Afghanistan: Aid workers flee riots

Aid workers in Afghanistan were abandoning the western city of Heart today after rioters burned their offices and fought with security forces over President Hamid Karzai’s sacking of its warlord governor.

The United Nations began flying some of its 51 foreign staff from the city to the capital Kabul after unrest at the weekend which left three people dead and more than 50 injured.

Yesterday, supporters of ousted provincial governor Ismail Khan went on the rampage and clashed with Afghan and US forces, looting and burning at least two UN compounds, other offices and vehicles.

The rioting in Afghanistan’s wealthiest city was a blow to the war-torn country’s faltering reconstruction and to Karzai’s attempt to assert the authority of his central government in the runup to landmark presidential elections in October.

As UN staff began evacuating, a team of senior UN officials arrived in the city to assess the damage.

“Many of the offices have been destroyed,” UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said after flying over the area in a helicopter. Vehicles were also burned or wrecked.

The team will have to look at “what is gone, what is left and what still works” before giving any indication of when UN operations there can recover, he said.

A skeleton staff will remain, he said.

About 50 other foreign relief workers were also heading for Kabul, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office, which advises aid groups on security.

Karzai had sent more than 1,000 members of the new, US-trained national army and 300 German-trained national police to Heart province after deadly clashes in August between troops loyal to Khan and those of rival warlords.

But they struggled to contain the unrest triggered by Saturday’s announcement that Khan, the regional strongman, had been shifted to a Cabinet post in Kabul.

Khan, who also helped US forces rout the Taliban three years ago, still has the loyalty of a sizeable private army that he has been reluctant to disarm.

He has refused to take up the Cabinet post, saying he wants to stay in Heart, but after a call from US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Khan appeared on local television yesterday to appeal for order in the city.

Most of the casualties in the violence at the weekend were civilians hit by bullets apparently fired by Afghan police and troops trying to keep order.

Karzai condemned the rioters, who also burned the office of a Danish aid group and wrecked the local branch of the Afghan human rights commission. He said they were damaging Afghanistan’s fragile peace process.