Paula Penfold reporting in Afghanistan with Stuff Circuit in 2019. OPINION: In a 2005 speech, four years after New Zealand first deployed to Afghanistan, then-Defence Minister Phil Goff defended the continuing mission by saying the reason for committing troops was not simply because the Taliban regime was involved in appalling human rights abuses – girls banned from attending school, women prohibited from the paid workforce, weekly executions at the Kabul football stadium, were a few of the examples he listed – but because we had accepted our responsibility to end the country’s hosting ...