Taliban Increasingly Target Aid Workers Connected With Christianity

Aid workers in Afghanistan, particularly those perceived as having a connection with Christianity or the US, have increasingly become targets for attack by the Taliban since 2001. So far this year, 29 aid workers, either foreign or Afghans employed by one of the 100-plus agencies in the country, have been killed.

In August, three western women working for an American aid organization and their Afghan driver were shot dead in a Taliban ambush in the Logar province. The women - a British-Canadian, a Canadian and a Trinidadian - worked for the New York-based International Rescue Committee, which suspended all its humanitarian aid programs in Afghanistan. A Taliban spokesman described them as "the foreign invader forces".

"Greater insecurity jeopardizes aid activities in parts of the country where millions could be short of food", said one aid worker based in Kabul yesterday. "Now road travel is becoming increasingly dangerous, the UN is offering free flights to aid workers. Not enough is being done, particularly by the UN, to engage with militant groups to ensure safe access to humanitarian workers".

He said that for years, until al-Qaeda's influence grew at the end of the 1990s, the Taliban did allow NGOs to operate, especially on health and agricultural programs. The worst that was likely to happen to anyone suspected of promoting Christianity was that they would be deported. In 2007 a total of 26 aid workers were killed in Afghanistan, including two members of a group of 23 South Koreans from a church group taken hostage in southern Afghanistan. Two were killed and the rest were released.In 2006, 21 aid workers were murdered in April and May alone. In 2004, three members of Medicins Sans Frontieres - one Dutch, one Swiss, one Norwegian - were killed in north-western Afghanistan.