IRC Suspends Activity in Afghanistan after the Murder of Four Employees
August 14, 2008
Taliban forces opened fire on two International Rescue Committee (IRC) vehicles killed four aid workers and seriously wounding a fifth in the Logar Province south the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday.
Mohammad Aimal, Shirley Case, Nicole Dial, and Jacqueline Kirk, were killed after five Taliban armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles shot at their vehicle. Another driver, identified only as Zabiullah, is currently in critical condition at hospital in Kabul. All of the victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
The Taliban immediately took responsibility for the attack. “We don’t value their aid projects and we don’t think they are working for the progress of our country,” Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahed said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.
After more than twenty years in Afghanistan, the IRC announced it has suspended all activity in the country.
Case, 30, had joined the IRC just two months ago, on June 8th, to manage education programs designed to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Dial, 30, joined the IRC on May 21 to coordinate the agency’s programs for children. Kirk, 40, has worked for the IRC since 2004. In addition to providing support to the IRC’s educational programs as a technical advisor, she was a research fellow at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and worked for the university’s International Conflict Research Centre. Aimal began to work for the IRC in 2002, when he was just 19. In a statement released today, the IRC described him as “infectiously cheerful” and “someone who constantly looked on the bright side of life.”
This is not the first time Taliban forces have targeted the IRC. Akram Mohammad Gul, 40, and Mustafa Sayed Abdullah, 28, were killed on their way to work in the Charkh district of Logar after two Taliban gunmen on a motorcycle fired on their vehicle on July 17, 2007. At the time of his death, Gul, the father of eight children, worked as the social organizer for the IRC’s National Solidarity Program. He joined the IRC in April 2006. Abdullah was a driver with a local rental car company hired by the IRC. No charges were ever filed for these murders, the IRC said in a press release.
23 aid workers have been murdered in Afghanistan so far this year – a 50% increase from the 2007 total. According to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, many aid organizations have restricted the scale and scope of their projects. Many aid workers told CAHR the increased attacks reflect a deliberate strategy by the Taliban, who came to power in the mid-1990s by exploiting their countrymen’s desperation and fear, to scare international aid organizations out of Afghanistan. Others feel that the US and British governments have themselves blurred the lines between military personnel and aid workers. In his book, Hope in Hell, journalist Dan Bortolotti stated: “When Colin Powell talk[ed] about NGOs being ‘such an important part of our combat team,’ and Tony Blair [said] that ‘…war has three dimensions…the military, the political and the humanitarian one,’ they reinforce[d] the idea that aid organizations are their partners rather than independent actors.”
Regardless of the cause, the effect on the Afghan population is disastrous. With hundreds of children dying each day of preventable disease, millions of landmines still scattered throughout the country, and more than a million people at risk of starvation, the Afghan people need the international assistance more than ever to improve their health and safeguard their well-being.