PAKISTAN: Concerns about humanitarian access, safety of aid workers

2 June 2008

PESHAWAR, 2 June 2008 (IRIN) - The kidnapping of a World Health Oranization (WHO) official in the Mohmand Agency, along Pakistan’s troubled border with Afghanistan, has heightened concerns about the safety of humanitarian workers.

Though Shahid Khan, a WHO polio monitoring officer, was released just over 24 hours after his abduction on 25 May, the incident, also involving two local workers, has caused alarm.

“Security is a very big concern. Our local staff is exposed because they must travel in potentially hazardous areas to reach communities. Incidents such as the recent kidnapping add to the sense of fear,” Saeed Akbar Khan, WHO Operation Officer in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), told IRIN.

Khan also stressed that, despite the risks, the anti-polio vaccination drive had to continue as “it is important not to miss a single child”.

The issue of safety for humanitarian workers has already hampered access to communities most in need of help in various parts of Pakistan, particularly the NWFP and parts of the vast, southwestern province of Balochistan, which has faced a law-and-order problem for many years, aid workers say.

NGOs have had to deal with a spate of attacks in Pakistan. At least seven NGOs in the NWFP were targeted in 2007, including CARE International, which has been engaged in relief work since the earthquake of October 2005 that killed at least 73,000.

Attacks on the NGO’s offices in Battagram and Allai in July and October 2007 led to CARE suspending some projects or leaving them to be implemented by local partners. The organisation also moved its offices from areas such as Allai.

In February 2008, four workers died during an attack in Mansehra, NWFP, on the offices of the British NGO, PLAN, which then suspended its projects in Pakistan.

There have also been attacks on polio teams, schools, teachers and others providing humanitarian help across the NWFP. NGOs have received threatening letters and edicts have been issued against them.

“These incidents have increased in the last year or so,” Imran Khan, provincial coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in the NWFP, said. The kidnapping of Shahid Khan thus fits a pattern, with fears persisting of further threats to safety. The NWFP information minister, Mian Ifikhar Hussain, has consistently stressed that the government was “determined to root out militancy”.

Opposition to NGOs

Qari Shakeel, of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Movement of Islamic Students) in Mohmand Agency, told IRIN: “Apparently these NGOs come here to help us on different fronts, but their actual motives are different. They come here to protect and promote the interests of the West. They give our children toffees but actually they strive to distance them from our religion. This is not acceptable to us. So we are not going to let these people turn our children into infidels.”

While there is debate over who was involved in the abduction of Khan, such attitudes present a threat to all NGOs and their staff. The consequences are potentially grave in terms of humanitarian aid, with many organisations having already pulled out staff or reduced the scale of operations in Pakistan, say aid workers.