The New Zealand Herald reported on August 15 that Josh
Jacobsen, the Green Party’s candidate for the North Shore
electorate in Auckland, spent years in the military and
fought in Afghanistan as a lance corporal in the New Zealand
Special Air Service (NZSAS).
The NZSAS, the
military’s special forces unit, consists of highly trained
killers. It took part in the criminal US imperialist
invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and carried out numerous
secret missions during the two-decade-long war that
devastated the country. The unit was highly valued by
Washington and received a citation from President George W.
Bush in 2004.
It is estimated that more than 200,000
people died in the war, which was part of Washington’s
drive to secure unchallenged control over the region and to
strengthen its position against Russia, Iran and China.
Faced with spiralling costs and mass resistance to the
occupying forces and the US puppet regime, the Biden
administration withdrew in August 2021 and handed power back
to the Taliban.
The Greens’ selection of Jacobsen
further exposes the fraudulent claims by the pseudo-left
groups, the International Socialist Organisation and
Socialist Aotearoa, that it is an anti-war party. Jacobsen
speaks proudly about his participation in an illegal war
aimed at transforming Afghanistan into a US
colony.
According to the Herald, Jacobsen joined the
military after leaving high school and passed selection for
the NZSAS at the age of 21. He was deployed to Afghanistan
in 2010 and again in 2011.
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Jacobsen is unlikely to
enter parliament in the November 7 election; he is ranked
25th on the Green Party list and is standing in a seat held
by the conservative National Party since 1949. The Herald
notes that if elected “he could be the first New Zealand
MP to have fought as a combat soldier since the World War II
generation.”
The article by reporter David Fisher,
which includes several comments from Jacobsen, is a piece of
war propaganda. It covers up the brutal and criminal
character of the Afghan war and whitewashes the role of the
NZSAS.
The Greens candidate explains that he was eager
to go to Afghanistan to “put into action the skills we had
been taught. And I think everyone who joins wants to help
people.”
Such comments make the NZSAS sound like a
humanitarian aid agency. Its actual role was to terrorise
the population and violently suppress the insurgency against
the occupiers. Despite the secrecy surrounding NZSAS
operations, the unit—like the US, British, German and
Australian forces—has been implicated in war
crimes.
The Herald refers to an inquiry established by
the previous Labour Party-led government, which included the
Greens, after investigative journalists revealed that six
civilians were killed and 15 injured during Operation
Burnham, an August 2010 raid on two villages carried out by
the NZSAS and American forces.
Fisher writes
ambiguously that “Jacobsen’s hesitancy to discuss his
service with the NZSAS means he will not acknowledge being
part of the raid.” Jacobsen is quoted saying that the
inquiry’s findings, released in 2020, “acknowledged that
the actions of the people on the ground was in keeping with
what New Zealanders would expect of the Defence
Force.”
The inquiry confirmed that civilians were
killed, including a three-year-old girl—facts that the
Defence Force had initially denied—but defended the deaths
as collateral damage. Attorney-General David Parker
described the killings as “legal.”
The inquiry
also confirmed that the NZSAS had breached the Geneva
Convention by beating a captured insurgent and handing him
over to the National Directorate of Security, which was
notorious for torturing prisoners.
Reporting in
November 2019 also implicated the New Zealand army in 17
Afghan civilian deaths and injuries, including the deaths of
seven children, caused by unexploded bombs left behind at
firing ranges in Bamyan province, where an NZ army base
operated from 2003 to 2013.
Jacobsen has not publicly
criticised any of the atrocities committed during the war
and has repeatedly defended NZ’s role in it. On August 19,
2021, he wrote on Facebook that the withdrawal from
Afghanistan raised questions: “What did we achieve? And
was it worth it? These conversations are well worth having.
This is not the last time that the New Zealand military will
be sent to war.”
He then declared that soldiers had
fought to end the Taliban’s oppression of “women,
non-Pashtuns, and non-Muslims.” This is the same
“humanitarian” propaganda used by successive US
governments to justify aggressive wars of conquest in
Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed more than a million
people and destroyed entire societies.
In a more
recent post, on April 3, 2026, Jacobsen wrote that “it is
the values instilled in me during my time in the Navy and
the Army that brought me to the Greens; serving our country,
looking after each other, and leaving the place better than
we found it.” Jacobsen was not yet speaking publicly about
having been in the NZSAS.
To describe New Zealand’s
role in Afghanistan as “looking after” people and
“leaving the place better than we found it” is a
grotesque lie.
How exactly did Jacobsen go from
fighting in Afghanistan to joining the Greens? According to
the Herald, after leaving the military he “spent time
studying at a university in the United States where he met
his wife,” whose name and occupation are not revealed. He
then spent time in “South America and Africa” before
eventually moving to Jordan.
The Herald states:
“Jacobsen’s experience landed him work with the United
Nations, including roles that took him inside Gaza around
the time military action by Israel saw thousands killed and
a humanitarian crisis that stretched into 2015 and
beyond.” What Jacobsen did for the UN and what he did in
Gaza is not explained.
According to Jacobsen, the
Greens’ “brave” position on Palestine “tipped me
from voting for the Greens to joining the Greens.” The
party’s election manifesto calls for NZ to recognise the
state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel—policies
which, even if adopted, will not stop the genocide against
the Palestinian people.
The party must be judged on
its record. Like its Australian and German counterparts, it
has consistently supported New Zealand’s role as a minor
imperialist power allied to the US.
The Greens voted
against the Labour-Alliance government’s deployment of
NZSAS troops to Afghanistan in late 2001, but provided
critical support for that government to stay in office.
Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimmons made clear that the
party was not against military action on principle,
declaring that there “may be a place for armed forces”
to be deployed if approved by the UN.
In 2010, Green
MP Keith Locke stated that he was “proud” of New
Zealand’s role in Afghanistan, falsely calling it a
“peacekeeping” operation.
The Greens were part of
the 2017–2023 Labour-led government which strengthened New
Zealand’s alliance with US imperialism, including by
sending NZ troops to Britain to train Ukrainian conscripts
for the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.
In 2019,
Green Party co-leader James Shaw worked with Defence
Minister Ron Mark, a member of the right-wing nationalist NZ
First Party, on a policy document justifying increased
military spending. New Zealand became closely integrated
into US-led war preparations against China, which the
Labour-Greens-NZ First government repeatedly described as
the main “threat” facing the world, along with
Russia.
The Greens are positioning themselves to join
another Labour-led government, which will continue and
deepen this militarist trajectory. Labour agrees with the
current National Party-led government that the military
budget must be doubled from 1 to 2 percent of GDP and
recruitment expanded significantly.
The Greens’
promotion of Jacobsen is part of the political
establishment’s efforts to overcome mass opposition to
war, to encourage nationalism and to persuade young people
to join the military.
New Zealand’s ruling class is
actively preparing to drag the country into the rapidly
expanding war for the redivision of the entire world. This
unfolding global catastrophe can only be stopped by building
an anti-war movement of the international working class that
is independent of, and opposed to, all the capitalist
parties, including the Green Party and its middle class,
pseudo-left cheerleaders. Workers and young people must take
up the fight for the socialist reorganisation of society, to
put an end to the capitalist system, which is the source of
war. Those who agree with this program should contact the
Socialist Equality Group.
By Tom Peters, Socialist
Equality Group
20 August 2026
Original url: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/20/lpgi-a20.html
