[Mb-civic] The Afghan Trap Le Monde Editorial

[Michael Butler]

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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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