Talking to the Taliban (Hopefully)

by Michael Kleinman

Published October 09, 2008 @ 03:41PM PST

It's been a brutal year for aid workers in Afghanistan. Thirty Afghan and international aid workers have been killed since January, with another 92 abducted.  This includes the killing of three UN staff in Kandahar on September 14th, as well as four IRC staff in Logar Province on August 13th.  This spiraling insecurity means that fewer and fewer people receive assistance - 40-50% of the country is now too dangerous for the UN to operate.

In response, the UN and a number of NGOs recently called on the Taliban to support a new humanitarian agenda in Afghanistan.   According to Kai Eide, the UN Special Representative to Afghanistan: "I would like to underline that this is not a political effort - this is not a hearts-and-minds effort - it is a purely neutral humanitarian effort. There are disagreements on so many things, but let us demonstrate that we can share this humanitarian agenda."

The question, of course, is whether the Taliban will listen.  As Eide said, the appeal is based on emphasizing that humanitarian action is neither political nor military.

Traditionally, humanitarian agencies have operated on the assumption that as long as they acted impartially and remained neutral and independent, no one would see them as a threat.

Yet the Taliban have refused to play along.  For instance, the Taliban justified their slaughter of the four IRC staff in Logar by claiming that they were part of the "foreign invader forces".

How the Taliban respond to this most recent appeal will go a long way towards determining whether those principles of neutrality and independence still have any meaning in Afghanistan.

In a related note, three OCHA officers resigned in September, after the UN rejected calls to separate OCHA from the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).  According to one report: "Humanitarian NGOs argued the neutrality of OCHA was compromised while it operated under the mandate of the UN integrated mission which had a clear political mandate to support the Afghan government."

In other words, it's hard to claim neutrality when you're supporting one side against the other.  (Which, by the by, is one reason why NGOs and the military tend to talk past each other - the military has a clear enemy, whereas humanitarian security and access is predicated on not drawing such fine distinctions.)

With winter coming, time is running out.  The Afghan Government recently announced that it faces a massive food shortfall due to a severe drought, which could affect up to six million people.  According to the UN, "an estimated 1.2 million children under the age of five and 550,000 pregnant and lactating women in 22 provinces are at high risk of severe malnutrition."

To see the most recent UN Secretary General's report on Afghanistan, click here.

Image: Taliban - Photo from geoconger.wordpress.com