Red Cross head warns against swift Afghan exit

Decade of work risks being lost to chaos

A decade of progress will be put at risk if Canada and the rest of the world run for the exit in Afghanistan next year, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Friday.

ICRC president Peter Maurer also echoed Canadian concerns about Western countries arming rebel forces in Syria, and said the twoyear-old conflict is in danger of touching off a wider conflagration in the Middle East.

“Our assessment from the ground is that the conflict is expanding, the impact is deepening, and the impact on (Syria’s) neighbours is deepening,” Maurer told Postmedia News. “The consequence of it will not only be a humanitarian disaster … it may be political destabilization even far beyond Syria.”

Maurer, a former Swiss ambassador who has headed the ICRC since last July, was in Ottawa to meet with Canadian officials and discuss this country’s contributions to humanitarian emergencies and crises.

Afghanistan is the ICRC’s largest active mission with about 1,500 people in the field providing assistance and helping rebuild the country. But Maurer said the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops — including 900 Canadian military trainers — and an expected drawdown of aid next year poses a significant threat to Afghanistan’s economy, and hence its stability.

“We have a contraction of the economy because of troops and their purchasing power moving out of the country,” Maurer said. “And at the same time we have aid agencies moving out.”

Canada promised in July to contribute $227 million in further assistance to Afghanistan between 2014 and 2017 as part of an overall international commitment of $16 billion. That is over and above what was already committed between 2011 and 2014.

Maurer said such a prolonged engagement after 2014 is important to help Afghanistan complete its transition to self-governance in a stable manner. “I regularly encourage all actors in all the countries I’m visiting to be very careful and not throw away some of the achievements of the last 10 years by prematurely leaving Afghanistan,” he said.

“We consider as overly pessimistic those voices who think that this country will disintegrate,” he added. “But it needs support.”

As for Syria, Maurer is less optimistic. The ICRC is one of the few humanitarian organizations still operating within the war-torn country — though not without considerable risk. “There is rarely a convoy which we send from Damascus to one of the regions which would not be involved in a security incident,” Maurer said.