New Zealand is sending troops to Iraq. The decision was not a smooth one. It was quite clear yesterday that the New Zealand Parliament was vehemently divided over the issue especially when such issues warrant unanimous decisions and positive sentiments in view of sending our young persons to operational areas.

This was such a decision for which there are no right or wrong answers. But in the long-term we, as New Zealand that recently got a seat on the UN Security Council, are going to loose the image where we punch above our weight. Within the “five eyes” realm; New Zealand inter-mingles exceptionally well with any country on the globe. It will be very interesting to observe the aftermath of Kiwi troops’ deployment in Iraq.

Among the side issues is the discussion about issuing diplomatic passports to the troops. Will it really change anything in the operational area? Not exactly as the nature of diplomatic work is totally different from the work of operational troops. But yes, this will complicate the issue for other troops without diplomatic passports. The local population will immediately identify that those with diplomatic passports are genuine soldiers whilst others are black ops type contractors. This will set a different interaction tone with the local population.

The next question that comes to mind is whether this deployment is going to stay as a training role? In an operational area it is quite difficult to draw a line between combat and training roles. Once the combat troops are engaged in a serious ‘contact’ then reinforcements do not discriminate between combat and training roles. And what happens when a base is under attack? Every finger needs to be on the trigger – combat or training.

Emphasising again that there are no right or wrong answers around such deployments, there will be plenty to learn from this exercise.