Posted on 08/12/2004 5:31:31 AM PDT by OESY
Doctors without Borders ... has pulled out of Afghanistan.
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The group cited two reasons.... First, it was distressed by the murder of five staff members, who were killed in northwestern Afghanistan in June. ...
As they explained in their press conference, Doctors Without Borders take issue with the coalition's approach in Afghanistan. They bitterly resent the policy of using military units to also perform humanitarian and development tasks. In particular, they object to Provincial Reconstruction Teams, whose mixed assignment of security and economic development is anathema to them. Humanitarian aid, they believe, must be kept strictly separate from anything military.
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I admire this organization and its strong ethics, but it has missed a paradigm change in global conflict. It's a different world out there, and unless they want to get out of the aid business altogether, they'll have to come to terms with it.
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The new generation of terrorists does not spare unarmed humanitarians. They do not leave clinics, schools and other benign civilian projects untouched: They destroy them especially, because they want civilians to suffer and reconstruction to fail. Fear and backwardness are a kingdom they can rule; healthy, secure and prosperous populations have no use for them. This means that humanitarian aid workers are not neutral in the eyes of the terrorists; rather, because they work to make things better, they represent a threat.
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The absence of weapons and soldiers did not protect them; it just made them easier to kill. Whoever supports progress, stability and the well-being of civil society is the enemy. In this deeply regrettable new situation, security, development and aid are parts of an inseparable whole, and until stability is achieved, humanitarians will have to operate under the cover of arms -- or not at all.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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And to think I used to donate to Docs without Borders...no more.
Hmm. Has John Kerry yet announced that this is Bush's fault. And that if he is elected this rather French-acting group will send doctors back to Afghanistan?
Ping for later reference.
I've been a defender of Doctors Without Borders in the past. But I've got to agree with the writer that their philosophies need to be modified to take into account the new realities. The Islamofacists are unusual threats. They need to be met with unusual creativity and resolve -- not just comfortable blame-America-first attitudes that have been so chic in the past.
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