A slaughter in Afghanistan

Deteriorating security in Afghanistan was highlighted last week by the murder of 10 aid workers, including six Americans, in northern Afghanistan. The 10 doctors, nurses, and technicians were on a mission to deliver dental and eye care to rural villages when they were ambushed by bearded men, and then lined up and shot, according to an Afghan member of the group whose life was spared. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack and accused the aid workers, from International Assistance Mission, of serving as American spies who were trying to spread Christianity. Afghan government authorities said the murderers may have actually been thieves, not Taliban.

A U.N. report released this week shows that Afghan civilian deaths have soared over the past year, due to increased attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents. Civilian casualties are up 30 percent overall, even though deaths caused by NATO and Afghan forces are down.

These brutal murders recall life under the Taliban regime before the 2001 U.S. invasion, said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. “Killing aid workers, disfiguring young girls, torching schools, threatening any who object to their brutal notion of justice. That’s the Taliban way.” Preventing these thugs from returning to power is a moral imperative. The anti-war crowd will say the murders reflect “how badly the war is going,” said The Wall Street Journal. But what they really show is “the fate that will befall our Afghan allies if we let the Islamists once again overrun the country.”

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The slain aid workers weren’t political actors or even missionaries, said Shaila Dewan in The New York Times, they were dedicated humanitarians. Dr. Tom Little, the New York optometrist who led the mission, had worked for 35 years in Afghanistan, where he’d also raised three daughters. Dr. Thomas Grams, a Colorado dentist, had “trekked to villages halfway up Mount Everest, carrying dental equipment by yak,” to treat patients. Dr. Karen Woo, a Briton who was to be married in a few weeks, had donated her services in poor countries all over the world. Their brutal murder has sparked concern that Afghanistan’s “long-standing custom of allowing safe passage to aid workers” is “breaking down.”