AFGHANISTAN: Concern is pulling its expatriate staff out of Afghanistan as a security measure on the eve of tomorrow's presidential election, fearing violence from remnants of the Taliban regime ousted three years ago writes Denis McClean in Geneva.
The Irish aid agency has 15 international staff and 380 national staff in Afghanistan based in the north-east.
Most other aid agencies, including the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, are adopting a low profile in-country, closing offices and giving expatriate staff leave outside the country in the run-up to the polls.
Concern's overseas director, Mr Paul O'Brien, said that only the Irish agency's country director, Ms Áine Fay, would remain in Kabul during the election period and a decision on the return of other expatriate staff from neighbouring Pakistan and Tajikistan would be decided next week.
More than 30 aid workers have died in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2003.
The latest casualties included five staff of Medicins sans Frontières who were shot to death on June 2nd last as their vehicle pulled out of the agency's compound in the north-western province of Baghdis.
Mr O'Brien, who visited Concern programmes in Afghanistan recently, said the organisation had not experienced any attacks in the six years that it had been working there.
"We work on an acceptance model. We explain who we are and what it is that we are trying to do, that we are a humanitarian organisation. We do a lot of work explaining who we are and we don't use armed guards."
He said the security situation was kept under constant review but admitted that "there are certain elements of terrorism against which nothing will work. Anyone with a white face can be a target."