Australian aid agency pulls out of Iraq

The last Australian aid agency operating in Iraq has suspended operations in the country, saying it is too dangerous to keep working there amid the violent insurgency.

The head of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, told ABC radio today that three Australians were among 20 of the staff working in the charity’s Iraq office.

Costello said the charity had worked in Iraq since April 2003, mainly on water sanitation projects and health rehabilitation.

He said the decision to end operations was prompted by safety concerns. It was not immediately clear if all staff had already left Iraq.

“Your first priority is always your own staff, and it has just become intolerable and too dangerous,” said Costello.

The charity took the decision to cease work in Iraq before the kidnapping last month of Margaret Hassan, CARE International’s head of Iraq operations, but did not immediately publicise it for fear of jeopardising negotiations to free her.

The Arab satellite station al-Jazeera said early this week it had received a videotape showing the murder of a woman believed to be Hassan, an Anglo-Irish national who had lived in Iraq for three decades.

Costello said the World Vision charity had an Iraqi staff member killed about eight weeks ago, but said it was unclear if he was targeted because of his links to a Western aid agency.

“We’re not convinced that it was because he worked for World Vision, there might have been other plots and subplots going on, so though that wasn’t publicised that was a tragedy for us, but it sends a message that we’d prefer not to send, that you know, this is too dangerous and we really have to go,” he said.

Despite the danger, staff did not want to cease operations in Iraq, he said.

“They’re torn between leaving a job that they came to do and people that they’ve come to love and knowing that this is now clear policy decision, it’s not in this sense a difficult decision to make when you have policies that say when it gets to this level you simply have to withdraw,” Costello told the ABC.