Doctors Without Borders pulls out of Afghanistan, says government ignores killings of its workers
Aid group pulls out of Afghanistan
Doctors Without Borders says government ignores killings of its workers
Associated Press
Originally published July 29, 2004
KABUL, Afghanistan - Medecins Sans Frontieres has became the first major aid agency to withdraw from Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, saying yesterday that the government failed to act on evidence that local warlords were behind the killings of five of its staff.
The Nobel Prize-winning medical relief group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, denounced the U.S. military's use of aid to persuade Afghans to snitch on insurgents, saying it risked turning all relief workers into targets.
It said it was also dismayed that Taliban rebels tried to claim responsibility for the June 2 attack on its staff.
"We feel that the framework for independent humanitarian action in Afghanistan at present has simply evaporated," said Kenny Gluck, MSF's director of operations. There is a "lack of respect for the safety of aid workers."
The withdrawal of Medecins Sans Frontieres, which had 80 international volunteers and 1,400 Afghan staff in the country before the June attack, is the most dramatic example yet of how poor security more than two years after the fall of the Taliban is hampering the delivery of badly needed aid.
More than 30 aid workers have been killed here since March 2003, rendering much of the south and east off-limits.
President Hamid Karzai said he regretted MSF's decision and insisted authorities were investigating the June attack.
The government is "fully committed to bringing to justice those responsible for murdering the MSF employees" and making the country safe for aid workers, a statement from his office said.
The assault on the MSF workers in northwestern Badghis, the deadliest yet on an international relief agency, raised fears that the north was also becoming too dangerous.
Badghis police say two men on a motorcycle stopped an MSF vehicle as it returned to the provincial capital Qala-e-Naw from a rural clinic. The three Europeans and two Afghans inside were shot dead.
A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility and accused the victims of working for U.S. interests - a shock to MSF, which relies on neutrality to protect staff who venture into war zones.
But MSF officials said yesterday that the Afghan interior minister had told them there was "credible evidence" that a former local security chief in Badghis had ordered the killing to protest his ouster.
That the official, who wasn't identified, has been neither arrested nor denounced "sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers," Gluck told reporters.
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
