MSF suspends programme after looting

The relief activities of the NGO Medecins sans frontieres (MSF) ground to a halt in six Afghan provinces after several of its compounds in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and in Kandahar in the southeast were looted this week. These incidents are the latest in a string of lootings and attacks on UN and NGO premises, all indicating that law and order are deteriorating.

Diderik Van Halsema, the MSF spokesman in Islamabad, said MSF normal activities could not be carried out in the northern and southern parts of the country. The loss of relief supplies and equipment had forced MSF to suspend its nutritional, health and vaccination programmes for thousands of Afghans, he said.

"There's been a lot of in-fighting going on, and it was a bit scary when we lost contact with our national staff. But we can now confirm that none of them were injured," he said. With security conditions sharply deteriorating, national staff are at home looking after their families.

Van Halsema said it was still unclear as to who was responsible for the lootings, and the agency was not commenting on this until it had more accurate information. Together with other agencies, MSF had withdrawn its international staff from Afghanistan shortly after the 11 September attacks, although its relief programmes were continuing with the help of its Afghan staff.

In a press release issued on Thursday, the international president of MSF, Morten Rostrup, appealed to the local authorities to do their utmost to respect what little assistance was still available, and to allow unhindered access for civilians to locations where they could still receive food and medical care.

Last week, Van Halsema told IRIN that MSF had been able to pre-position sufficient supplies inside the country to sustain its medical and nutritional centres. Now, with the closure of the two regional bases, its ability to provide assistance to Afghans had been severely compromised.

On Wednesday, Stephanie Bunker, the spokeswoman for the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, said law and order were deteriorating in the southern province of Kandahar, where there had been incidents, including a raid on the NGO Islamic Relief's office in Kandahar city. The UN guesthouse and office of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Mazar-e Sharif had also been attacked.

Van Halsema said the activities of his agencies were continuing normally in Herat in the west, in the capital, Kabul, and in the northeastern areas under control of the Northern Alliance. However, future work in Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar depended on how the military and security situation evolved, he said.