Weather Forecast For Bamiyan

Troops prepared despite report, say NZDF bosses

The head of the Defence Force says the training for New Zealand soldiers in Afghanistan has changed following the death of Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell.

O'Donnell was killed last August in an ambush in the northeast of province of Bamiyan, where the Defence Force's Provincial Reconstruction Team is based.

The Feilding-born soldier died when his patrol was attacked with explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire.

The attack also injured Lance Corporal Matthew Ball, Private Allister Baker and an Afghan interpreter.

The Defence Force yesterday released the results of a court of inquiry into O'Donnell's death.

It found troops were trained to the required standard, but criticised a lack of Afghanistan-related training, saying it did not cover in enough depth all of the equipment that would be used.

That included Humvee driver training, weapons training and and ground-to-air communications.

Defence Force Chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones said before the August ambush the attacks against the New Zealanders had been with Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs.

''This was a complex attack which involved IEDs and ground fire, which was a new circumstance,'' he told Radio New Zealand.

The training for the troops had focused on humanitarian support and self defence. ''But because there had only been IEDs, and no need for the use of weapons, that training had been pushed further down the priority list in favour of other tactics and techniques that were preventing IED attacks.

''It's complex equipment that does take a lot of time.''

However, the situation in Bamiyan had changed with the attack, General Jones said.

''This isn't a static environment where it's always been like this and we are taking time to get up to speed. This is an enemy that does chose its time and place and adjust its tactics.''

''We need to be adjusting ours and learn our lessons about what training, what equipment we need.''

Troops hadn't previously needed to call in air strikes because there hadn't been enemy forces remaining on the ground, he said.

The court of inquiry process enabled the Defence Force to review its operations, General Jones said.

''This is why we do these inquiries to actually say 'okay, the threat has changed, how do we need to change to get on top of that'.

''We are now training on those things.''

O'Donnell was the first New Zealander to be killed in Afghanistan. Private Kirifi Mila was killed in a vehicle accident in February.

Reconstruction of Bamyan Bhuddas by Afghanistan and International ...

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 – Taliban regime,an Islamist militia group that ruled large parts of Afghanistan from September 1996 till late 2001. The regime was fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic.

Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to forbid a wide variety of previously lawful activities in Afghanistan. One Taliban list of prohibitions included: pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.[105] They also got rid of employment, education, and sports for all women, dancing, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and characterizations of living things, no matter if they were drawings, paintings, photographs, stuffed animals, or dolls. Men had to have a fist size beard at the bottom of their chin. Conversely, they had to wear their head hair short. Men had to wear a head covering.

Among the Afghanistan’s historical remains, Taliban’s biggest targets, literally and figuratively, were the two monumental Buddha statues carved out of the sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. One stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet high, and together they had watched over the dusty Bamiyan Valley since the sixth century, several centuries before Islam reached the region.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th century monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,202 ft). Built in 507 CE, the larger in 554 CE, the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art.

The statues which were the largest Buddha carvings in the world were destroyed by Taliban using massive explosions in 2001, despite international opposition.

After almost a decade, teams from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, along with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, are engaged in the painstaking process of putting the broken Buddhas back together.

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