Why are they there?

Linda Norgrove, 1974-2010.

The full facts surrounding the tragedy of 36-year-old Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove, abducted in Afghanistan's Kunar province and killed during a rescue attempt last Friday night by US special forces, have yet to emerge. That the US military were willing to mount such a dangerous operation to try and rescue her tells us something about how potentially damaging such kidnappings are to coalition public relations.

Linda Norgrove is not the first British aid worker to be killed in Afghanistan. In August this year, Dr Karen Woo, who was attached to the International Assistance Mission (IAM), was murdered (probably by the Taliban) whilst delivering medical supplies. Two years ago this month, Gayle Williams of the Christian charity Serve Afghanistan, was shot dead in Kabul.

Aid workers, most of them young, travel to these dusty, unforgiving places because they believe that they can make a difference. They are big-hearted, idealistic and tremendously courageous. But, as with our soldiers, public respect and praise for them are tempered by a fear that their sacrifices may count for nothing, that they are pawns in a larger game whose political objectives are obscure. With every shocking death or attack, one question is thrown into sharp relief. Why exactly were they there?

The war has made schizophrenics of all of us. Whilst one part of us is full of admiration for the professional soldiers, who daily risk their lives defusing bombs, dodging snipers and helping the hapless civilians caught in the midst of it, another part of us knows that it is a war that cannot be won, and that every life lost in it is a life lost needlessly.

Both western aid and western military intervention in that part of the world are problematic when they arrive laden with western values, and some of the aid organisations – for example Development Alternatives Inc., the global consulting company that Linda Norgrove worked for – provide not only medical and agricultural aid, but also political services promoting democratic government, gender equality and suchlike.

Such things may seem right and natural to us, but we should understand that to some peoples they are strange and inexplicable. The problem is that the things that we take to be the defining features of civilisation emerged over a very long period from very particular, highly structured societal, religious and economic contexts, and to expect them to instantly take root and thrive in a very different context – one dominated by feudal Islam, tribal warlords and Sharia – seems to me like trying to grow tulips in the desert.

I suspect that quite a high proportion of overseas aid workers are evangelical Christians, and indeed the Taliban has frequently accused aid workers of trying to spread Christianity. But even the ones who are not Christian seem to have a kind of missionary zeal about them. There have been reports also of US soldiers trying to convert people and distributing bibles printed in the local languages. It is unsurprising that many Muslims see the coalition forces as anti-Islamic “infidel-crusaders”.

Statements from coalition governments as to the aims of the war have proven elusive, changeable and contradictory. Initially, the stated aims were to capture Bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Then they were to remove the Taliban and their training camps in order to protect the folks back home. Then to bring democracy, development and human rights: to build schools for children and stop Afghan men slapping their wives around, that sort of thing.

How ungrateful these backward people are for “Operation Enduring Freedom”! They have so little interest in free elections, women's rights and economic development. Do they not understand that these things are good for them?

Linda Norgrove gave her life helping others. She had been sharing her special expertise with Afghan farmers to enable them to switch from growing poppies to growing legal crops, and who knows what long-term benefits that work might bring?

But whichever way you look at it, our troops do not belong there. I support the “Bring Our Troops Home” campaign spearheaded by the British National Party, though not without reservation, because I know that TV and press pictures of anti-war protests here will be demoralizing for the soldiers. But perhaps that is the one thing that will bring a swift end to it. When senior military officers realise that their men no longer believe in the war, believe instead that they are risking their lives for nothing, then it will surely become unsustainable – just as in the late 1960s the Vietnam War became unsustainable when US troops began to learn of the mass demonstrations taking place at home.