The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) is asking aid workers to face grim facts: the Afghan government has lost control over large swaths of its territory and the Taliban will hold at least part of the country well into the foreseeable future. If NGOs want to protect their staff and keep saving lives, they’ll have to accept the Taliban as the official authority in areas currently under Taliban control.
Aid workers should seek permission from the Taliban to operate in areas they control, a leading NGO says today.
In a gloomy assessment of the current security situation, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (Anso) says the Taliban are “anticipating authority”, even to the extent of developing a foreign policy.
“The sum of their activity presents the image of a movement anticipating authority and one which has already obtained a complex momentum that Nato will be incapable of reversing,” it warns.
More on this at UN Dispatch soon.
Transitionland 