Ron Smith: Cinema and the secret world

I am not intending to expand into the arcane realm of the film critic but I am recommending, for those who have not yet seen them, two recent films that deal with the clandestine world of secret warfare.  The first of these is Argo, which was a great success at the Oscars, a few days ago, and the second is Zero Dark Thirty, which deeply offended the sensibilities of the politically correct, and rapidly disappeared from critical view.  Both of these were made with the officially approved cooperation of the relevant intelligence agencies.  Indeed, Zero Dark Thirty (ZDT) was intended to be part of the Barak Obama re-election campaign, depicting him as a fearless fighter against terrorism, until that project tripped over in Benghazi in September.  This was when al Qaeda turned out to be very much alive and well-capable of killing an American ambassador in his consulate.

Ron Smith: Afghanistan: prisoners and torture

I last wrote on this topic in August of last year (‘What to do with the prisoners?’, 25 August, 2010) when, as now, the matter of prisoner-taking by our SAS forces in Afghanistan was raised as a political and moral issue. The matter has now resurfaced through a long article by Jon Stephenson in the latest (May 2011) edition of Metro magazine. Again, accusations of impropriety are made against our SAS forces, and our political and military leadership, in relation to prisoners taken in counterinsurgency operations, in which our forces were involved, and who were subsequently handed over to US custody, or to the custody of various Afghan Government agencies. It should be noted that there is no suggestion that prisoners have been ill-treated by New Zealand soldiers. The focus of concern is rather on what happened to them after they have been handed over and this because of our legal (and moral) obligations under various international treaties and conventions.