Red Cross halts most Pakistan aid after beheading of doctor
Geneva: The International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) said on Tuesday it was halting most of its aid programmes in
Pakistan due to deteriorating security and the beheading of a British
staff doctor in April blamed on Taliban insurgents.
The independent agency, which had already suspended operations in
three of Pakistan’s four provinces in May pending a security assessment,
said it would carry on working in the country “but on a reduced scale”.
“All relief and protection activities are being stopped. All projects
of rehabilitation, economic projects, have been terminated,” said
Jacques de Maio, head of ICRC operations in South Asia, on one of the
organisation’s blog.
A security guard walks past the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Peshawar. AFP
“We have closed a number of offices. We are also terminating all visits to detainees in Pakistan,” he added.
The agency, which rarely suspends its operations even in war zones,
has worked in the country since the end of British colonial rule in
1947.
It was providing mainly health services and physical rehabilitation
for victims of violence and natural disasters, many of whom have lost
limbs.
The ICRC said it would focus on treating patients wounded in fighting
and aimed to reopen a surgical field hospital in Peshawar. It has been
closed since the murder of staff member Khalil Rasjed Dale, abducted by
suspected militants in January.
The beheaded body of Dale, who ran a health programme in the
southwestern city of Quetta in the Baluchistan province, was found on 29
April.
De Maio said the plan was for Peshawar hospital to be its “flagship”
operation in the country … “unless we determine in the next few weeks
that the prerequisites are not fulfilled and therefore the conditions
are not met for us to redeploy”.
ICRC offices in Sindh province, where flood recovery work is now complete, and in Quetta are being closed, the agency said.
In 2011, Pakistan was one of the largest ICRC operations in the
world. The delegation employed 1,300 staff who assisted hundreds of
thousands of people.
“We are ready to continue helping people in need, such as the wounded
and the physically disabled, provided working conditions for our staff
are adequate,” Paul Castella, head of the ICRC delegation in Islamabad,
said in Tuesday’s statement.
Dale was the third Westerner to be beheaded by militants in Pakistan.
The others include Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002
and Piotr Stanczak, a Polish geologist, in 2009.
A senior police officer said when Dale’s body was recovered that the
Pakistan Taliban had claimed responsibility for the killing, saying a
ransom had not been paid.
The Pakistan Taliban have been fighting a bloody insurgency against
the Pakistani state since the group was formed 2007. It is close to al
Qaeda and it claimed credit for a failed car bomb attempt in New York’s
Times Square in May 2010.
Pro-Taliban militants are also active in Baluchistan, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran.
Pakistan is an increasingly dangerous environment for aid workers.
Gunmen in Pakistan shot and wounded a staff member of the World
Health Organization and an expatriate consultant working for the United
Nations health agency in July.
A month earlier, a Pakistani militant group threatened action against
anyone conducting polio vaccinations in the region where it is based,
saying the health care drive was a cover for US spies.
Comments