Simon Strombom Photo: Supplied
Health problems from breathing smoke from burning tyres and faecal matter are on the radar of the new Afghanistan Veterans Association.
The association already has about a thousand members online.
Former army major Simon Strombom, who served in Afghanistan and received a Distinguished Service Decoration, helped set it up. He has late-onset asthma, recognised by Veterans Affairs as caused by toxic air exposure.
"In Afghanistan there's not a lot of fuel," he said. "What they do is they actually burn faecal matter, so most of the Afghans through the whole tour, they were saying 25 percent of the dust we were breathing in was just faecal matter."
The new association offered a way to get health problems addressed and a fresh, relevant alternative to other veteran groups, without duplicating their valuable work, said Strombom, who also established the New Zealand Remembrance Army volunteer network in 2018.
The Vietnam Veterans Association had provided seed funding "in a strong gesture of intergenerational support".
Strombom's health was harmed in just six months in-country.
"The effects are coming through, it was a very toxic environment.
"Another example was, when they made bricks because there was no wood, they used car tyres, so we'd come down the roads and there'd be huge plumes of black smoke, and the people making the brick were actually black.
"You're breathing smokey rubber."
Veterans' Affairs had done well by him, but some others struggled, he said.
The new association planned to hold a national remembrance event each August, marking the period when most New Zealand casualties occurred in Afghanistan.
Up to 5000 troops from New Zealand were there for about 20 years until 2021.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
