t r u t h o u t - Le Monde

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Killings Drive Doctor Group to Leave Afghanistan    •
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    The Afghan Trap
    Le Monde Editorial
    Thursday 29 July 2004
    It took Doctors without Borders' announcement of its departure from Afghanistan in response to the assassination of five of its members by the Taliban for the spotlights to turn back towards this unhappy country. The humanitarian organization, which has been on the ground there for twenty-four years, deemed that its teams' security could no longer be assured.
    The "French Doctors" do not content themselves merely with criticizing President Karzai's government's parody of an inquiry; they call into question the whole western strategy and America itself. The promised economic aid has not materialized; foreign troop strength is dramatically insufficient to prevent security from deteriorating and to protect preparation for the upcoming elections: the presidential in October and the legislative in April 2005.
    Even more serious, DwB attacks an American strategy that mixes military operations and humanitarian aid: "To erase all distinctions between military efforts against insurgents and humanitarian work, puts all aid workers in danger," asserted this NGO's Secretary General. It's all the more dramatic as the Afghan population, hostage for decades to war and destruction, and which lives in some of the worst hygienic conditions in the world, has an urgent need of this aid.
    After having been the symbol of the international- and not only American - response to al-Qaeda's terrorism right after the bloody September 11 2001 attacks, Afghanistan now risks becoming the symbol of the failure of the community of nations to rebuild this ravaged country. Obsessed by Iraq, American President Bush has never deployed adequate resources to capture Osama bin Laden and to consolidate the power of his ally, Karzai. For a long time he preferred to capitalize on the services of the war lords, who today are turning against the central power.
    But the Europeans are no better, in spite of the reinforcement of their military presence on the ground. Security is less and less assured outside of Kabul. And, as NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared during the recent Istanbul summit, it's in Afghanistan, where the organization musters 6,400 soldiers, that "NATO's credibility is at stake."
    So is the European Union's. The Union's troops, with a French general at their head, are to assume command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in September, when its troop strength is supposed to go from 6,500 to 10,000 men.
    Afghanistan's security cannot be assured without an adequate military presence and above all without a coherent strategy. Without security, there is no political or economic reconstruction. Without security, the field is left open to the Taliban and every extremist movement, and a whole side of the strategy for the war against terrorism collapses. The credibility and the security of our world also are at stake in the Afghan mountains.

    Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

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    Killings Drive Doctor Group to Leave Afghanistan
    By Carlotta Gall
    The New York Times
    Thursday 29 July 2004
    Kabul, Afghanistan - The international aid agency Doctors Without Borders announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years to protest the government's failure to lock up the killers of five of its staff members and out of concern for the safety of the rest of its workers in the country.
    The lack of progress on the case - even though a prime suspect has been identified - as well as threats from the Taliban forced the decision, Kenny Gluck, the group's operational director, said at a news conference in Kabul. The risk of more attacks remains too high, he said.
    "We are scared that the lack of a credible government investigation and credible prosecution sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers," he said. "We feel there is not a framework in which we can put unarmed aid workers who are trying to provide assistance."
    The decision to pull out by such a prominent aid agency - Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and works in 80 countries - has shaken the government and the aid community in Afghanistan. The Afghan government and the Bush administration expressed regret and hope that the organization will reconsider, something Mr. Gluck said was possible.
    The group has been one of the longest serving aid organizations in Afghanistan, sending doctors and nurses to rural areas during the Soviet occupation in the 1980's and continuing through harrowing years of civil war and Taliban rule.
    It attracts volunteers from around the world and employs 1,400 Afghans and 80 foreigners in medical projects across the country. In coming weeks, it said, it will hand over some projects to the government or other agencies, and close others.
    In its announcement on Wednesday, the group also criticized the policy of the American-led coalition force in Afghanistan to use troops to provide relief aid, confusing, it charged, needed assistance with military and political objectives. The policy, it said, blurs the lines between relief and military activity, endangering the lives of aid workers. The State Department took issue with that assessment.
    Underscoring the continuing dangers around the country, a bomb on Wednesday killed two people and wounded seven when it blew up in a mosque where voters were registering for elections in the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul. One of the dead was an election worker and the other was a civilian registering for elections, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported. Among reconstruction and aid workers, the toll has been severe: at least 44 foreigners and Afghans involved in such work have been killed since March of last year.
    Many have been targets of Taliban gunmen or other militants in southern Afghanistan. But the five staff members of Doctors Without Borders, who were gunned down on June 2, and 12 Chinese and Afghan construction workers, shot dead on June 10, were killed by local militias in northern Afghanistan.
    Senior Afghan security officials here acknowledge that the man behind the killings of the relief workers is a former local police chief who was angry at being dismissed and wanted to damage his replacement's reputation. Yet the man remains at large, and several reputed henchmen were only temporarily detained.
    "They have told us they have credible evidence, but all the suspects have been arrested and then released," Mr. Gluck said.
    Stung by the accusations, President Hamid Karzai's office issued a statement saying it was committed to prosecuting those responsible.
    "The government is also committed to making the country safe for aid workers," it said, adding that Mr. Karzai hoped that the group "would find it possible to return."
    The State Department rejected the group's charge that mixing of military and relief activity had endangered aid workers. "We strongly reject any allegation that our actions have made it more dangerous for humanitarian workers," a deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli, said, according to Agence France-Presse.
    But in May the American military apologized for leaflets warning Afghan villagers that unless they supplied information about militants they would not receive assistance.
    It is unusual for Doctors Without Borders, which attracts 2,500 volunteer professionals annually and employs 15,000 local aid workers around the world, to leave a country.
    It is renowned for working in the toughest conditions and conflicts, and has withdrawn only from North Korea in recent years and Ethiopia 20 years ago, according to Mr. Gluck. It suspended operations temporarily in Afghanistan after a worker was killed in 1990.
    "We would be very anxious to return," Mr. Gluck said. "Afghanistan is a country where there are massive unmet medical needs."

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