U.N. Reassessing Security After Deadly Kabul Assau

日期：2009.11.02 | 分类：phones | 标签： DVR Cards

Attack in Afghan Capital Illustrates Taliban’s Reach
On Wednesday, gunmen associated with the Taliban entered the compound of the guesthouse and killed eight people, including six foreign staff members. The authorities said the gunmen would have killed far more people had they not been held off by United Nations guards, who engaged the assailants in a fierce gun battle, killing three of them.

The assault unnerved many international organizations working here, underscoring the vulnerability of their workers. “Before yesterday,DVR Cards, the risk was there, but it was a virtual risk,” said Laurent Saillard, the director of the Hamid Karzai appeared to have won that vote, but he eventually bowed to international pressure to hold a runoff after widespread fraud in his favor was discovered.

In its work here, officials of the United Nations mission have made a point of emphasizing the organization’s impartiality. As a result, they found Wednesday’s attack particularly shocking. They have tried to impress on Afghans that the mission does not favor any side in conflict with insurgents and is unlike the foreign military forces here. They have pointed to their investigations of civilian casualties and other human rights abuses that have angered the Afghan population, and have tried to improve government services.

Although the United Nations is not immune from the violence here – three of its foreign election workers were kidnapped in 2004 – its workers have gone largely untouched. In the last two years it has expanded the number of its provincial offices, a reflection of good relations with the general population and the reputation for impartiality.

In the runoff, Mr. Karzai will face Abdullah Abdullah, who was the next largest vote-getter in the election in August, and there are fears that fraud may occur again. If United Nations workers are constrained from working at full strength because of security fears, they will most likely be less able to safeguard the integrity of the runoff. Complicating matters is an announcement by Afghanistan’s NATO-led forces here announced that two members of the international force had died in separate roadside bomb attacks on Wednesday in southern Afghanistan.

In Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother, held a news conference to rebut statements in an article in The New York Times on Wednesday that said he had been paid by the C.I.A. for much of the past eight years, rented a compound to the agency and helped it run the Kandahar Strike Force, a paramilitary group. Mr. Karzai categorically denied having any relationship with the C.I.A. and also said that he was not involved in the lucrative narcotics business in southern Afghanistan.