- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 110
PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2006.02.13
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A4
BYLINE: Mike Blanchfield
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen
WORD COUNT: 530
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Military accused of hindering Afghan aid work: Focus on Kandahar means other areas go lacking, CARE director says
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One of Canada's largest aid agencies is criticizing the federal government's focus on the war-torn Kandahar region, saying it will force the end of relief efforts in other parts of Afghanistan -- including helping the country's impoverished war widows.
CARE Canada director John Watson levelled that charge in a recent interview in which he responded to comments made by the leader of the Canadian Forces' provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, who said last week that non-governmental agencies need to do a "gut check" and come back to the increasingly violent region.
Mr. Watson said the comments by Canadian Col. Steve Bowes reflect "a breathtaking lack of understanding" of how the military and aid groups should be working together.
"When they say, 'you got to do a gut check,' what he's got in mind is NGOs coming and staying with the military, going out on patrols and doing work. That's not the way it works," said Mr. Watson.
"We have to have the ability to carry out our operations independent of the military, to be seen to be doing that independent of the military."
Mr. Watson, who has been critical of the military's renewed focus on humanitarian operations in the past, said he applauds Canada's military contribution to international efforts to bring security to Afghanistan's troubled south, where violence has spiked in the last year with a Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgency that now features suicide bombings.
That doesn't mean aid agencies should be working under military protection, he added.
Almost all western aid groups have abandoned southern Afghanistan since the renewed violence. Canada has pledged funding to Afghan reconstruction through the Canadian International Development Agency.
But most of that aid will be funnelled through military-led efforts in Kandahar under the provincial reconstruction team.
This "3-D" policy approach emphasizes co-operation of defence, diplomatic efforts through the Foreign Affairs Department and development assistance through CIDA.
Outside Kandahar, that will mean an end to funding for other projects such as CARE's efforts to feed and provide other aid and basic vocational training to Afghanistan's 60,000 war widows and their children. The Widows Feeding Project is so popular it drew a visit by ex-deputy prime minister John Manley in Kabul four years ago.
With CIDA funding to Afghanistan due to be cut from this year's $100,000 contribution to $40,000 by 2008, Mr. Watson said the widows' program is on the chopping block. CIDA currently funds the full $6.5-million cost of the program to March 31.
"They're cutting it off because of Kandahar," said Mr. Watson. "Everything is focused in Kandahar, and everything that falls outside of that is being cut back.
"We're working quite fine in Afghanistan, and they're cutting the funding to successful projects in order to fund initiatives in Kandahar that are just not feasible."
Since the end of the Cold War, aid workers have become targets of some combatants in war-torn countries. Mr. Watson said CARE has thought long and hard about where it operates after having lost 44 local staff in Somalia and another 24 in Rwanda a decade ago.
Aid agencies aren't prepared to give up their hard-earned neutrality by going "behind the wire" and aligning themselves with military forces, he said.
The international arm of CARE has been active in Afghanistan since 1961 and has 900 staffers -- 99 per cent of them Afghan hires -- in 11 provinces, and running 13 projects worth $20 million.
It remained in the country during the 1996-2001 rule of the fundamentalist Taliban militia that harboured al-Qaeda.
DATE: 2006.02.13
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A4
BYLINE: Mike Blanchfield
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen
WORD COUNT: 530
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Military accused of hindering Afghan aid work: Focus on Kandahar means other areas go lacking, CARE director says
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of Canada's largest aid agencies is criticizing the federal government's focus on the war-torn Kandahar region, saying it will force the end of relief efforts in other parts of Afghanistan -- including helping the country's impoverished war widows.
CARE Canada director John Watson levelled that charge in a recent interview in which he responded to comments made by the leader of the Canadian Forces' provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, who said last week that non-governmental agencies need to do a "gut check" and come back to the increasingly violent region.
Mr. Watson said the comments by Canadian Col. Steve Bowes reflect "a breathtaking lack of understanding" of how the military and aid groups should be working together.
"When they say, 'you got to do a gut check,' what he's got in mind is NGOs coming and staying with the military, going out on patrols and doing work. That's not the way it works," said Mr. Watson.
"We have to have the ability to carry out our operations independent of the military, to be seen to be doing that independent of the military."
Mr. Watson, who has been critical of the military's renewed focus on humanitarian operations in the past, said he applauds Canada's military contribution to international efforts to bring security to Afghanistan's troubled south, where violence has spiked in the last year with a Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgency that now features suicide bombings.
That doesn't mean aid agencies should be working under military protection, he added.
Almost all western aid groups have abandoned southern Afghanistan since the renewed violence. Canada has pledged funding to Afghan reconstruction through the Canadian International Development Agency.
But most of that aid will be funnelled through military-led efforts in Kandahar under the provincial reconstruction team.
This "3-D" policy approach emphasizes co-operation of defence, diplomatic efforts through the Foreign Affairs Department and development assistance through CIDA.
Outside Kandahar, that will mean an end to funding for other projects such as CARE's efforts to feed and provide other aid and basic vocational training to Afghanistan's 60,000 war widows and their children. The Widows Feeding Project is so popular it drew a visit by ex-deputy prime minister John Manley in Kabul four years ago.
With CIDA funding to Afghanistan due to be cut from this year's $100,000 contribution to $40,000 by 2008, Mr. Watson said the widows' program is on the chopping block. CIDA currently funds the full $6.5-million cost of the program to March 31.
"They're cutting it off because of Kandahar," said Mr. Watson. "Everything is focused in Kandahar, and everything that falls outside of that is being cut back.
"We're working quite fine in Afghanistan, and they're cutting the funding to successful projects in order to fund initiatives in Kandahar that are just not feasible."
Since the end of the Cold War, aid workers have become targets of some combatants in war-torn countries. Mr. Watson said CARE has thought long and hard about where it operates after having lost 44 local staff in Somalia and another 24 in Rwanda a decade ago.
Aid agencies aren't prepared to give up their hard-earned neutrality by going "behind the wire" and aligning themselves with military forces, he said.
The international arm of CARE has been active in Afghanistan since 1961 and has 900 staffers -- 99 per cent of them Afghan hires -- in 11 provinces, and running 13 projects worth $20 million.
It remained in the country during the 1996-2001 rule of the fundamentalist Taliban militia that harboured al-Qaeda.
