MSF withdraws from the country

The Belgian-based medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) pulled out of Iraq on Thursday saying that international organisations had become targets in the light of recent threats and kidnappings of humanitarian workers. “The risk is getting closer and closer to us,” Koen Henckaerts, MSF’s director of operations for Iraq, told IRIN on Friday from Brussels, noting the increase in attacks on the humanitarian community, such as the recent kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, the director for Iraq with the international NGO CARE. “We [NGOs] have been a target of insurgents several times and we have the impression that impartiality and independence are not respected,” Henckaerts said, adding that it was difficult to keep their autonomy and to counter any belief that NGOs were working with Coalition forces. The Belgium branch was the last MSF agency which was still operating in the country, according to the MSF official. The health NGO had been working in Iraq since 2002 and even kept a small team of international aid workers assisting in hospitals during the bombing of Baghdad that signalled the start of last year’s war. While working in the country, MSF set up three clinics in Sadr City, one of the poorest districts in Baghdad, supported health centres in Karbala and Najaf in the south and in the central city of Fallujah, following heavy fighting and assisted displaced people from the latter city. However, the aid worker noted that the current security situation was halting their activities. “If there is no special aid for any independent organisation to assist everybody we prefer to leave,” he asserted. Due to the dire humanitarian and medical needs of the Iraqi people, the decision was taken with much regret and sadness, Gorik Ooms, the general director of MSF in Belgium, said. “It has become impossible for MSF as an organisation to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, be they foreign or Iraqi,” he added. This is the second time this year that MSF opted to leave a country due to security reasons. In July, it pulled out of Afghanistan following the government's failure to mount an adequate investigation into the killing of five MSF workers in the northwestern province of Badghis.