Locke Keith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5634] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 This afternoon in Parliament I think we had a very good debate on the question of Afghanistan and whether the SAS should be recommitted there. I note that the conclusion was that four parties were against the SAS going and one was for. I think that reflects the great concern in the population. It would have been good as Labour speakers said if the debate had happened before the commitment of SAS troops rather than afterwards. 
One point from that debate I would like to take up is the question of terrorism. Dr Wayne Mapp in his contribution as the Minister of Defence said—and he has used the expression before—that if we do not commit troops and fight the Taliban Afghanistan will end up being a “haven for terrorists” again. In a later point he said that it would be an uncontested home for al-Qaeda. I think it betrays reality; as Phil Goff said if Osama bin Laden is anywhere he is probably in Pakistan. All kinds of journalists have been running around Afghanistan talking to players in Afghanistan the Taliban and the Government and all sorts of factions and no one I know of has come across al-Qaeda in the past year or two. If anything there is just a very small core. But it serves the purpose of people who want to support this type of intervention in Afghanistan or elsewhere to portray some giant conspiracy: Osama bin Laden sitting in his cave in Afghanistan and all the tentacles going out and bombs going off in cities around the world duplicating the communist conspiracy of the past which was used to justify all sorts of other interventions including in Viet Nam. 
The reality is that these terrorist groups generally—including the ones that bombed in London and Jakarta most recently—have their own particular rationale. We very strongly disagree with object to oppose and criticise the way they are killing civilians in trying to get to their political goals but if we want to understand what terrorism is about we have to actually look at it in each situation and look at the arguments that each terrorist group comes up with to get some support behind it. 
When we look at the London bombings and the people engaged in that we see clearly that there are two basic motivations as they explained it. They felt alienated in Britain. They felt that Muslims there including Muslim youth like themselves were being mistreated. Also they objected to what was happening in Iraq with the British invasion of Iraq. There are different configurations of explanations for the support going to terrorist groups around the world. Osama bin Laden I think had three planks when he got going. First was opposition to US troops in Saudi Arabia second was what was happening in Palestine and third was the Western military pressure on Iraq and the sanctions against Iraq. He got support around that. 
So if we want to get rid of the evil of terrorism we have to actually look at the causes and try to deal with them. In fact if we look at a range of cases we see that foreign intervention particularly foreign military intervention is exactly what gives these terrorist groups their fuel not as some giant interlinked conspiracy but in each country they exist in. So it is from that point of view that I believe it is an error to send the SAS troops to Afghanistan and engage in a military solution rather than a solution involving dialogue reconstruction and the things that our provincial reconstruction team is doing. Peaceful solutions are increasingly being advocated around the world. 
If one thinks that a military solution is right and that putting in a lot of foreign troops bombing places having sweeps across the Afghan countryside upsetting everyone killing civilians and everything else will get rid of terrorism one is dreaming. In fact it goes completely the opposite way. There have been articles in the  
Dominion Post 
 the  
New Zealand Herald 
 and all kinds of papers and when we read the stories of why people in Afghanistan go towards the Taliban we see that the kids there feel alienated and have nowhere to turn. So they turn to the Taliban to madrasas and Islamic fundamentalism just as in our society the young kids in South Auckland or Porirua who turn towards the criminal gangs are the kids who are at a loose end are in poverty and do not see a future. 
Vote agreed to.