Aid Groups Defend Security After Taliban Murder

Aid workers in Afghanistan have expressed surprise that a charity allowed one of its volunteers to walk to and from work in Kabul despite an increased security threat to NGO workers in the country.

Gayle Williams was gunned down in the street last Tuesday by two men on a motorbike. Taliban insurgents later claimed responsibility for her killing.

Williams, 34, a British-South African dual national, was a volunteer with the Christian charity organization Serve Afghanistan, which helps people with disabilities. She had worked in the country for more than two years.

Mike Lyth, Serve's chairman, said that the organization had a very tight security policy and Williams had been pulled out of Kandahar this year after a risk analysis.

"She was walking in an area which was considered to be safe, and the walk was just a few minutes," he said. "We trained all of our staff, including Gayle, to vary their route and we always radio in when we leave home and again when we arrive. There are many NGOs that walk and a few that don't. We have to be able to get out and get things and there's a need to be able to walk a certain distance.

"Our information is that this was an opportunistic killing."

Many NGOs operate a strict policy of no walking in cities following attacks on foreign and local staff working across the country. July, August and September had more attacks on NGO staff than at any time since records began in 2002, and this year 29 people working for NGOs have been killed. Seventy-two have been abducted.

Robin Greenwood, Christian Aid's head of Asia and Middle East, said his staff had been forbidden from walking in cities for three-and-a-half years and it had been made very clear in the guidelines.

"Our policy is that staff travel from home to office and office to meetings by vehicle, no matter what the distance. This is because we have been advised by our security advisers and have seen from experience that people who are out walking are more vulnerable. We used to walk but stopped. This is a policy that is certainly shared by a lot of other international NGOs in Afghanistan."

The Afghanistan NGO's Security Organization (Anso) informs 190 NGOs of security risk and this week told 80 directors that "anyone that believed that Kabul was not capable of an incident like this [Williams's murder] was frankly kidding themselves".

An Anso spokesman said: "We inform people of the security environment and it is the responsibility of the agencies to come up with their own policy ... generally we advise people to take a number of measures that minimize the opportunities for things to happen to them. Moving by vehicle is less risky than by foot but we don't tell people that as a blanket thing."

One female aid worker, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said: "I wouldn't have done it. I think she exposed herself to a risk. I only mean I don't think it is appropriate for a woman, a foreigner, to walk alone in the streets even at eight o'clock in the morning."