RAJA ASGHAR, Islamabad | Wednesday
AID workers and diplomats began pulling out of Afghanistan on Wednesday after suspicions centred on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, sheltered by the Taliban government, for horrific attacks in the United States.
The United Nations said it was temporarily relocating its 80 expatriate staff in Afghanistan to neighbouring Pakistan.
Australian, US and German diplomats, who were trying to help eight foreign aid workers detained in Afghanistan on charges of preaching Christianity, are also being evacuated from Kabul after the U.S. terror attacks, Australia said on Wednesday.
Aid agency sources in Islamabad and Kabul said foreign aid workers in war-torn Afghanistan were leaving on a special UN flight in the middle of the day.
The pullout came as fears mounted over possible US retaliatory strikes after Tuesday’s suicide attacks by aircraft hijackers on US economic and military targets.
The United Nations said it was “temporarily relocating” international staff deployed in Afghanistan “due to circumstances prevailing internationally”.
“The relocation of up to 80 international staff began on September 12 and is expected to be completed on September 13,” a statement issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Islamabad and Geneva said.
Authorities in Afghanistan were cooperating in issuing necessary flight clearances for staff evacuation.
After the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, the US launched missile strikes on Afghanistan, targeting suspected hideouts of bin Laden, blamed for those attacks which killed over 200 people.
Bin laden, a Saudi exile and multi-millionaire who lives in Afghanistan as a “guest” of the Taliban, denied the charge.
One of the world’s poorest countries, Afghanistan is suffering its worst drought in memory and the devastation from a long civil war.
“United Nations humanitarian agencies hope that activities can continue as normal so that critical pre-winter relief work can be completed,” the UN statement said.
UN expatriate staff are now deployed in six locations in the war-torn country: Kabul, Jalalabad, Mazar, Kandahar, Heart and Faisalbad.
Separately, a representative for the Australian Foreign Ministry said relatives of eight foreign aid workers from German-based Christian relief agency Shelter Now International were being flown out along with the diplomats trying to help them.
The aid workers were arrested five weeks ago and charged by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban with trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, a crime punishable by death.
On Tuesday, the UN envoy for Afghanistan said that if Washington believed the latest attacks were linked to bin Laden, it would have “incalculable consequences” for Afghanistan.
The envoy, Francesc Vendrell, was speaking in an interview at the UN European headquarters in Geneva after chairing three-day talks between diplomats from Iran, Germany, Italy and the United States about the situation in war-torn Afghanistan.
UN sources in Islamabad said two special UN planes carrying staff and some aid workers arrived in Islamabad from Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif and two more were due later in the day.
Taliban authorities in Kabul on Wednesday beefed up security at government offices, thoroughly checking vehicles entering government compounds, witnesses said.
The checks were being conducted hours after the attacks in the United States and an overnight rocket attack on Kabul airport by anti-Taliban forces based north of the Afghan capital.
The anti-Taliban opposition alliance said it had carried out the air and rocket assault on Kabul airport early on Wednesday, which initially sparked fears that it could be a repetition of US missile strikes on Afghanistan in 1998.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and other officials of his radical Islamic movement said on Tuesday bin Laden could not have been involved in the latest attacks. – Reuters (Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Sydney)
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