Killings could deter aid missions to Afghanistan
- August 8, 2010
By Tomas Roman
ABC 7 Reporter
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(KGO) -- The recent killings of ten members of a Christian medical team in Afghanistan have created fear and concern in the heart of at least one medical aid worker.
If the Taliban meant to send the message that anyone travelling with a faith-based aid organization could be killed, it could mean a lot less aid to the Afghan people who physicians say badly need the medical help.
"I would certainly think twice about going again," says Dr. Albert Chan.
Chan is a Bay Area pediatrician who taught pediatrics to Afghan doctors in Kabul back in 2007. He realizes the situation for aid workers there has become extremely dangerous, especially for those with religious organizations. He was with a Christian aid group at the time, but states that did not mean they were there to preach.
"I was there with a faith-based organization, but we weren't there to leave behind Christianity," he says. "I'm not religious. We were there to leave behind medical knowledge and medical technology of the last three decades."
Chan acknowledges that it is the non-governmental organizations and religious groups who have stepped up to provide medical aid, teachers and relief workers to a country badly lacking governmental resources, especially in the north where the relief workers were killed last week because the Taliban believed they were preaching Christianity.
"Not only am I very sad about the 10 aid workers who were killed, but I'm thinking of the probably hundreds of local Afghans who are on the waiting list for necessary operations, to correct their vision or to have elective surgery, who now aren't going to get their operations," he says. "That's really the saddest thing of all."
"When they have created the fear, they have succeeded," Mohammad Qayoumi says.
Qayoumi is the president of Cal State East Bay and was born and raised in Afghanistan. He says if the Taliban says that they killed the workers because the Qur'an says so, they have purposely misinterpreted the book.
"They feel when they make something a religious event they can play more with people's emotions," he says.
Both Chan and Qayoumi agree that these attacks may have a chilling effect on aid to Afghanistan, especially by faith-based organizations. Qayoumi says those groups are already spending about 35 percent of their budgets on security.
"That means less and less aid will be available to the villages who really need this help so badly," he says.
Qayoumi and others that spoke to ABC7 hope the faith-based organizations do not buy into the terror tactics of the Taliban and scale back aid. If they do, they say it will be a victory for the Taliban and a disaster for the people of Afghanistan.