Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Doctors Without Balls bails

Reported   The French relief agency Médecins Sans Frontières said it is pulling out of Afghanistan, discouraged by a fruitless investigation into the slayings of five of its workers and fearful of new attacks.

All understandable. But, then there is this:
...three main reasons: the dangers on the ground, disappointment that the investigation into the June killings has gone nowhere and what it called the U.S. military's use of humanitarian aid for political and military motives.

U.S. and NATO troops run several so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams across the country, under which soldiers provide health care, dig wells and perform other work normally carried out by civilians.

Aid groups have long feared that the practice blurs the lines between relief work and soldiers' efforts to persuade local communities to provide intelligence

Uh huh.  So are the purely humanitarian-motivated Doctors are abandoning their patients because of "poor security" fears an AP reporter manages to inject into his story, competition, or other pragmatic reasons?

No comments: