meta-roj

after 24 years of operations in afghanistan, through the russian operations, the warring warlords period, and the taliban, medecins sans frontieres has decided that afghanistan is too dangerous and they will leave.

this will presumably result in the pullout of some 80 foreign personnel and the unemployment of some 1400 local workers.

Médecins Sans Frontières to leave Afghanistan [guardian, july 28, 2004]

MSF today angrily blamed the Afghan government for failing to protect aid workers, and US forces for “co-opting” humanitarian relief programmes for its own ends. More than 30 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2003.

“After having worked nearly without interruption alongside the most vulnerable Afghan people since 1980, it is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them,” Marine Buissonnière, MSF’s secretary general, said in a statement

…

The agency also claimed the US-led coalition in Afghanistan had “consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions”.

It cited a leaflet distributed by US-led forces in southern Afghanistan in May that told locals they would need to give troops information about the Taliban and al-Qaida if they wanted to keep receiving humanitarian assistance.

i suppose this could be msf playing politics to drive some sort of agenda, but the organization’s integrity and reputation is fairly solid. maybe candidate bush was right when he suggested that the united states wasn’t very good at the whole nation-building thing.

i guess we’re stuck in a situation where the united states is going to have to step in and fill in the humanitarian gap, or we’re just going to ignore those people and hope nobody notices.