- How Much the NZDF has Changed
19 May 2009
Editor,
It was with interest that I read your article on ‘Soldiering in Somalia’ (Army News Issue 397). It made me reflect on my time in Somalia and how much the NZDF has changed since then.
I was the NZ Senior National Officer with UNOSOM II for six months in 1993, including the period of the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident which Lou Gardiner mentions in your article. I remember seeing that incident from ‘Taniwha Hill’.
During my tour in Somalia I found that I was serving three masters; UNOSOM, NZ Land Force Command in Takapuna and Army General Staff in Wellington. As SNO I reported to Land Force Command and was responsible for the command and administration of the New Zealand contingent. In addition to being the NZ SNO I was the Senior Staff Officer Logistics Operations and Plans on the UN Force Headquarters. Thirdly, as New Zealand had one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council at the time, I had to provide regular situation reports to Army General Staff which would have contributed to the political briefing of ‘our man on the Security Council’.
The existence of a single NZ Joint Force Headquarters must now make an SNO’s life much more straightforward.
Hopefully command and control of UN operations has also improved. On one occasion in Mogadishu in the force commander’s air-conditioned briefing caravan (where everyone who had had to acclimatise to 42C absolutely froze) I witnessed the somewhat ridiculous sight of very senior officers (full colonel and above) debating the minor tactics to be used in a battalion scale cordon and search operation. This puzzled me until I realised that possibly none of the senior operations staff had any training in or experience of counter insurgency and internal security operations, other than US experience in Vietnam (which might not be seen as entirely appropriate).
It was very easy to criticise the UNOSOM operation as it was conducted by a random collection of units and formations from many different countries, and the planning was conducted by staff officers who spoke a wide variety of languages and whose English was not necessarily fluent.
The NZDF and NZ Army at the time were also far from perfect. At that time, apart from the medical contingent that was sent to the first Gulf War, we hadn’t deployed a sizeable contingent anywhere warlike since Vietnam. Administrative processes were not designed for operations. As examples, take pay and allowances, always close to a soldier’s heart: there was no way to give soldiers their pay in cash – I had to invent one. This included deciding on the US Dollar /NZ Dollar exchange rate, obtaining and accounting for US Dollars (in a country with no banks and no banking system) and providing adequate reconciliations to Takapuna so that the computer based NZDF pay system could be updated. The allowance system included ‘hazardous duty allowance’ and ‘exceptional hazard allowance’. These allowances covered hazardous occurrences in peacetime, but did not take account of how to recognise being shot at as a hazardous event. Again, I had to invent a standard process and get it blessed by the accountants in Takapuna. Remember that this was a warlike operation under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, not a Chapter 6 peacekeeping operation, and being shot at was a rather routine (but somewhat hazardous) event.
Not so long ago a friend of mine was deployed to East Timor as the SNO. Whilst he was there I pulled out my old Somalia Post-Tour Report and sent it to him. I suspect that he was slightly amused, if not bemused, by my report. None of the things that had been significant issues to me as an SNO were issues for him at all. My report had included 25 recommendations on national administration alone. That did not include other recommendations related to command and operational matters.
One of the comments in my post-tour report regarding our medical kits related to condoms. It said "One of the non-temperature sensitive items is a packet of three condoms. This is neither chalk nor cheese. We should issue either none (on moral grounds) or dozens (on practical grounds)”. The remark about ‘temperature sensitive items’ related to a number of the medicines needing to be stored at low temperatures – and the only fridge that I had access to was the Australians’ beer fridge. The subject of condoms, however, stemmed from the medical briefing that we received prior to deployment. A medic talked us through the uses for all the items that we were each given (which filled an old 81mm mortar bomb box). One of these was a packet of three condoms. He held it up and said ‘you all know what these are for’, then put it down and went on to the next item. I put my hand up and said that I didn’t know what they were for because if they were for the usual purpose then three condoms for six months didn’t seem like nearly enough. On the other hand as a happily married man I didn’t need any condoms and giving me three was a complete waste. I was given a very old fashioned look and we went on to talk about the cream you use for scabies.
It is great to see that the NZDF is now so much better organised, trained and equipped to conduct operations and to deploy contingents to, and support them in, far away places. The taxpayers’ dollars are well spent on such a useful tool for the government of the day to use in pursuit of their foreign policy goals.
It is also great to see the high level of recognition now given to those who go on operations. That must be so good for morale and esprit de corps. When I returned from Somalia I felt that I had been part of a remote sideshow that was not part of the Army’s normal business and that no-one was terribly interested in. Not so many months later I was involved in the logistic preparations for the major deployment to Bosnia, but that’s another story, and as we know since then the NZDF has been constantly on operations in many parts of the world.
As one can see from the variety of medals on display every Anzac Day the Army now has a very wide experience of operations of many different sorts, and that experience is at every level. That can only be good. Certainly the Army today clearly recognises its core business, and is much better organised and equipped to carry it out. It is a very different organisation to the one that sent me to UNOSOM II in 1993.
Thank you for running the article on Somalia.
David Haynes
Upper Hutt