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Q&A: The Taliban are "not anti-NGO" -head of NGO safety group

by Francois Servranckx | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 5 July 2011 14:22 GMT

"The war is more intense now than any time in the last 10 years," says NGO safety expert Nic Lee

LONDON (AlertNet) - Under pressure to start ending an unpopular war, U.S. President Barack Obama announced last month the withdrawal of 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year and 23,000 by September 2012. 

British Prime Minister David Cameron also announced that 426 British troops would be withdrawn this year from the UK's 9,500-strong force.

AlertNet spoke to Nic Lee, chief executive of the International NGO Safety Organization (INSO), about conditions for aid agencies in Afghanistan and the impact a troop withdrawal might have. Lee has been based in Afghanistan for the past six years.

WHAT IS THE SECURITY SITUATION FOR NGOS IN AFGHANISTAN?

The level of conflict has been escalating phenomenally for the last five years. Regardless of what you read elsewhere there has been no interruption of that this year. The war is more intense now than any time in the last 10 years, there are more attacks, there is more engagement all around the country. The point is that none of that is directed against us (NGOs). There is no coherent or countrywide anti-NGO agenda. Where NGOs run into problems is simply two ways: by the fact that there are 50 percent more IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) on the road than there were last year and what can be described as a breakdown in the chain of command or local decisions that are made by district commanders to attack an organisation.

So within that, we do still have NGO incidents obviously because it’s a very violent context. We still have NGOs which are mistaken for someone else. NGO staff that are abducted are always released. Once they understand that this is actually an NGO, they always let them go. Last year we had 78 NGO staff abducted in Afghanistan and a 100 percent of them were released. Not any single one was kept in captivity.

Geographically, the south and the east are the areas where most attacks are going on, but because these areas are so violent, there are not so many NGOs present. Where you get most NGO incidents is in the central provinces, because you have a much higher volume of NGOs demographically

WHY IS THERE A RISE IN VIOLENCE AGAINST AID WORKERS WORLDWIDE?

There are changing trends ... (Conflicts are) becoming mostly internal armed conflicts between irregular forces these days rather than two states fighting out somewhere. There has been a general erosion of respect of humanitarian independence and impartiality; the rise and advance of global jihadism and ideologically driven violence which somehow undermines the core of humanitarian independence; the politicisation of the development and humanitarian agendas ... The bottom line is that the whole humanitarian community is experiencing greater level of violence.

WILL PULLING TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN HELP OR HINDER NGO SECURITY?

There is no type of military activity that is good for humanitarian space. Any form of de-escalation, demilitarization will always be beneficial to the humanitarian environment. In the Afghan case, we have no reasons to believe that the opposition will be anti-NGO. We think that they will recognize the need to deliver services to the people. In the longer term, it may actually mean that the humanitarian space will increase with the departure of troops, that’s absolutely a possibility. But between now and then, even though they have started to withdraw, they are still fighting and there is still an attempt to include development into the counter-insurgency strategy. The Taliban are not anti-NGO. We have dozens and dozens of examples of positive interactions where they have even asked for the expansion of programmes and they made it perfectly clear that they understand what NGOs are. I think the days of painting the Taliban as a bunch of farmers who don’t understand these kinds of things are over.

IN AFGHANISTAN, WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR NGOS TO GET CLOSER TO THE POPULATION ONCE NATO TROOPS LEAVE?

Yes, but there is a lot of “ifs”. It will all depend on how post-2014 Afghanistan will look like. If you assume that the Taliban are going to control the territory there would be no reasons why NGOs would not operate openly under registration and licence as they did in fact when the Taliban were in power across the country. If you look at the horizon, you can see that, but right now, we have at least two years of come-back and maybe they will be disappointed by the international community and everybody will be ostracized. It can go a lot of different ways I suppose.

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