Counting the Dead

This post was written by Harry Rud in Afghanistan. In my rather biased view, his blog offers the best perspective on what it's like to be a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan today.

One of my colleagues in Afghanistan was killed this year. I worked with him briefly, but can’t remember his face from among the group of other men I drank tea with.

Secrecy unfolded over events. There were news items on local radio and television from other sources, and ANSO (the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office) put out a report. But we took pains to keep things quite. Not the death itself, but other events that occurred before and after, the details and context. Even within the senior management of our organisation, updates were given on a need to know basis, the information that emerged tightly controlled.

I didn’t entirely agree with the way information about the event was managed and reported, but then I didn’t know the full story myself and didn’t have to make the decision, so cannot pass judgement. There are issues of confidentiality, a precariously complicated political and humanitarian environment, and an overriding imperative to ensure the safety of other staff members in the field and of our beneficiaries.

Reporting incidents and sharing key information within the humanitarian community is extremely important, but certain things are best kept out of the public realm unless there is a particular reason to share them. As an unrelated example, the kidnapping of foreigners is frequently kept secret. The media know of it, as do many other people in Afghanistan. But it is not reported on or blogged about. Giving it public attention is liable to raise the stakes even further and complicate the negotiations.

The killing was reported by Michael on this blog. I’m not going to link to it as I feel duty bound to give away as little as possible. But I was happy to see it here. I understood the need for secrecy but was still frustrated by it, for though it wasn’t meant that way it still seemed like we were forgetting, almost denying the man’s existence and his work.

According to ANSO’s 2nd Quarter report, there have been 10 Afghan NGO staff fatalities in the first six months of this year, 29 abductions and an increasing number of violent attacks. These numbers pale in comparison to the 1,304 civilian casualties reported during the same period, the majority caused by criminals, insurgent attacks and Improvised Explosive Devices.

Such statistics feel incredibly banal. They may also not be accurate, for some, perhaps many, incidents go unreported or are dissociated from the work of a specific NGO or UN agency (‘he was at home on leave, it wasn’t related to us...’), where lives have passed unmarked by the people who should celebrate them. Knowing the name of just one ‘unit’ on the ANSO graph, I feel a greater appreciation of the numbers of the dead. It is important to count them.

[Photo of graves in Afghanistan from a.j.b.'s photostream on flickr]