From today's Guardian, "Aid agency quits Afghanistan over security fears":

One of the world's leading frontline aid organisations, Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders], is pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of a deterioration in security.

MSF, a neutral group which depends primarily on private donations, has a reputation for sending medical staff into troublespots regarded by other agencies as too dangerous. This is its first pullout from any country since being founded 33 years ago.

The organisation, which worked in Afghanistan through the Soviet occupation, the civil war and the Taliban, said yesterday that the US-led coalition put aid workers at risk by blurring the line between military and humanitarian operations.

The surprise withdrawal is a setback for the Afghan government and the US in their attempts to persuade the international community that security in the country is improving in the run-up to the twice-delayed presidential election, now scheduled for October. A UN election worker and a person registering to vote were killed yesterday in a bomb attack in Ghazni, south of Kabul.

Thirty-two aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since March last year. Five MSF workers were killed at Badghis, in the north-west of the country, on June 2.

Before the attack, MSF had 80 expatriate staff in the country and 1,400 local staff, covering 13 provinces. The remaining 15 expatriate staff are leaving and the local staff are being made redundant. MSF aims to be out of Afghanistan by the end of August.

Vickie Hawkins, who returned to Britain two weeks ago after leading the MSF mission in Afghanistan, said yesterday: "While the security situation has deteriorated over the last year, what is a new feature is this targeting issue which has never happened before in Afghanistan and this is what makes us take the situation so seriously we felt we have to withdraw." She said the line between aid and the military had been blurred since US soldiers, after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, dressed in civilian clothes and drove around in the white Land cruisers favoured by aid agencies.

More recently, the Pentagon was forced to apologise for leaflets dropped on villages which threatened to withhold aid unless information was forthcoming about al-Qaida and the Taliban. Britain has distanced itself from this campaign.