* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A wise security officer once told me: "You can no longer reduce the threat, so reduce the risk".
For several years, we, aidworkers, have gone beyond the point where we can reduce the external threat of terrorist attacks on us. So we should confine to reducing the risk posed upon us.
Over the past years, we have seen our own vulnerability increase. We have been kidnapped, killed and raped. We have been hit where we work, where we eat, where we sleep, where we drive.
In a natural reaction most aid organisation beefed up their security precautions over the past years. By putting up higher fences around the offices. More barbed wire. Getting staff to wear bullet-proof vests in high security areas. Ballistic kavlar sheeting in the cars. And as we went along, we not only put a barrier between ourselves and those we are supposed to serve, but we did not stop the killing or the kidnapping either.
On the contrary. We build a 10 foot fence, and the terrorists find an 11 foot ladder. Our flag jackets don't resist the destructive force of suicide bombs.
And still, despite the threat, we need to do our work. Despite the threat, we have to provide humanitarian aid where the need is obvious. If we don't provide the aid, people die.
If, in the past year, there has been a single emergency operation where the aid organisations have faced the dilemma between their humanitarian mission, and staff safety, it has been in the Pakistani floods.
Since 2009, the aid community has been directly targeted several times by bold terrorist acts: In March 2009, seven WorldVision staff died in an attack on their office. Mercy Corps had their staff abducted and in June 9 2009, the bombing of the Pearl Continental in Peshawar, destroyed the hotel where most aidworkers stayed. The bombing of WFP's office in Islamabad, on October 5 2009, left five dead and several wounded.
The Taliban has made no secret in targeting aidworkers in the whole region. A point made clear in in the recent killing of 10 aidworkers in Afghanistan.
A week ago, the Pakistani Taliban has urged the government not to accept any foreign aid for victims of the flooding. They issued a similar warning one week before last year's bombing of the aidworkers' hotel in Peshawar.
This week's news of the Taliban's threat to foreign aid workers, came to no surprise for many of us.
And what will we do? Apart from bringing in more armour, we should think unconventionally, and think hard: No armour, no barbed wire, and not a single additional security officer will further reduce the risk. But reducing the amount of aidworkers will.
This is a hard line of thought, and against so many dynamics instilled in aid organisations, who traditionally have been pumping in as many aidworkers as they can, into disaster areas. That has to stop.
It is not a popular thought, though. Every single self-respecting NGO, UN agency, non-profit organisation always scrambles to show its face and "plant the flag" in a natural disaster.
Pakistan is no different. Not only because the need is there, and the need *is* there.
Are we holding back on our urge, our natural eagerness to 'go out there, and do our work'? Is it the natural feeling of solidarity for the aidworkers on the ground, to send in more? Or is it the urge for adrenaline. The addiction. Or are we ensuring no single donor can ever point the finger at us saying 'you have not done enough'? Or is it the fear of competition - let there be no doubt, the aid-"business" is a very competitive market. "If we don't pump in enough staff, our competitor will eat from our cake".
Hard words, often thought, but rarely spoken in public. But that is how the aid world works.
Every single relief agency should hold back on the impulse to "pump in as many people as they can". Many support functions such as finance, administration, procurement, reporting, mapping, coordination,... can be done from a remote support base, keeping the strict minimum of people in harm's way.
In an emergency, more than half of the people on the ground, could easily do their job in a support base close to, but not in, the emergency zone. And probably they would work more effectively too, without the stress of the security precautions and in far better work environments.
I wish one thing: that for every single person any organisation sends in, the question is asked: "Do we really need this person to be there, on the ground?". So that in a week or a month's time, we will not have to mourn again for colleagues lost "in the line of duty".
Peter Casier has been an aidworker since 1994, working in most emergencies. And lost too many of his colleagues. He blogs at The Road to the Horizon on the life of an international aid worker and many other subjects, just one of his blog-o-sphere activities.
