Afghanistan
I was contingent commander for the Afghanistan summer deployment where New Zealand is making at least a micro difference, certainly in the Bamyan Province.
This experience is an example of the very diverse challenges New Zealand Police employment offers, and not just for inspectors as all ranks are being deployed.
Apart from being a fantastically beautiful place, Bamyan is where the Taliban blew up the Buddhas. When we arrived we realised their police chief (a famous Afghan warlord who gave the Taliban a hiding in the Russian war) was heavily into assisting opium smuggling. He made it his goal to disempower the narcotics squad, which was run by a chap trying to do a good job with nothing.
By the end of our time, we had fired the dodgy police chief, rebuilt the narcotics team and saw some great results. This culminated in an operation which seized over one tonne of raw opium after a nasty shoot-out, way out in the Yakawlang plains at night.
More importantly, the police brought it all back to the New Zealand base (normally it goes missing), where we secured it and burnt it off. It was the biggest seizure for years by the Afghan police in that province.