Afghan Crime Wave Threatens Aid Efforts

A spate of violence, including the murder of a Red Cross worker, is causing international aid agencies to suspend operations in parts of Afghanistan and prompting renewed concerns about this war-scarred nation’s chances of ever returning to health.

The government of President Hamid Karzai acknowledges it has a crime wave on its hands, one that includes armed robberies, carjackings, assaults and extortion, often targeting international donor agencies. But the Karzai administration seems powerless to curb the violence and acknowledges there is no short-term solution.

What is certain is that with its economy still inert after 25 years of conflict, and the central government unable to collect more than a fraction of the revenue it needs to finance its operations, Afghanistan depends on outside aid agencies to deliver basic services such as health care, education and water to its citizens.

If rising crime frightened these organizations away, the country would be left in truly desperate straits. Already, crime has reached such a level that most international agencies have suspended field operations in the southern third of the country, where much of the violence is concentrated. Many halted operations after the killing last month of Red Cross water engineer Ricardo Munguia, 39, in southern Oruzgan province. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the relief agency is still considering “if and when to take up operations again.”

The general climate of insecurity was driven home again Thursday when a friend of Karzai’s, Haji Gilani, was killed as he walked with his nephew past their home in Deh Rawod in Oruzgan province. The younger man also was slain. Oruzgan Gov. Jan Mohammed told reporters that remnants of the deposed Taliban regime were behind the killings.

While the world’s attention has been focused on the war in Iraq, the recent violence has underscored the fact that the war on terrorism -- which began here after the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. -- is a long way from over and that instability is a huge impediment to the nation’s recovery.

Foreigners and high-profile Afghans aren’t the only potential victims. Anyone driving on roads outside the cities risks a shakedown or a carjacking at an illegal roadblock. The country’s numerous warlords and their armed militiamen routinely commandeer a portion of goods being transported from town to town or declare a customs duty on them.

Foreign aid agencies are common targets because they are known to have resources. Last month, a UNICEF office was held up by half a dozen armed gunmen and robbed of $250,000 in cash. On Wednesday, a Care International office in Jalrez, 20 miles from Kabul, was taken over by 16 armed men and looted of computers, cash and a car.

The men told the staff they were being robbed because they were “spies for America,” said a project director for the charity in Kabul, the capital.

The crimes are attributed to a variety of causes, ranging from economic hardship to sympathy with besieged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to simple corruption, sometimes on a massive scale.

Forty-nine truckloads of coal that had been donated to Afghans by the French agency ACTED were commandeered in February by a warlord north of Kabul and remain unaccounted for.

According to European Union officials, warlords in remote Badghis province in the northwest took 20 tons of an 80-ton shipment of seed and fertilizer sent to Afghan farmers by the EU. Leaders of Konar province in the east charge a $10,000 tax on each shipment of wooden windows and doors destined for refugee housing, said one well-informed aid source.

“The development process is not on track, and there are several reasons to be worried, chief among them being the insecurity across the country,” said a European diplomat who asked not to be identified. Without peace and security, the investment that the country needs to create jobs and infrastructure won’t be forthcoming, he warned.

A Western diplomat who also asked not to be identified said there is a good chance that the crime wave -- along with attacks by Saddam Hussein sympathizers -- will recede once the Iraq war ends.

But the killing March 27 of aid worker Munguia had a chilling effect on the large international aid community here.

“There has clearly been a degrading of security,” said Rafael Robillard, head of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, or ACBAR, a group that represents about 85 major nongovernmental aid organizations.

Certain crimes, such as Munguia’s slaying, seem to have been politically motivated. Some fundamentalist renegades have called for holy war against all foreigners in Afghanistan. Traveling in a plainly marked Red Cross vehicle, Munguia was singled out from his Afghan co-workers to be killed while on a mission to design a much-needed water system for a rural area in southern Afghanistan.

Currently, security in Kabul is provided by the International Security Assistance Force, whose mission extends only to the outer reaches of the city. The rest of the nation is essentially lawless.

At a news conference last week, Afghan Interior Minister Ali Jalali said there were no quick solutions to the crime wave.

The question is: Will international donor agencies have the patience to wait if violence continues apace?

“Aid workers don’t come here to get assassinated. They agree to work in insecure areas, but there is a limit.... In terms of the entire development process, security is the No. 1 concern,” said Robillard.