Posted on 07/28/2004 7:59:23 PM PDT by Lorianne
MÉDECINS sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders]yesterday launched a stinging verbal attack on US forces in Afghanistan as it announced it was pulling out of the country after 24 years because of the deteriorating security situation.
The aid group, which prides itself on tackling the toughest of humanitarian emergencies, said the US military was using aid work as part of a "heart and minds" campaign to garner support from Afghans sceptical of their intentions.
Speaking on a day in which two people were killed by a blast in a mosque where Afghans were registering to vote yesterday, the MSF secretary general, Marine Buissonnière, said: "MSF denounces this attempt to co-opt humanitarian aid, to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds," adding that in doing so it endangered the lives of aid workers.
"Providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act, endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardising the aid to people in need," Ms Buissonnière said.
The decision will be a blow to the Afghan government, which relies heavily on humanitarian aid in its impoverished and war-shattered countryside.
The Nobel Prize-winning group said it was leaving the country because of fears for the safety of staff after five workers, including three foreigners, were killed in an attack on a remote road in the north-west in June.
More than 900 people have been killed in violence during the past year that has targeted foreign and local troops, aid workers and people involved in preparing for the country’s first free, direct elections.
It was unclear when the relief agency would cease its activities there. The group had about 80 international volunteers and 1,400 Afghan staff in the country before the attack, which led it to suspend several projects.
The pullout is the most dramatic example of how poor security more than two years after the fall of the Taleban is hampering the delivery of badly needed aid and reconstruction.
In the latest violence, a bomb exploded in a mosque in the south-eastern town of Andar, where Afghans were registering yesterday for the elections, killing at least two people and seriously injuring two, officials said.
The attack, in Ghazni province, was the worst on poll preparations since three women election workers were killed by a bomb in Jalalabad on 26 June, a day after 16 Afghans found holding voter registration cards were shot dead in the south.
A UN spokesman, David Singh, said one of the two people killed in Ghazni was a member of the Afghan election co-ordinating body, and two election officials were seriously wounded. The US military said six people had been killed.
Authorities have blamed all three attacks on remnants of the ousted Taleban regime and its Islamic militant allies, who have vowed to disrupt a presidential vote in October and parliamentary elections planned for April.
Three rockets fired into Kabul on Tuesday night set off a secondary explosion at an Afghan military arms dump and blew a hole in the road in front of the Chinese Embassy, but injured no-one.
Anti-government militants are blamed for many of the attacks and the deaths of more than 30 aid workers since March 2003, making the south and east virtually off-limits. The assault on the MSF workers in the north-western area of Badghis, the deadliest yet on an international relief agency, raised fears that the north was also becoming too dangerous.
Police say two men on a motorcycle stopped a clearly marked MSF vehicle on a rural road as they returned to the provincial capital from a clinic. The three Europeans and two Afghans inside were shot dead.
A purported Taleban spokesman claimed responsibility, and accused the victims of working for US interests - a shock to MSF, which like many agencies relies on neutrality to protect staff in war zones. Investigators have not ruled out a link to feuds among local warlords.
Police initially arrested 13 people over the killings. But Badghis’s police chief, Amir Shah Naibzada, said yesterday they have all been released. "We’re still trying our best to find out who did this."
MSF said the government’s failure to conduct a "credible investigation" was a factor in its decision to withdraw.
MSF also complained about leaflets dropped by US forces over parts of Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan that said assistance was conditional on people passing on intelligence about Taleban, al-Qaeda and allied Islamic militants.
MSF has been in Afghanistan since 1980, shortly after the Soviet invasion, and is one of the few groups to remain there through the occupation, civil war in the 1990s and the rule of the Taleban, which was ended in late 2001.
The mosque attack and MSF’s withdrawal are further signs of deteriorating security despite the presence of 20,000 US-led troops and 6,500 NATO-led peacekeepers.
Worsening violence coincides with preparations for a presidential poll in October, which the US-backed president, Hamid Karzai, is expected win
"MÉDECINS sans Frontière"
They use their French name when they cut and run.
How fitting.
Thats right they were on vacation.
Typical liberal blameshifting. Next time try blaming the terrorists who blow up the bombs, not the tactics of the soldiers working to protect you.
TRANSLATION:
They're pining for the good old days of the Taliban.
Don' let le screen door hit you in l'ass on le way out, froggies.
"Providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act."
These frenchy frenchmen would have carried band-aids to Auschwitz while condemning efforts to liberate the camp as endangering the lives of the "residents" and violating the impartiality of the wonderful "neutral" caregivers.
Why don't they just admit they don't like seeing the government press into the countryside?
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