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08/09/2010

The West is used to a steady stream of bad news from Afghanistan. But even hardened observers of the conflict there were shocked by the news that 10 members of a medical aid team had been brutally murdered last week.

The aid workers, who have been identified as six Americans, two Afghans, one Briton and a German, were killed in Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan last Thursday. Their bodies were found on Friday, two days after they had lost touch with their organization.

The team were working for the International Assistance Mission, a Kabul-based Christian charity which has been active in the country since the 1960s. The aid workers had been providing medical help, including eye care, to communities in Nuristan province. They had chosen to travel back to the capital Kabul via Badakhshan because of the province's reputation as being relatively safe.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the murders, claiming the aid workers were trying to convert Muslims and alleging that the group had been carrying Bibles translated into the Afghan language Dari. It is unclear whether the Taliban was really responsible for the deaths or not, however. Sources in the German intelligence community have speculated that the aid workers may have been killed by bandits, and that the Taliban may have claimed responsibility in order to gain publicity.

'We Do Not Proselytize'

IAM director Dirk Frans denied that the group had been engaged in missionary activities. "Our faith motivates and inspires us, but we do not proselytize," he told the Associated Press. He said that the workers had probably been carrying their personal Bibles in English or German, but not in any Afghan languages.

The region's chief of police, Aqa Noor Kentoos, said that the group had been surrounded by men. "First of all they searched them and then killed them, one after the other," he said.

The police chief said that the sole survivor of the tragedy was the group's Afghan driver. The man had told police he had been spared because he had recited verses from the Koran and begged for mercy, saying he was a Muslim.

Team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York, had worked in Afghanistan since the 1970s and had raised his three children in Kabul. The German victim has been identified as Daniela Beyer of Chemnitz, a 35-year-old translator who had been working for IAM for around one year.

"We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people," commented US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who condemned the killings as a "senseless act." German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for the crime, which she described as a "cowardly murder," to be swiftly investigated. The incident underscored the necessity for Germany to continue working "determinedly to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan," she said.

Media commentators writing in the Monday editions of Germany's newspapers were unanimous in condemning the murders but divided over what lessons should be learned from the tragedy.

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"Even those people in Afghanistan who want nothing else than to help cure blindness are not safe from those who have been blinded by hatred. It is not yet clear whether it was in fact the Taliban or just common criminals who killed the 10 doctors and their assistants in the northeast of the country. In Afghanistan, the boundaries between Islamist fanatics, warlords, drug dealers, part-time Taliban and other merchants of death are blurred in any case. The fact that the Taliban claimed responsibility, and accused the aid workers of missionary activity, show that the militants would certainly have liked to have committed the massacre. In doing so, they delivered a blow to those in the West who believed that the Islamists' resistance was basically directed only against the foreign military presence."

"This perspective doesn't make it any easier for the countries which are considering withdrawing their troops. To the debate about how many dead soldiers Western democracies can endure before they begin to question the political and military sense of such a mission, can now be added the no less urgent question of whether or not these societies are prepared to accept the complete rejection of their fundamental values that a possible failure (of their mission) will entail. In the future, will we look away when girls and women in Afghanistan are treated worse than cattle and mutilated and massacred because they were 'disobedient?' Or will we bomb a training camp in the mountains every now and again, to ease our consciences?"

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The deaths of the 10 aid workers will raise new doubts about whether Afghanistan can be improved, whether with a military convoy or a civilian expedition. Good deeds are not rewarded. What kind of a country is it, where doctors lose their lives simply because they have distributed a few eye drops?"

"Afghanistan will be lost if it is abandoned by aid workers. They usually have greater stamina than the military, which relies on popular support at home and in national parliaments. The Taliban have now sent the NGOs the brutal message that they, too, are not welcome in their country."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"There was once a time when the Taliban treated representatives of other religions with deep respect. But that attitude has fallen victim to the holy warriors' fanaticism, bred by war. That is one of the tragic consequences of this conflict. Another tragic consequence is the idea, totally neglected by many strategists in the West, of integrating development and reconstruction aid within the military strategy. It is a disgrace that volunteers who help parties in the conflict are classified as either friend or foe, based on a black-and-white view of things."

"It is no consolation that the 10 murdered aid workers probably fell victim to unscrupulous bandits rather than the Taliban. There have always been such criminals in Afghanistan, and it certainly was not the first time that an IAM group encountered such villains. It remains to be seen what will be learned by questioning the sole survivor. In Afghanistan, one often experiences that complicated stories lie behind apparently senseless acts of violence."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"The 10 aid workers who were killed have fallen victim to the escalated logic of war in Afghanistan. On the one side, the Taliban lumps all foreigners together as Christians or Jews, and therefore 'infidels.' From here it's a short step to accuse them of missionary activity, and then, as a next step, to authorize their punishment by shooting."

"The West is not entirely innocent in relation to this development. Under former US President George W. Bush, the American mission -- the term itself is significant -- in Afghanistan was seen by many, both officially and on a personal level, as happening within a religious context -- something that is also true today. One only needs to read some of the soldiers' blogs from Afghanistan in order to understand that. And usually (that view) is connected to simplistic, semi-racist motives involving 'helping' the poor, 'backward' Afghans."

"But the US, which always views itself as a bringer of civilization, often behaves in a contradictory fashion. That can be seen in politics, for example, where missionary activities are defended as a human right within the context of religious freedom, even if they are extremely problematic."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"Were the workers killed in Afghanistan Christian missionaries or not? Some people will think that question is crucial. Anyone who opposes the fanaticism of the Islamists with Christianity's 'good news' must surely expect to die. It's easy to shake your head about someone who places so much trust in God. But these aid workers were not martyrs. They did not come to die, but to help the living. It is often believers who see value in providing this kind of service to people. If aid workers are Christians who take their faith seriously, then it must however be difficult for them not to spread God's word, if they are asked why they came to Afghanistan.

"That places aid workers in Afghanistan and elsewhere in a dangerous dilemma. At some point they will inevitably encounter the resistance of those who use fear as a means of exerting power. Those who are trying to oppose such extremists, will have to carefully consider two things, irrespective of which culture they come from: how to answer when asked about their motivation, and how to protect themselves…. Those observers who like to refer to humanitarian values when they argue against what they consider to be an immoral war in Afghanistan, should ask themselves how the people in the country can be helped once the Taliban's inhumanity is once again the law of the land."