I don't know....but they killed an american yesterday and most of the human rights orgs and health people there are getting ready to bail....mmmmmmmm
sure sounds like the situation in Iraq....
but we don't hear anything about the great victory in Afghanistan these days do we?
politicalhumor.about.com
Aid Agencies Pulling Out of Iraq as
Violence Rises
Bush asks the groups not to leave but, as in Afghanistan, many find that insurgents are
targeting their staff and hindering relief efforts.
By Sonni Efron and Shweta Govindarajan, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — President Bush appealed to
international aid groups Friday not to abandon their
efforts in Iraq, where some agency officials say they are
targets of an unprecedented campaign of violence by
insurgents.
"It is very important for the leaders of the NGOs
[nongovernmental organizations] to recognize that if
they don't go into Baghdad, they're doing exactly what
the terrorists want them to do," Bush told reporters.
"We will stay the course, and as more and more Iraqis
realize freedom is precious and freedom is a beautiful way of life, they will assume
more and more responsibilities, not only for security, but for humanitarian reasons
as well."
After three deadly bombings at the headquarters of the United Nations and the
International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, Bush administration
officials have said they understand the decisions by those organizations and others
to withdraw their international staff. The administration insists that its
reconstruction efforts are progressing despite an increase in attacks. Bush's plea
reflected the administration's desire to enlist the international community in the
costly rebuilding of Iraq.
But the president's pitch seemed unlikely to reverse the exodus of aid workers
who in some cases are handing their work over to Iraqis and, in others,
abandoning areas that are too dangerous.
"The threats facing aid workers in Iraq are without comparison to any other
region in the world," said Nathaniel Raymond, spokesman for Oxfam America,
which operates in more than 100 countries. "These attacks are frequent,
sophisticated and very specifically targeted to kill humanitarian personnel,
intimidate aid groups and hinder operations.
"I don't know of any situation where we have been so effectively as an aid
community unable to operate," Raymond said.
In interviews with 15 of the largest aid organizations operating in Iraq — some of
which also are active in Afghanistan — several said they were working in more
stable areas of Iraq and had not had to curtail their activities. A spokeswoman for
the U.S. Agency for International Development said that although insecurity was a
problem, the agency saw no evidence that it had had a significant impact on the
pace of reconstruction.
But other veteran aid officials said relief workers were finding themselves in the
cross hairs of what one described as an "unprecedented assault" in both Iraq and
Afghanistan. Another aid official said insurgents were carrying out an "active
campaign of assassinations" that had succeeded in slowing relief and
reconstruction efforts in parts of each beleaguered nation.
Some agencies say the neutrality that enables them to work safely in conflict
zones has been jeopardized by having to work under a U.S. military occupation.
But administration officials point out that Iraqi hostility to the U.N. and some
Western agencies was nurtured by Saddam Hussein's propaganda during a
decade of international sanctions.
In Afghanistan, where attacks on aid workers have increased from about one a
month a year ago to nearly one a day, entire regions of the country are off-limits
to Western relief workers. Twelve aid workers have been killed and dozens
wounded since March, according to a survey of the 10 largest charities operating
in Afghanistan that was conducted by CARE, an international relief organization.
A chilling incident was the execution-style murder of Ricardo Munguia, 39, a Red
Cross water engineer who was helping to dig wells in a remote Afghan village.
The man who shot Munguia in the head had lost a leg and was wearing a
prosthesis of a type most probably provided by the Red Cross, survivors of the
incident told authorities.
At least four of the dead are Afghan aid workers executed in September as part
of what appears to be a systematic campaign to punish Afghans who cooperate
with international aid organizations or the U.S.-backed government of Hamid
Karzai.
The four victims, who worked for a Danish aid group, were killed by suspected
Taliban militants who said the workers had to be punished for ignoring warnings
not to help Western relief agencies, an Afghan survivor of the attack told
authorities.
Also in September, a notice stuck on the front gate of a CARE compound in the
same province where the workers were slain told Afghans to "separate yourself
from the Jews and Christian community." It warned them not to attend the
funerals of people killed while working for foreign NGOs.
The attacks continued this week. On Tuesday, a car bomb exploded outside a
U.N. office in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. And on Wednesday, a bomb
exploded near the offices of Save the Children in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
There were no casualties.
"The pattern has been growing for months," said Kevin Henry, advocacy director
for CARE in Atlanta. "People are not aware of the extent to which not just aid
workers, as you see in Iraq, but Afghans working with the government or in
support of Afghan reconstruction efforts, have been targeted quite explicitly."
About 600,000 Afghans have been unable to receive aid because security
concerns forced the 10 major NGOs operating in Afghanistan to reduce services,
Henry said. As of October, nine projects have had to be canceled, either because
the NGOs could not safely get into the areas, or because locals were threatened
if they cooperated.
Among the scrapped projects were a Danish water and sanitation project that
would have helped more than 39,000 people, a health clinic financed by
Norwegians, and a Save the Children program for 210,000 women and children.
In Iraq, however, where local staff have not been directly threatened, many aid
groups say they can run some operations without foreigners and the unwanted
attention they attract.
The 15 largest aid agencies have evacuated at least 148 expatriate staffers since
last summer, many to offices in Amman, Jordan's capital, from where they
continue to assist, fund and try to supervise Iraqi relief efforts. At least 1,015
Iraqis are still working for the agencies in Iraq. The security situation is so dicey
that Interaction, an umbrella group of international charities operating in Iraq,
would not disclose how many groups were still active in the country or even how
many aid workers had been killed or wounded there since the war's end.
A senior administration official said the U.S. expected the pullout by the Red
Cross and other groups to be temporary.
But the future of the U.N. organizations operating in Iraq was unclear Friday.
Officials from five major U.N. agencies working there were meeting in Cyprus for
a weeklong "internal brainstorming session" at which the main topic was security,
two U.N. officials said. One official emerged to say there was no timetable for a
return.
"How does one carry on in this situation?" asked Kevin Kennedy, head of the
humanitarian emergency branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, in comments to Agence France-Presse news agency in
Nicosia, the Cypriot capital.
Still, many aid groups are carrying on. Some have hired security firms. Others
have quietly moved to residential areas, trying not to attract attention.
But Oxfam's Raymond notes that two-thirds of the Iraqi population lives in central
Iraq, where the violence — and thus access — is worst. Oxfam pulled its
international staff out of Iraq in August because carjackings and robberies made it
too dangerous for the workers to travel to villages.
The International Organization for Migration relocated 30 expatriates to Amman
after one of its drivers was killed. But its staff of about 130 Iraqis has continued
to identify patients who need medical care that can't be given in Iraq, and
evacuate them abroad for treatment, said Adrian Sutton, spokesman for the
group in Jordan.
"We're not pulling out, not at all," Sutton said. "The people that matter greatly are
the professional Iraqi staff on the ground. It's just the visibility of the expats which
has made them targets."
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