Campaign to curb attacks on aid bodies

Afghanistan's aid community is to launch a national media campaign on Tuesday to publicise the amount of assistance being provided to more than two million people in the country's war-ravaged northern regions, where levels of insecurity are rising. The move comes after news this weekend that an international aid worker was raped a week ago while on mission near the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, and that the number of attacks on relief workers and organisations in the region was on the increase. "The aid community looked at alternatives, and we decided we would launch a publicity campaign in the media ... [on] ... the volume of aid coming here, the insecurity and the impact it has on the aid community to continue our campaigns," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) regional coordinator for northern Afghanistan, Farhana Faruqi, told IRIN. "At the same time, the campaign is to inform the public authorities and factional and military commanders of the volume of assistance and the number of beneficiaries in the region," she added. Faruqi said many international NGOs had already suspended or seriously considered suspending their operations, and had told the UN that if no immediate action was taken by regional and provincial authorities, as well as factional leaderships, they would not return at all. At the weekend Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Afghanistan, said in a statement that UN staff were reporting an "alarming level of violence that is affecting both the personal security and confidence of local residents, and the ability of aid workers to assist them". He said UN interventions with local authorities had not resulted in measures to address the continuing abuses, and also warned that many aid workers, noting the climate of fear and insecurity in the region, were considering reducing or discontinuing their work there. There were also concerns over the increased harassment of displaced Afghans by various parties, "including a number of worrying incidents" recently in the northern province of Sar-e Pol. "The most immediate and devastating impact would be on communities and families who are already vulnerable, and who have no survival mechanisms left after a cycle of armed conflict and drought," Faruqi stressed. Citing one incident, Faruqi said an American aid organisation's convoy was fired upon in broad daylight while taking food to almost 1,300 displaced families. "They [the aid organisation] left the country immediately," she said. The organisation, which Faruqi declined to name, had committed itself to several other education and development projects. These had now been abandoned. In another instance, a clinic was attacked during factional fighting in Sholgara in the northern Balkh Province. One UN official said naming the organisations which had been targeted could be dangerous in the present climate of instability, because the exact identities of the perpetrators were unclear and the organisations could face serious repercussions from those perpetrators, whoever they might be. However, it is understood that many of the attacks are being perpetrated by commanders who are accountable to warlords in the north, three of whom are delegates at the Loya Jirga taking place in the capital, Kabul. Brahimi said he had met the men - Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, Gen Atta Mohammad and Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq - to discuss the issue, and that they had "promised to take urgent measures as required by this grave situation". He has also asked the newly appointed government to ensure the "restoration of vital humanitarian space in the area, and to ensure that those committing such crimes are held accountable under the law". Faruqi said aid organisations and local communities had been demanding a strong international military presence, as well as a multiethnic and religious security force in the region. "While the efforts of the UN have been to support regional security structures, the implementation of such a decision has been very slow and difficult," she said. Marina Mateen of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on Monday described the aid worker's rape as tragic, but said: "I am sure the international community will react to this rape, but this again will be selfish, because so many Afghan women were raped there." She said rape had been used as a weapon of war in the region from 1992 to 1995 as factions fought for control. "There were daily rapes. Many girls jumped out of their windows, and some fathers even killed their daughters to save them from rape," she told IRIN. The UN is sending a team into the northern region to investigate the growing lack of security.