Aid Workers in Peril

Afghans who work for international aid organisations are taking their lives in their hands when they go about their business, especially when traveling around the provinces.

The dangers they face were tragically underlined by the killing of four Afghans working with the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees in the southern Ghazni province on September 8.

Local staff are increasingly regarded as legitimate targets by Taleban guerrillas, who have staged an increasing number of attacks across southern Afghanistan. Elsewhere, they are liable to be robbed by bandits.

"The situation under the Taleban was much better than now," said a driver for the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, who did not want to be named.

"At that time nobody would ask us where we were going, day or night. Our emblem was respected…. Now we are frightened wherever we go. We used to fear going north in the past, but now we feel frightened when we go south, too."

The driver says he has no choice but to stick with his dangerous job, "I have to undergo this suffering because I have to earn a living for my children and get them educated."

When ICRC worker Ricardo Munguia was murdered in the central province of Oruzgan province in March, it was clear he had been picked out as a foreign national, and the Afghan colleagues travelling with him were spared.

But Afghans working for foreign aid agencies, or any organisation connected with the Western-backed interim administration, have become easy targets for the Taleban movement as it seeks to disrupt the rebuilding of the country.

The toll includes two workers of the Afghan Red Crescent Society in Ghazni, a Mercy Corps driver in a raid in Helmand, and a driver with the government's Afghanistan Development Authority, ADA, killed in Wardak.

"Local and foreign NGOs [non-government organizations], local or international staff, are the same to attackers," reckons Nick Downie, security co-ordinator in the central region for the Afghanistan NGO Security Offices, ANSO.

Downie said that attacks in the south and south-east were usually the work of Taleban remnants or of men loyal to extremist Islamic faction leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

In other parts of Afghanistan, however, NGO workers - and the vehicles they use - have increasingly become targets for crime, he said.

Western news agencies have reported that leaflets purporting to come from the Taleban have been distributed in the Kandahar area, threatening to kill "one by one" any Afghans working for the US military there.

Afghans working for international organisations have subject to a campaign of rumours that they have a secret agenda to introduce foreign influences.

Engineer Mohammad Salam Nori, who is director of a foreign-funded water project in Helmand province, told IWPR that local people have been led to believe that he had changed his religion so as to get foreign money. "Six months ago we were praying in a town, and people were surprised that we were still Muslims."

Afghans who work for foreign media also come under suspicion. A reporter in the southern Zabul province who freelances for international media organisations told IWPR that he has received several warnings.

"I have received many letters saying that I should not work with foreigners, otherwise I should watch what happens to me." he said. "People are so ignorant that they don't know the difference between a reporter and someone who works for the Americans."

If the attacks mean that fewer aid workers are prepared to venture out of Kabul, aid projects in the provinces will suffer. Mir Mustafa Parwani, the Red Crescent's foreign relations and planning director, said that the violence had already placed severe limitations on operations outside the capital. "They encounter deadly attacks, and none of the workers are willing to go," he told IWPR.

Saduddin Safi of the ADA said his organisation had been forced to scale back its work outside Kabul since a driver died and another member of a demining team was injured when their vehicle came under attack in Wardak province in May.

"Since then we haven't been able to carry out our duties beyond Kabul, because armed people are attacking our offices and workers, and people are quitting their jobs," he said.

Safi believes that President Hamed Karzai needs to exert more authority.

"Unless the central authority takes responsibility for securing our workers, I can say that not only ADA but all welfare organisations will close their offices, and the ruined and destroyed parts of the country will remain as they are now."

Fazlurahman, who works at Shelter Now, takes the same view. He told IWPR how one of their teams was attacked when cleaning an underground water channel in the Zankhan district of Ghazni province. The men were beaten and their Land Cruiser stolen.

"Hamed Karzai's government just governs in Kabul," he said. "If the government does not provide security to foreign NGOs, they will confine their activities in Kabul. But it is not just Kabul that needs reconstruction: there are 32 provinces in Afghanistan which need reconstruction."

Many Afghans feel they have to continue taking risks because of the overriding need to provide assistance in outlying areas. Doctor Mohammad Sadiq, who works for the demining organisation Afghan Technical Consultants, will be sticking it out even though he was hit by five bullets when a convoy came under attack in Shah Joi, Zabul.

"I will continue working for this organisation even if I face many more problems, in order to help root out mines from Afghanistan, " he pledged.

Habiburahman Ibrahimi and Shahabuddin Tarakhel are IWPR-trained freelance journalists in Kabul. Danish Karokhel and Rahimullah Samander are IWPR editor/reporters.