Médecins Sans Frontières doesn't scare easily. Its members first went into Afghanistan on donkeys under the Soviet occupation and have been there ever since through thick and thin - civil war, Taliban and Operation Enduring Freedom. So we should take notice when MSF announces that it is pulling out of a country it has been in for 24 years. The primary cause is an attack seven weeks ago on an MSF car in which five of its staff were killed. It took place in Badghis, a province in north-west Afghanistan that was considered safer than many others and where the Taliban does not usually operate. Although the attack was claimed by the Taliban, suspicions soon settled on a local warlord against whom Kabul has been reluctant to act. The MSF statement was unusually pointed for an organisation that cherishes its neutrality. It accused the US of blurring the boundaries between aid work and combat by co-opting humanitarian aid for political and military purposes.
Aid workers have become increasingly concerned at the work of the coalition's benignly named provincial reconstruction teams, deployed across the country to build roads, dig wells and gather intelligence. Is this hearts and minds or the militarisation of humanitarian relief? Another example, uncovered by MSF, was the dropping of leaflets in Zabul province, which borders Pakistan. One leaflet showing a bag of provisions read: "In order to continue the humanitarian aid, pass over any information related to Taliban, al-Qaida or Gulbuddin (the renegade warlord) to the coalition forces." The Pentagon apologised and said it would not happen again.
The US robustly denies that its policies are endangering the lives of aid workers, 32 of whom have been killed in the past year. But security in Afghanistan is a coalition responsibility and one that seems at odds with having a policy of leaving a "light footprint" of troops on the ground. When independent organisations such as the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit warn of an increasing loss of control over the warlords, narcotics and security in general, the conclusion one is forced to draw is that one intervention in Iraq has sucked the life out of the other intervention in Afghanistan. There are many mitigating factors - warlords, opium, the weakness of Kabul, the reluctance of Nato countries to provide more troops, the failure to disarm militias or to train a credible national army - but none can disguise the fact that an insurgency is continuing in Afghanistan, just as persistently as it is in Iraq.
