Losing humanitarian perspective in Afghanistan

The brutal killing earlier this month of five aid workers from the frontline health agency, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), represents yet another disconcerting indication of Afghanistan's deteriorating security situation and the failure of NATO members to tackle the real issues at hand.

Since the beginning of 2004, at least 38 aid workers have been killed in insurgent attacks, mainly by former Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic or Pashtun nationalist elements. This is almost twice as many as last year. While bandits and drug traffickers are partly to blame for the killings, MSF believes that the June 3 assault against its team in the normally calm northwestern province of Badghis was politically motivated.

Afghans and expatriates alike are increasingly pointing fingers at Islamic extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar for a growing portion of this violence. A former resistance politician with massive human rights abuses to his name, Mr. Hekmatyar was backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistanis during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Today, Hekmatyar's role as a key opponent to the administration of President Hamid Karzai stands out as one of the most glaring examples of short-sighted policies of the past coming back to haunt Afghanistan. Having declared jihad against his former American patrons, Hekmatyar is now a designated an "international terrorist," with US-led coalition forces having tried to kill or capture him since early 2002.

Despite ample warnings during the 1980s by aid groups, journalists, and even certain US State Department officials, the CIA refused to curb its backing of Islamic fundamentalists, arguing that they represented the most effective resistance fighters. The West also ignored concerns about walking away once the Red Army had withdrawn, leaving factions of well-armed guerrillas to bicker among themselves. This resulted in widespread civil war and lawlessness, eventually enabling the rise of the Taliban and the ability of Al Qaeda to operate virtually without constraint.

The MSF murders suggest that coalition forces must bear some of the responsibility for rising attacks against aid workers. Ever since the October 2001 intervention, US and other military forces have consistently sought to usurp humanitarian operations for their own purposes, endangering relief personnel by placing them in the same caldron as soldiers.

The military are also involved in providing humanitarian assistance through the deployment of armed Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or PRTs, causing great confusion. As in Iraq, insurgents in Afghanistan no longer differentiate between soldiers and aid workers, but consider them part and parcel of the same Western "anti-Islamic crusade."

Last April, for example, US planes began dropping leaflets in southern Afghanistan demanding that people pass on any relevant information regarding the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or Hekmatyar to the coalition forces in order to "continue receiving humanitarian aid."

"The deliberate linking of humanitarian aid with military objectives destroys the meaning of humanitarianism," asserts Nelke Manders, head of MSF's Afghanistan mission. "It will result, in the end, in the neediest Afghans not getting badly needed aid - and those providing aid being targeted."

The spreading violence is seriously hampering reconstruction projects and forcing aid groups, such as the International Red Cross and UN agencies, to limit or close their operations. Many expatriates are being pulled out of the country or being restricted to Kabul.

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