Aid workers review security
2008-08-14 20:33
Kabul - Foreign humanitarian agencies in
Afghanistan have restricted staff movements and said on
Thursday they are considering suspending operations in some
areas after suspected Taliban insurgents killed three women aid
workers.
Rising violence has already forced aid agencies to cut back
their humanitarian work in Afghanistan, one of the poorest
countries in the world, which is struggling to cope with high
food prices and drought as well as the Taliban insurgency.
The three women worked for US-based International Rescue
Committee (IRC) and were shot dead in a car chase on Wednesday
as they were travelling through Logar, until this year a
relatively peaceful province just south of the capital, Kabul.
The IRC focuses on providing shelter, water and sanitation
to refugees returning to Afghanistan, but has now suspended all
its humanitarian aid programmes in the country indefinitely.
Some NGOs have been active at some level in Afghanistan for
up to 30 years, throughout the Soviet occupation, civil war and
Taliban rule, and are unlikely to pull out of the country.
Forced to downscale
"But what will happen if these kinds of acts continue is
that NGOs will be forced to downscale ... reduce the scope of
their activities and ultimately the only people who will suffer
are the Afghans who rely on the support the NGOs are
providing," said a senior Western aid worker who declined to be
named.
A group of about 100 aid agencies active in Afghanistan
already complained this month that rising violence had forced
them to scale back their work and they appealed to all sides in
the conflict to respect their neutrality.
About 20 Afghan NGO workers have been killed so far this
year, but the killing of the three women from the IRC was the
deadliest attack on foreign aid workers in recent years.