Is USAID Policy Risking Lives in Afghanistan?
Security for aid workers in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and non-government organizations blame U.S. development policies for putting more lives at risk. The U.S. Agency for International Development requires that humanitarian-aid projects in Afghanistan support the military’s war strategy, a policy that has made aid workers targets for the Taliban, say non-government organizations, or NGOs. “There are more attacks on aid workers now,” said Ann Richard, vice president of government relations at the International Rescue Committee, a non-government organization with programs in Afghanistan. “Security for NGOs has gone in the opposite direction.” USAID policies support the counterinsurgency (COIN) war strategy in Afghanistan, and the agency allocates money to NGOs based on how their projects “contribute to COIN goals,” according to agency guidelines for development in Afghanistan. (COIN is shorthand for counterinsurgency, the war strategy used in the Iraq and Afghanistan that coordinates
