Shining a light on murky work
After long consideration, Attorney-General David Parker has announced an official inquiry into the SAS-led raid on an Afghan village in 2010, as described in the Nicky Hager/Jon Stephenson book Hit& Run.
Not surprisingly, opinions are divided on how openly this inquiry should be conducted. Similar efforts overseas – like the inquiry into Britain’s role in the rendition and torture of terrorism suspects – failed to strike a widely accepted balance between secrecy and transparency, in its handling of evidence.
Par for the course, really. The public entrusts our armed forces with sweeping powers to use deadly force in the country’s name. Yet when the powers are used controversially – and the book’s claim is that six civilians were killed in the raid, including a child – the demands for secrecy can blanket the proceedings. The public (and the media) then have to struggle to discern whether their trust has been abused, or not. Ironic, really, when the declared aim of the investigation is to re-re-assure the public, and foster confidence in the forces under scrutiny.
Even with the best will in the world, the Hit& Run inquiry will be a difficult exercise, given that (a) other military forces besides the NZDF were involved (b) the vital video footage of the raid is owned by the Pentagon, which will be reluctant to set any precedent whereby the US military can be subjected to legal scrutiny by a foreign power and (c) the NZDF itself is likely to invoke national security concerns and thus limit what evidence the inquiry, let alone the public or media, may get to see.
The inquiry will take a year and will be conducted by retired judge Sir Terence Arnold and former PMSir Geoffrey Palmer. Unfortunately, while announcing the inquiry, Parker cast aspersions on the (un)reliability of aspects of the book. In Parker’s personal opinion, the raid footage he had seen did not corroborate the book’s claims about the absence of armed individuals in the village.
Regrettably, Parker then refused to answer further questions about what he’d seen, or its duration. He also could not guarantee that the inquiry itself would be given access to the same footage that Parker (and a National trio of senior politicians before him) had been invited to watch - presumably by courtesy of the NZDF, rather than down at the US Embassy. It seems surprising this footage can be screened for lobbying purposes to politicians, while national security concerns prevent the sharing of the same information with the public, the media, or – potentially – even with the $2 million inquiry set up to clarify the matters in dispute.
Even so, a flawed inquiry still seems better than none at all. Ways may be found to steer around some of the inbuilt obstacles. The terms of reference do seem broad enough to allow the inquiry (and the legal counsel for the villagers) to probe the raid’s rules of engagement.
Hopefully, the inquiry may even discover, for instance, how a raid conducted in pitch darkness could ever hope to distinguish terrorists from civilians, and enemy combatants from villagers trying to protect their homes and families from a surprise attack by heavily armed strangers.