U.N. Relocates Foreign Staff in Afghanistan

November 6, 2009
U.N. Relocates Foreign Staff in Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations mission in Afghanistan announced plans on Thursday to relocate hundreds of foreign staff members, sending some out of the country, in the wake of a lethal attack on its workers at a guesthouse last week.

The relocation of its workers here, while temporary, was one more signal of mounting pressure on United Nations operations as security deteriorates around the region. The move comes just four days after the United Nations announced it was withdrawing its international workers from northwestern Pakistan, where insurgents are fighting Pakistani troops and have carried out a string of terrorist attacks.

In recent weeks, United Nations workers on both sides of the border have been singled out in deadly attacks, in what appears to be a deliberate campaign by insurgents to undercut international support for the embattled Afghan and Pakistani governments.

Five United Nations workers for the World Food Program were killed in a suicide attack at the program’s offices in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in early October. Last week in Kabul three insurgents dressed in police uniforms scaled the front gate of a guesthouse housing United Nations personnel to mount a terrifying two-hour siege.

Five of the United Nations’ international staff members were killed, along with two Afghan security officials and the brother-in-law of a prominent Afghan politician, before the attackers were shot and killed. The strike was the biggest on the United Nations in Afghanistan in its half-century of work here and forced the organization to lock down its operations as it reviewed security across the country.

A United Nations spokesman, Adrian Edwards, said Thursday that about 600 international staff members would be temporarily relocated either to other places in Afghanistan or outside the country, primarily Dubai and Central Asian countries.

The hope is that they will be able to return within three weeks to a month, but it could take longer to set up secure housing, Mr. Edwards said. He said the mission was reviewing all its locations.

But he stressed that the United Nations was not reducing its presence in Afghanistan. The United Nations has at least 1,000 international staff members assigned to Afghanistan, and at any one time 600 to 700 of them are in the country. The number of Afghan staff members is much bigger, around 4,500, Mr. Edwards said.

Even as their work has grown increasingly risky, United Nations officials have come under criticism for their handling of Afghanistan’s fraud-plagued presidential election. President Hamid Karzai was declared the victor this week after his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, decided not to participate in a runoff, saying he had no confidence it would be fair.
Last month, the United Nations fired its No. 2 official in Afghanistan, Peter W. Galbraith, an American diplomat, after he pushed for a more aggressive approach to the election fraud than Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan.

Senior United Nations officials and diplomats said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had decided to recall Mr. Galbraith because of irreconcilable differences with Mr. Eide.

At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Eide changed his tone, and issued an unusual public appeal to President Karzai to carry out sweeping reforms in order to restore confidence in his government, whose legitimacy has been called into question by the problems surrounding the vote.

Mr. Eide said it was important that Mr. Karzai review election oversight procedures and investigate the involvement of government officials in facilitating the fraud. He also encouraged him to increase the competency of his cabinet.

Many of the Kabul government’s outside backers, including the Obama administration, have urged Mr. Karzai to do much the same, but it was the first time the United Nations mission had publicly done so.

“I do believe it’s understood that serious reforms are needed, and I believe that reforms will come as a new government is formed,” Mr. Eide said.

“It’s up to the president to compose his government,” he continued. “We have seen new competent ministers coming in, and it has had an impact. What we have said to President Karzai is, ‘You have some competent people, and you need more of them.’ ”

Elsewhere in the country, an American soldier was killed Wednesday by insurgents while on patrol in eastern Afghanistan, the NATO mission said.

In western Afghanistan, NATO forces were investigating reports of civilian casualties in an airstrike on Wednesday in Helmand Province near the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Navy Capt. Jane Campbell said that NATO forces fired a single surface-to-surface rocket at a place near Babaji village, in Lashkar Gah district, against a group of nine people believed to be placing an explosive device.

There were conflicting reports from local people about whether the strike killed civilians or insurgents. Local officials in the area, who asked not to be quoted by name because they feared retribution from insurgents, said those killed were Taliban, but others who know the place where the rocket struck insisted that civilians were killed.

Alan Cowell contributed from Paris.