http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/07/AR2010080700822.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Taliban kills 10 medical aid workers in northern Afghanistan
British surgeon Karen Woo and the team's leader, optometrist Tom Little
from New York, are among those thought to be dead. (AP)
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By Joshua Partlow
Sunday, August 8, 2010
KABUL -- Gunmen killed 10 members of a medical team, including six Americans,
traveling in the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, demonstrating the
reach of insurgents far from their traditional havens and shocking the
expatriate community here.
The attack was one of the deadliest on civilian aid workers since the war began
in 2001. That it occurred in Badakhshan province, a scenic mountain redoubt
considered a peaceful refuge from the war, added to growing concern that the
Taliban has seized on northern Afghanistan as its latest front.
The dead have not been officially identified, and the bodies not yet returned
to Kabul, but Afghan and Western officials said the victims were thought to be
members of a medical team working with a Christian charity group that has
decades of experience in Afghanistan. That team, from the International
Assistance Mission, lost contact with its office in Kabul on Wednesday, two
days before the attack, said Dirk Frans, the group's executive director.
"We've got a team that has gone missing, and then there are 10 people found
dead. At the moment we're working on the assumption that this is the same
team," Frans said.
The Taliban quickly asserted responsibility for the killings, saying the
medical workers were "foreign spies" and were spreading Christianity. But
police officials have not ruled out robbery as a motive, as the victims were
stripped of their belongings after they were shot.
The team members -- six Americans, one German, one Briton and four Afghans --
were returning from neighboring Nurestan province, where they had spent several
days administering eye care to impoverished villagers. They were traveling
unarmed and without security guards, Frans said.
The dead are thought to include the team's leader, Tom Little, an optometrist
from New York who had worked in Afghanistan over the past four decades. Little,
a fluent Dari speaker, had been thrown out of the country by the Taliban in
2001 during a crackdown on Christian aid groups. Three of the victims are
thought to be women, including Karen Woo, a British surgeon who had written on
her blog about the possible risks of traveling to the area.
Two of the Afghans were unharmed.
The group is registered as a Christian nonprofit organization. Although its
members do not shy away from this affiliation in this conservative Muslim
country, Frans and others said they do not proselytize. In their work since
1966 on health and economic development projects, under King Zahir Shah, the
Russians, the mujaheddin government and the Taliban, Frans said, "all along
we've been known as a Christian organization. That has been a nonissue."
"This is truly a bedrock institution in Afghanistan," said Andy M.A. Campbell,
the Afghanistan country director for the National Democratic Institute. "They
have been around for decades."
Others who have worked with the group described it as culturally sensitive to
the Muslim values of Afghanistan and staffed by foreigners committed to
long-term development work in the country. "This is not a Mickey Mouse
organization," said a person who has worked for and evaluated the
organization's projects in the past.
The Taliban has targeted foreign aid workers in the past but such attacks are
relatively rare, and insurgents have allowed some aid groups safe passage into
areas they control. In August 2008, gunmen killed three women from the
International Rescue Committee and their Afghan driver in Logar province. Four
years earlier, 11 Chinese road workers were shot to death in Kunduz province.
Among the confusing aspects of the attack was why the Taliban, if indeed
responsible, chose to summarily execute the team, rather than hold its members
hostage, which it has done in many other cases to bargain for money or other
concessions. In July 2007, the Taliban seized 23 South Korean missionaries
driving in a bus from Kandahar to Kabul. Two of the hostages were killed before
the South Korean government negotiated the release of the others.
The medical team was returning from several days of treating eye problems and
administering dental care in the Parun Valley of Nurestan. Unable to reach the
isolated valley by road, they abandoned their three Land Rovers and hiked with
pack mules for miles through a pass in the 16,000-foot mountains.
The exact timing of the attack remained unclear Saturday. The deputy police
chief in Badakhshan, Gen. Sayid Hussain Safari, said insurgents might have
followed them on their return hike and attacked as they reached their vehicles.
When Frans last heard from the group members, on Wednesday, they had already
crossed into Badakhshan, he said. They had driven that way to avoid a southern
route they considered too dangerous, he said. One of the Afghans, who lived in
Jalalabad, left the group to make his own way home and was unharmed.
Safari said 10 gunmen surrounded the medical team, shot the victims with
AK-47s, and ransacked their belongings from the vehicles. Of the 11 people at
the scene of the shooting, only one survived, an Afghan driver named Saifullah.
He told police that the gunmen led him on a long march uphill as he recited the
Koran and prayed to be spared.
"He swore to God and said that I'm a true Muslim. That's why they trusted him
and released him," Safari said.
But his escape has raised suspicion among some close to the medical team that
he might have been involved in orchestrating the attack. Saifullah, who remains
in the custody of district police, has not yet been interrogated by the
provincial authorities and could not be reached for comment.
Other accounts of the killing conflicted slightly with Safari's version. Frans
said police in Badakhshan told him that the group was shot at while driving.
"We've only heard what we've heard from the police in Badakhshan," he said.
"The cars were sprayed with bullets, the people were pulled out and robbed of
everything they had."
The team members were apparently aware that they were going into difficult
territory. Woo, the British surgeon, who had been working on a documentary
about her time in Afghanistan, had written on a Web site that "the trek will
not be easy."
"The expedition will require a lot of physical and mental resolve and will not
be without risk but ultimately, I believe that the provision of medical
treatment is of fundamental importance and that the effort is worth it in order
to assist those who need it most," said Woo, who was engaged to be married.
Badakhshan is a scenic province far from the insurgent hot spots in southern
and eastern Afghanistan. But insurgents have become more prevalent there and in
other northern provinces over the past year as they have shifted to areas with
fewer NATO troops. Military officials have said the area is also an important
point for manufacturing heroin and transporting it out of Afghanistan.
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
