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“With a deep feeling of sadness and anger, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announces today the closure of all medical programs in Afghanistan. MSF is taking this decision in the aftermath of the killing of five MSF aid workers in a deliberate attack on June 2, 2004, when a clearly marked MSF vehicle was ambushed in the northwestern province of Badghis. Five of our colleagues were mercilessly shot in the attack. This targeted killing of five of its aid workers is unprecedented in the history of MSF, which has been delivering medical humanitarian assistance in some of the most violent conflicts around the world over the last 30 years.”

“The violence directed against humanitarian aid workers has come in a context in which the United States-backed coalition has consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions. MSF denounces the coalition's attempts to co-opt humanitarian aid and use it to "win hearts and minds." By doing so, providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act, endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardizing the aid to people in need. Only recently, on May 12, 2004, MSF publicly condemned the distribution of leaflets by the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in which the population was informed that providing information about the Taliban and al Qaeda was necessary if
they wanted the delivery of aid to continue.”

“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 [July 28, 2004] that the US-led coalition put aid workers at risk by blurring the line between military and humanitarian operations.”