U.N. Agency Begins Afghan Withdrawal

A bit of news from the war that never was:

The U.N. refugee agency began pulling foreign staff out of
large swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday in the wake
of the killing of a French worker, a decision that could affect tens of
thousands of Afghan returnees.
The withdrawal of international staff follows a series of attacks on
the United Nations in recent days, including the drive-by killing of
Bettina Goislard, a 29-year-old UNHCR worker, as she traveled through a
bazaar in a clearly marked U.N. vehicle in the city of Ghazni, 60 miles
southwest of the capital.
That same day saw a bomb attack on a U.N. vehicle in eastern Paktia
province. And on Nov. 11, a car bomb exploded outside U.N. offices in
Kandahar, injuring two people.
However, Mullah Akim Latifi, who was a culture and information official
under the Taliban and claims to still speak for the group, told The
Associated Press by satellite telephone on Tuesday that the Taliban
were not involved in Goislard's killing.
"We are not interested in killing aid workers. We only want to kidnap
them to bargain for the release of our jailed comrades," said Latifi.

This is pretty crappy news. The situation in Afghanistan is looking as
grim as ever. The Taliban is surging back into the country, warlords
have more power than they've ever had, and the US forces have
completely withdrawn from most of the Afghani provinces. Our "sphere of
control" now consists of little more than Hamid Karzai's house, and now
that the UN is pulling out we'll have even less credibility among
Afghanis.
Luckily for Rove & Co. no one cares about Afghanistan anymore.

Posted by flow Frazao on November 18, 2003 at 07:38 AM | Permalink