[Last Monday, the Red Cross sent its vice president, Gilles Carbonnier, to meet with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, on the sidelines of peace talks with the Americans, but there was no apparent breakthrough. A Taliban statement expressed the obvious: “Both sides stressed that Afghanistan needs a great deal of humanitarian aid and attention.”]
By Rod Nordland
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An attack by Taliban
militants on aid groups last week seemed to signal a
worrisome new chapter in
Afghanistan. Credit Wakil Kohsar/Agence
France-Presse — Getty
Images
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KABUL,
Afghanistan — A Taliban
attack on two aid organizations last week, the deadliest episode in a recent
surge of violence against humanitarian workers in Afghanistan, is a signal to
many that as peace talks falter, the insurgents are lashing out against
so-called soft targets.
Wednesday’s attack killed three workers for
CARE, the American aid group, and at least six others, most of them civilians.
Aid workers said the true death toll was 13. In either case, it was the single
biggest loss of life among the country’s 2,000 nongovernmental organizations in
more than a year.
The bombing, which struck CARE and
Counterpart International offices, came as the sixth round of peace
negotiations between the Taliban and Americans limped to an end in Qatar. The
Afghan government was excluded from the talks, which ended after seven fitful
days with a sense of fading optimism.
The Taliban, meanwhile, vowed that the
assault on the aid groups would not be their last.
Even before the attack, casualties among aid
workers had started to rise after several years of decline. Through April, five
aid workers had been killed, 12 injured and 18 abducted this year in
Afghanistan, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator, Toby
Lanzer.
Also worrisome for humanitarian groups is the
Taliban’s continued refusal to give the International Committee of the Red
Cross, by far the biggest aid organization in the country, safe passage through
areas they control.
In April, the insurgents issued a statement
saying that the Red Cross, which has worked on both sides of the conflict’s
front lines, and the World Health Organization would be barred from Taliban
areas because of what they called “suspicious” activities.
The Red Cross operates ambulance services,
orthopedic clinics, hospitals, prison visitations and other activities
benefiting all sides in Afghanistan. The World Health Organization carries out
polio vaccinations; some Taliban-dominated areas are among the few places in
the world where the disease has not been wiped out.
Last Monday, the Red Cross sent its vice
president, Gilles Carbonnier, to meet with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, on the
sidelines of peace talks with the Americans, but there was no apparent
breakthrough. A Taliban statement expressed the obvious: “Both sides stressed
that Afghanistan needs a great deal of humanitarian aid and attention.”
Roya Musawi, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross
in Afghanistan, said, “We are in dialogue about resumption of our activities
for the people affected.”
The peace talks in Qatar between the Taliban
and the Americans proved briefer than earlier efforts, ending with little
apparent progress.
“The current pace of talks isn’t sufficient
when so much conflict rages and innocent people die,” the American negotiator
Zalmay Khalilzad said Thursday in a Twitter post.
In attacking the headquarters of Counterpart
International, an American organization, in Kabul, Afghanistan, the day before,
the insurgents accused it of engaging in anti-Islamic activity. Counterpart,
which receives funding from the United States Agency for International
Development, is one of numerous nongovernmental organizations that provide
development services to governments by contract.
As it happened, no one from Counterpart was
killed. Its staff members had taken refuge in armored safe rooms. But across
the street at the offices of CARE, which has operated in Afghanistan since
1966, three employees were among the dead.
The Taliban immediately doubled down.
“The Kabul attack on Counterpart is not the
last attack,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said on Twitter.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Mujahid denied
that any of the dead were civilians and said that if anyone from CARE had been
killed, it was accidental.
“In the attack, many foreigners and their
slaves were killed,” Mr. Mujahid said. “In fact, they did not allow reporters
to go to the scene and report the facts.”
In fact, Afghan and foreign journalists did
go to the scene, and none of the dead were foreigners. Only one of those killed
was from the Afghan security forces, a member of an elite police rapid response
unit, and aid workers in the area identified all of the others as civilians.
The insurgents’ statement also complained
that Counterpart’s mixing of men and women in its projects had “resulted in
rampant moral corruption,” raising another concern for aid groups. Such mixing
is commonplace in aid organizations, especially those funded by the
international community.
A day after the attack in Kabul, the Taliban
closed a dozen clinics run by an Afghan aid group, Ahead, in Nuristan Province,
according to Zakiullah Storay, the head of the provincial health department.
The year 2013 saw a high point in attacks on
aid workers, both worldwide and in Afghanistan, according to Aidworkersecurity.org,
a database funded by U.S.A.I.D. The United Nations said there were 237 attacks
on Afghan aid workers in 2013 through November, with 36 killed. Many of those
deaths were in remote rural areas and were attributed to cross-fire and accidents.
Then in January 2014, insurgents struck
Taverna du Liban, a Kabul cafe popular with foreigners, killing 21 people of 10
nationalities, many of them diplomats and aid workers. The attack led to the
departure of some aid groups, and a widespread shift to using Afghan citizens
in projects rather than foreigners.
The number of aid groups working in the field
in Afghanistan declined to 159 last year, from 223 in 2013, according to United
Nations data. In the intervening years, attacks steadily decreased after relief
groups took greater precautions and insurgents pledged not to attack them.
Still, Afghanistan remained one of the three
most dangerous countries for aid workers, according to the United Nations.
Attacks on aid workers began increasing again
last year, a trend noted at the time by Mr. Lanzer, the United Nations
humanitarian coordinator. On Saturday, Mr. Lanzer said that pattern had
continued.
“I’m as concerned today, if not more so, than
I was in August of last year,” he said.
It was unclear whether the increase was the
result of a shift of Taliban tactics, or just the greatly increased tempo of
the war this year, as both sides pushed to improve their positions at the
negotiating table.
Mr. Lanzer said he had often spoken to
Taliban officials about the protection of humanitarian workers.
“Consistently in all my conversations they
have said aid organizations will not be targeted,” he said. “So I think what
happened this week is of particular concern,” he added. “But I would also add
that any attack by any parties to the conflict that results in civilian
casualties cannot be justified.”
An official at one relief organization, who
said he was not permitted to speak publicly about the attack, said that most
groups still believed they would not be targeted. This aid worker cited
Counterpart’s involvement in political activities like Afghan elections as the
reason last week’s attack may have been distinct.
The aid group Oxfam was among several that
refused to make a distinction between their work and that of Counterpart.
“We strongly denounce any attack on NGOs
serving Afghans, as we see this as an attack on Afghans themselves,” its
country director, Ruby Ajanee, said.
So far, Mr. Lanzer said, there has been no
sign of aid workers’ leaving Afghanistan or cutting back on their activities.
“My ethos as humanitarian coordinator is that
nongovernment and U.N. agencies are here as professionals and we will stay to
continue to protect and deliver the aid that the people of this country
require,” he said.
Fiona Gall, head of Acbar, an organization
that represents aid groups in Afghanistan, said, “Giving aid is a neutral act.”
Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter: @RodNordland.
Fahim Abed and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
contributed reporting from Kabul, and Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad,
Afghanistan.
