Afghan nationals had been in contact with Immigration NZ. The process would be for them to turn up, be identified as people who had worked with NZ forces, and then evacuated.
Short said they were planning for hundreds of people ultimately needing to be evacuated to New Zealand. The 37 Afghan nationals who had assisted the NZDF had at least 200 close family members.
Ardern called for human rights and the safety of people in Afghanistan to be respected by the incoming Taliban government.
New Zealand has already resettled 44 former Afghan interpreters and employees, along with 96 immediate family members since 2012-13, but many others have had immigration applications declined in recent months.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is talking to media following a Cabinet meeting today. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Defence Minister Peeni Henare said about 3500 NZ personnel had been deployed to Afghanistan overall. Ten NZ personnel had been killed. "We mourn their loss," Henare said.
New Zealand had made a "positive contribution" in the region.
Asked if the 20-year war in Afghanistan was worth it, Ardern said those decisions were made with the best information available at the time.
Every member of the NZDF who went into Afghanistan did so to make the local peoples' lives better. "They did make a difference," Ardern said.
'Awful situation in front of us'
Act party leader David Seymour asked this morning why the resettlement applications of Afghanis who had worked with the NZDF had been rejected.
"The Taliban have moved fast but this Government had opportunities to help much sooner than today," Seymour said.
"Canada got the Afghan people who helped them out last month."
National MP and former Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee wouldn't say whether the Government had dropped the ball.
"You can go through that endlessly. The reality is we've got a very, very awful situation in front of us at the moment. The focus needs to be on what should be done, and done quickly.
Smoke rises after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel in Kandahar, south-west of Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 12. Photo / AP
"Anyone who's associated with or been part of any resistance to the Taliban will be definitely in danger. We know what will happen to those people [if caught]. They will be subjected to very rough treatment, and at the end of it, lose their life."
The Green Party said it was "heartbreaking" to know that Afghans face the prospect of living under Taliban rule once again, with women and girls at the greatest risk of sexual and gender-based violence.
The party's human rights spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said New Zealand could work with allies and partners to ensure Taliban fighters have no more funding and resources, even if that means standing up to our trading partners.
Brownlee joined Ghahraman in saying that the Western efforts in Afghanistan had failed.
"The consequences of that could well be that Afghanistan becomes a home again for the sort of terrorist activity that threatens anybody, anytime," Brownlee said.
"They will become a rogue state if the rest of the world doesn't engage with them in on some level."
That didn't mean accepting "the philosophy of that regime".
"But we have to accept the reality of there being that regime. Their history is not one of compromise, nor generosity to people who've been opposed to them in the past.
"But you would hope that as they reassume control of the country, they might want to be more engaged with the international community so they can achieve some of the things they claim they're able to deliver for the Afghan people."
