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11/14/2003: "Kandahar Chronicles #42 - 12/11/2003"

The calm after the storm. The city is tense following the attacks yesterday. UN agencies and NGOs meet in different venues around Kandahar during the day and stay close to their compounds at night. I feel like a prisoner again. Now we start the same old discussions about what is and isn’t an acceptable risk. Should we go to the camp? Low profile slow vehicle or well-marked speedy four wheel drive? Does that rumour about the Mullah have any foundation? Who blew up that vehicle outside the UN offices and caused us to have to cancel Bertein’s farewell party? Our computer has been down for two days and when I got it fired up again there were sixty two messages in our inbox-fifty of them security related. This will go on and on, summarizing, evaluating, discussing, speculating, restricting movements, securing approaches to compounds…on and on and on.

Even now, we try to maintain our strict neutrality but in this context it is difficult. In fact, with full respect to the MSF projects in Central and West Africa, this is as tough a security context as it gets now that we have temporarily suspended operations in Iraq following the attack on the Red Cross. We again have to review how we can effectively run our health posts in Zhare Dasht as well as brush up on procedures should the situation continue to deteriorate. National staff, for the first time in the six months I have been here, acknowledge that things could get worse. After years of civil war and invasions, they have become somewhat desensitised to this cycle of violence, so their bleak outlook is even more a reflection on the state of things. Clouds have begun to roll in, shading the cool desert landscape, and provide a fitting backdrop to the mood of the aid agencies.