KABUL -- The United Nations said Thursday it is sending more than half of its foreign staff out of Afghanistan in response to the murder of five of its workers at a guesthouse in Kabul last week.
The U.N. called the move temporary, but its top official in Afghanistan issued an unusually stern warning to the government of President Hamid Karzai, saying the U.N. could curtail work permanently if it doesn't see marked reforms.
"There is a belief among some that the international community will continue, whatever happens, because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan," said Kai Eide, head of the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, at a news conference. "I would like to emphasize that that's not true."
The U.N. is evaluating how to move its staff to bigger and more tightly guarded compounds before it allows its 600 evacuated staff to return, officials said. Until recently, about 1,100 foreign workers have been dispersed through 90 residences around Kabul. The U.N. would like to reduce that number to about 30, one official said.
Some fear the U.N.'s move could further blunt the effectiveness of aid programs as workers withdraw to fewer fortress-like residences. Kabul, unlike Baghdad, has no green zone, a tightly defended portion of the city where diplomats and foreigners are concentrated.
If the U.N. moves its workers into a central location, such a zone could begin to coalesce on its own. "There's definitely a tendency towards one day having a large, secured area," said a Western diplomat who monitors the security situation. "Its always easier to protect a large area since you can concentrate your forces there."
Some in the aid community said that the U.N. was too quick in deciding to leave. "They should take more time to assess," said Sardar Mohd, deputy country director of Mercy Corps, an American nongovernmental organization. "These days after the elections are very complicated, and it's not the time to leave the country. It's a time to figure out how to move forward."
"The U.N. decreasing their involvement will have a negative impact," he added. "Everyone in the humanitarian community is connected to the U.N. somehow."
The U.N. is hoping to bring back its foreign staff to Kabul "within weeks," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. in Kabul. He said the U.N. is trying to send only its nonessential staff abroad, and will do its utmost to prevent their relocation to affect operations.
"We have tried in our half a century to live and work in the community and not be sealed off here," he said. "But before we were not a target and we have to adapt to being a target now."
"We don't see this as a pullout or evacuation," he said. But he said the U.N. is trying to determine whether some of its foreign workers can perform the same work from abroad.
One U.N. official said that the U.N. is planning to establish an office in Dubai to oversee activities, and that some of the staff evacuating this week will remain there.
The U.N. has already suspended most of its operations in northwest Pakistan because of crumbling security there. U.N. workers in Pakistan have been targeted a number of times in recent months, including a bombing of the U.N. World Food Program office in Islamabad last month that killed five employees.
Courtesy: Wall Street Journal and ITN
No comments:
Post a Comment