NGOs meet to reassess work in dangerous south

Some NGOs in Afghanistan have told IRIN they would meet later this week to reassess their programmes in the south following last Wednesday’s fatal attack which killed two men working for the Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan (VARA) after suspected Taliban fighters shot at their car. The attack, along with many others recently, has led to renewed calls for more foreign peacekeepers to be deployed outside the capital. “If no effective action is taken to arrest the sharp downward trend in security, particularly in the south and southeast of the country, it will not be possible for NGOs to continue working there,” Barbara Stapleton, an advocacy and policy coordinator of the Agency Coordination Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) told IRIN on Sunday. The NGO staff were travelling in a vehicle through Helmand province on their way from Delaram to Kandahar. “One VARA staff member was killed outright, the seriously wounded driver of the vehicle died the next day,” the advocacy coordinator underlined. The attack followed the murder of four Afghans working for a Danish aid agency, in the southern province of Ghazni, on 8 September. In the most recent reported incident, suspected Taliban killed seven bodyguards of a provincial governor of Helmand province on Saturday night. The governor of Helmand was not travelling with the guards as they came under attack. Officials in Helmand said at least 10 fighters in two cars ambushed a military vehicle carrying the governor's guards. Five died instantly, the other two several hours later. All were shot. “NGOs are currently considering whether they can continue operating in these areas and if any collective decision is made by NGOs to pull out of these regions altogether, because of deteriorating security, this would have highly adverse implications for the Bonn Process,” Stapleton maintained. She added that as these areas were some of the poorest in Afghanistan, where people desperately needed help, any curtailment of NGO activity was of great concern to the assistance community. UN agencies, along with international and local NGOs operating in Afghanistan, have been calling for more security since early last year, but things have gotten so bad recently, a comprehensive downsizing could now be imminent. “We thought August was really bad with 39 incidents but his month has been worse again,” Paul O’Brien, an advocacy coordinator for CARE International which has extensive programmes in southeastern Afghanistan, told IRIN. NGOs have called for a security meeting among agencies working in the southern provinces this week, which would take place in the southern city of Kandahar. “We will meet to get a more coordinated opinion about how much is too much and how far and for what type of programme we are going to keep taking risks,” Diane Johnson, country director for the relief agency Mercy Corps told IRIN. Mercy Corps, which also has extensive programmes in southern provinces, said the agency would consider some new measures to make work in the region less dangerous. “We don’t think we can continue to travel long distances with marked vehicles. What we are looking at now is what can we do as sort of unidentified aid workers and what can we do as identified,” Johnson said, noting her agency had already experienced a series of security incidents since late last year. “We had two staff members killed, a car highjacked, a car shot up and two cars burned, as well as an office bombed,” she said. The possibility of NGOs withdrawing from parts of southern Afghanistan came two days after the visit of NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson to the capital Kabul. Robertson said the organisation was reviewing its plans to expand its mission beyond the capital but made no commitment. NATO currently heads the 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is confined to Kabul. "Security must be established throughout the country, and NATO is now examining how best to contribute to this," Robertson said. But organisations like CARE want to see more than just talk on the issue of ISAF expansion. “With respect to possible expansion of ISAF we have been calling for it for more than a year,” O’Brien said, noting that they needed the closest thing to a neutral international peace-keeping force. “The time for talking has long gone,” he stressed.