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Wednesday, July 28, 2004

You know it's a bad day when...

...Medicins Sans Frontieres pulls out of your country due to safety concerns. MSF is one of the bravest NGOs in the world, often doing essential aid work in distressed corners of the globe where other Western organizations don't dare set foot. After 24 years of work in war-plagued Afghanistan, the group is leaving the country, citing "the killing of our colleagues, the government's failure to arrest the culprits, and the false allegations by the Taliban." Five MSF workers were killed in a targeted attack on June 2, and the government has failed to take punitive action despite knowledge of the assailants' identities. The Taliban has claimed responsibility and threatened more attacks, saying that aid workers are serving American interests. In the announcement of their withdrawal from the country, MSF "denounces the [American-led] coalition’s attempts to co-opt humanitarian aid and use it to 'win hearts and minds.'"

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