Coalition backtracks on linking aid to Taliban info-paper

"To enable the continued supply of humanitarian aid, inform the allied forces about the Taliban, al Qaeda and Gulbuddin," one leaflet says.

Reuters reported on April 12 that the coalition was distributing leaflets featuring a picture of a rebel carrying a rocket launcher and a message in Persian and Pashtu urging Afghans to inform on the Taliban, al Qaeda and forces loyal to renegade commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

"The deliberate linking of humanitarian aid with military objectives destroys the meaning of humanitarianism," Nelke Manders, head of mission in Afghanistan for Médecins sans Frontieres (MSF), said in a statement.

The leaflets were distributed in Zabul province, which borders Pakistan and where the Taliban have regained control of several districts.

Britain and the United States said it was a mistake and it was not their policy to link aid with military operations, The Guardian said on May 6.

A Pentagon spokesperson told The Guardian the decision to distribute the leaflets had been made at local level, and military personnel would be instructed not to repeat the tactic.

The Guardian quoted Joseph Collins, deputy assistant secretary at the Pentagon, as saying: "We will instruct forces in the field not to portray assistance as reward for the provision of intelligence."

Former Prime Minister Hekmatyar is leader of the Islamist party Hezb-i-Islami party, which is now fighting jointly with Taliban and al Qaeda militants against allied forces and the Afghan National Army.

Hekmataryar, a former resistance politician who was supported by the United States and Pakistan during the Soviet war of the 1980s, declared jihad on the United States in 2002.

Up to one-third of the country, mainly the south and east, is effectively off-limits to foreign aid workers due to the security threat posed by Islamic militants, an increasing concern as the country heads towards elections in September.

In a statement on the MSF website, Manders said: "It will result, in the end, in the neediest Afghans not getting badly needed aid -- and those providing aid being targeted."

Another coalition leaflet said: "The attacks on allied forces are an obstacle to delivering humanitarian aid to your areas."

Aid organisations have long complained that U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan put aid workers at risk by blurring the lines between military and humanitarian operations.

There have been numerous reports of U.S. soldiers distributing aid in civilian clothing, increasing the confusion.

Three members of a team helping the United Nations prepare for elections were killed by Taliban members in the eastern province of Nuristan on May 4, while assessing the feasibility of opening voter registration sites in the province.

Taliban commander Mullah Sabir Momin said the two British staff of Global Risk Strategies and their Afgan translator had killed the because they were helping "The Americans to consolidate their occupation of Afgahanistn."

The killings in Nuristan followed a spate of attacks by suspected Taliban remnants in which nearly 20 people, including two local aid workers, were killed in a two-week period, mainly in teh the volatile south. More than 700 people have been killed since August, mainly in the south and east, in the bloodiest months since the fall of the Taliban in November 2001.

http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/108386221369.htm