Aid Groups in Iraq Face Mounting Obstacles

[Barrett808]

Aid Groups in Iraq Face Mounting Obstacles
ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
Associated Press
Posted on Wed, Oct. 20, 2004

GENEVA - Helping Iraq is hard to do. Many aid organizations have already pulled out their international staffs and, faced with the kidnapping of the director of CARE International in Iraq, some are wondering if they should leave altogether.

"It's really, really difficult," Marie-Helene Verney, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Wednesday. "All the NGOs we talked to are really struggling with trying to make the decision."

Following the August 2003 attack that killed 22 people at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the United Nations has kept virtually all of its international staff out of Iraq, relying instead on local workers and aid groups.

But the kidnapping Tuesday of Margaret Hassan of Care International - who holds British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship and is among the most widely known humanitarian officials in the Middle East - sent another chill through the ranks of already-worried aid workers. Last month Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari were held for three weeks.

A coordinating body of non-governmental organizations in Iraq declined to comment on the latest kidnapping, but Verney said: "The general trend is that everyone is pulling out."

She told The Associated Press that it was difficult to say how many NGOs remained in Iraq and how many have international staff.

"The problem is that you can't really name them," she said. "There are still a few, but it's becoming more and more difficult."

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