Aid Agencies Retreat Due to Violence

As reported by Jeremy Laurence for Reuters, many aid agencies are reducing their activities in the southern province of Helmand, Afghanistan due to increasing violence. “In the past six weeks, militants and their drug gangs have launched almost daily attacks against U.S.-led coalition troops in the south,” Laurence reports.

“NATO will undertake what is set to be the alliance’s toughest ground mission in its history when it takes over in the south from a U.S.-led coalition force at the end of the month,” says Laurence. In his report Laurence says that “Helmand has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in past weeks and 14 foreign troops have been killed since March.”

“We are pushing the Taliban extremists out of their safe havens, out of places the government has never been before. They are failing,” said Colonel Tom Collins, a coalition spokesman.

A Western security source told Reuters that the “Taliban controlled vast areas in the south and that there was no end in sight to the insurgency,” reports Laurence. “The source said the Taliban were ordering local farmers not to irrigate crops because this impeded their movements.” According to Laurence, the source also revealed that “the occasional suicide bomb attacks they are getting at the moment are just the tip of the iceberg.”

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