Rubin: Why was Afghan aid team killed?

By Trudy Rubin

The story of 10 medical aid workers murdered last week in Afghanistan provides some insights that may surprise you about the prospects for progress in the Afghan war.

The aid team, six of whom were Americans, was attacked while returning from an arduous trip to a remote area of northeastern Afghanistan where they provided medical services to Afghan villagers. The Taliban took “credit,” claiming the group was proselytizing. That charge was patently false: The International Assistance Mission, a Christian group that organized the trip, forbids proselytizing and has a long track record to prove this. So did the aid workers.

Indeed, these humanitarians were acting out of love for this complex country and its people. Tom Little, 61, an optometrist and the group's leader, spoke Dari and had worked in the country for 35 years. Dan Terry, 64, had also spent decades in the country and spoke Dari. Karen Woo, 36, a British surgeon, quit a lucrative practice in order to treat Afghan women. Glen Lapp, a nurse from Lancaster, was following the long-standing Mennonite tradition of doing humanitarian service.

So why were these good people killed? The murders took place in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, far from the Taliban heartland. This is an area populated by ethnic Tajiks who fought fiercely against Taliban rule in the 1990s and would have been hospitable to foreign aid workers. Only recently has there been some Taliban infiltration into this area.

So what really happened in Badakhshan? Details are still unclear. But Michael Semple, a former European Union representative in Kabul with extensive knowledge of the Taliban, puts forward a credible thesis in the Financial Times. “Perhaps the best way to understand the politics of the killing of the (aid workers),” he writes, “is that it is a product of the social breakdown caused by two competing systems failing to control Afghanistan.”

The NATO-backed Afghan government has failed to deliver security to a country broken by decades of war. The Taliban insurgents, however, are unable to exert enough control to fill this gap. Semple points out something else important. Badakhshan is just across the border from the Pakistani tribal area of Chitral, which the insurgents use as a safe haven.

By taking credit for the murder of the aid workers, the Taliban revealed its willingness to violate basic Afghan traditions. The villagers who welcomed the aid workers don't want to be ruled by such men, nor do most Afghans. The Taliban have made gains because the Kabul government has failed to deliver security and because Pakistan has provided them a haven.

Change those metrics, and the Taliban will fail.

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