The senseless slaughter last week of ten aid workers in northeastern Afghanistan has renewed the long-running debate about whether those tending to the world’s poorest and most forgotten people should resort to working under military protection. According to Die Zeit columnist Hauke Friederichs, this knee-jerk reaction from policymakers would only further endanger aid workers, whose efforts depend on a well-understood neutrality.
For Die Zeit, Hauke Friederichs writes in part:
It was but a helpless reflex when Development Minister Dirk Niebel and other politicians expressed in numerous op-ed articles the old demand for volunteer organizations to please work more closely with soldiers. The Braunschweiger Zeitung demands: “The deaths of these aid workers should induce aid agencies to reconsider their approach. Aid workers urgently need expert advice on security matters, including from the military, and when in doubt, armed protection.” This is pure nonsense.
Would the murderers have been deterred by a few armed security guards? Hardly. In the past, aid organizations and institutions operating in Afghanistan have been attacked despite such protection. Recently a German guard and several Afghans were killed in an attack in Kunduz.
But there is yet another reason to object to the call for closer cooperation between NGOs and soldiers. Aid workers would be no less vulnerable working alongside the military; after all, soldiers are the primary targets of the Taliban and the terrorists. And rebels strike with explosive devices, rockets and mortars. You could cynically say that aid workers are at even greater risk in the company of soldiers than not.
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