AFGHANISTAN: One of the world's leading frontline aid organisations, Médecins sans Frontières, is pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of a deterioration in security. MSF, a neutral group which depends primarily on private donations, has a reputation for sending medical staff into troublespots regarded by other agencies as too dangerous. This is its first pull-out from any country since being founded 33 years ago.
The organisation, which worked in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet occupation, the civil war and the Taliban, said yesterday that the US-led coalition put aid workers at risk by blurring the line between military and humanitarian operations.
The surprise withdrawal is a setback for the Afghan government and the US in their attempts to persuade the international community that security in the country is improving in the run-up to the twice-delayed presidential election, now scheduled for October. A UN election worker and a person registering to vote were killed yesterday in a bomb attack in Ghazni, south of Kabul. Thirty-two aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since March last year. Five MSF workers were killed at Badghis, in the north-west of the country, on June 2nd. - (Guardian Service)