Globe and Mail
August 15, 2008

KANDAHAR — The gunning down of three female foreign aid workers – two of them Canadians – and their Afghan driver a few dozen miles south of Kabul on Wednesday is the latest bloody murder to underscore the relentless deterioration in Afghan security conditions.

Here in beleaguered Kandahar – where I have lived for nearly seven years and currently run a small soap-making co-operative – what most distressed my co-op members was the gender of the victims. “Women?” Nurallah pronounced, aghast. “They’re killing women? These people can’t be Afghans. If my worst enemy – my own personal enemy – came into my hands, but his wife was present, I wouldn’t touch him. I would let him go.”

On that point, Canadians and Afghans can agree.

Western coverage has brought to light other areas, however, where Afghan and international perceptions of this tragedy diverge.

Humanitarian immunity: Every news article I’ve read has stressed that the slain humanitarian workers’ car was “clearly marked” with their organization’s emblem – as if that should protect the passengers. But I fear humanitarian organizations are failing to recognize the transformations in this country since the 1980s and 1990s that have profoundly altered their status. These organizations take their own good intentions for granted, and expect beneficiaries to do the same. They are used to their outsider status and their declared neutrality guaranteeing safe passage across the battle lines of societies in conflict.

This conflict, however, is different. Neither the forces fighting the Afghan government, nor ordinary people, make any distinction between international humanitarian workers, the Afghan government, and international military forces. All are seen as part of the same system.

The vast majority of regular folk desire the presence of these interlocking groups. Afghans have serious criticisms to level against the corruption of government officials, the ways in which development aid is being spent, and the sometimes reckless behaviour of international troops. But by and large they want us here. Anti-government forces, however, are just as hostile to aid workers as they are to soldiers or government officials. The only place as dangerous to be as a NATO military convoy is a clearly marked humanitarian vehicle.

Danger to aid workers: Western media coverage has emphasized that danger to aid workers is shutting down delivery of humanitarian and development assistance. The victims’ employer, the International Rescue Committee, is temporarily suspending its operations, for example.

But the most important constraint on aid work is the risk it poses to Afghans. Many villages in Kandahar have been refusing development assistance for several years now. They are afraid that the mere acceptance of these projects will transform their homes into targets. Recently, villagers to the west of town sent a delegation to the Taliban to explain that the repairs they were about to make to their irrigation channel were not a development project. The Taliban leaders replied: “If we find out you used a tractor lent to you by the government, we will burn it and kill you.”

Afghan death toll: It is normal for people to feel most keenly the tragedies that strike people they know or can easily identify with. For precisely this reason, while bowing before the grief of the families of Wednesday’s victims, I would like to share some stories you may not have heard.

Three days ago, the governor of Ghazni province was ambushed on the main road to Kabul and barely escaped alive. In the village where one of my co-operative members was born, Taliban are using what was the school as the gallows. In the past two weeks, one suspected anti-Taliban spy was hanged. A second was beaten till he cried out a confession, then also hanged, dollar bills stuffed in his mouth. When the Taliban wished to strip the body so it would hang shamefully naked for the two days during which they forbade relatives to cut it down and bury it, the villagers protested. “Sit down and shut up,” came the answer. “Your turn is coming.” Then a 16-year old was hanged from the feet and shot. His crime? Working as an apprentice to the driver of a truck carrying humanitarian wheat to Kandahar. Where another of my co-operative members lives, a baker who sold bread to soldiers, a school principal, and a former government worker were abducted last week.

The Afghans do not support this so-called insurgency. They are its primary targets.

Sarah Chayes is the founder of Arghand, a soap-making co-operative in Kandahar. She is also the author of “The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban”.