KABUL, 29 July 2004 — The Medecins sans Frontieres aid group announced yesterday it was pulling out of Afghanistan after more than 20 years due to security concerns and the lack of progress in an investigation into the killing of five staff. A statement from the group, called Doctors Without Borders in English, also complained of the “co-optation” of assistance work by the US-led military, a reference to concerns that American forces blur the boundary between military and humanitarian work.
“Of course, it’s the killings of our colleagues. But linked to that, we’re very unhappy with the investigation,” said an MSF spokeswoman in Kabul. MSF has been in Afghanistan since 1980, shortly after the Soviet invasion, and is one of the few organizations to remain in the country through the occupation, civil war in the 1990s and the rule of the Taleban that was toppled in late 2001.
The decision by the Nobel Prize-winning relief agency is a blow to Afghan authorities, who rely heavily on the United Nations and other aid groups for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction work. The withdrawal is another sign of deteriorating security despite the presence of around 20,000 US-led troops and 6,500 NATO-led peacekeepers. Both forces are struggling to bring stability before a landmark presidential election in October.
Three foreign MSF staff, a woman from Belgium and men from Norway and Holland, were killed in June along with two Afghans workers on a remote road in the northwestern province of Badghis, which until then had been considered a relatively safe area. MSF accused the US military of “the co-optation of humanitarian aid ... for political and military motives”. The statement was referring to around a dozen US-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) deployed across the country to carry out civilian and military operations — ranging from building wells to gathering intelligence.
Six Afghans including two local UN staff registering voters for upcoming elections were killed in a bomb blast inside a mosque in central Afghanistan yesterday, officials said. The two UN staff members were registering voters in the mosque in Ghazni province when the bomb exploded, the US-led coalition said in a statement. At least two other UN staff members were injured in the explosion and were airlifted to hospital at the Bagram air base outside Kabul, the statement said. The UN staff were Afghan nationals, UN spokesman David Singh said.
Meanwhile, by shunning his powerful defense minister as a running mate in October elections, President Hamid Karzai has signaled to renegade commanders and strongmen that they cannot resist efforts to disarm them forever.
The surprise exclusion of Mohammad Qasim Fahim had deepened a rift within the government between technocrats from Karzai’s Pushtun ethnic group and minority leaders molded by the country’s violent past, diplomats and analysts said yesterday. Fahim, an ethnic Tajik, has long been cast as an obstacle to disarming regional militias like his own which are run by commanders mostly belonging to the Northern Alliance.
The alliance routed the Taleban in late 2001 in the war and won control of most major ministries in Kabul. Karzai has gradually wrested power from “holy warriors” reluctant to accept the rule of law over that of the gun. “I think the decision of President Karzai sends a signal to a variety of commanders and warlords that they can have a political future, there is a place for them, but that there is a quid pro quo,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, declining to be identified.
“And that involves compliance with disarmament, and non-involvement in the drugs trade, and I think this was the correct signal.” Karzai has identified so-called “warlords” and their private militias as the greatest threat to security in Afghanistan, rather than the insurgency against his rule by militants that has claimed hundreds of lives in the past year. He has struggled to rein in the factions, and his authority outside Kabul is weak because of the presence of militias that have clashed with government forces on several occasions.
