I wonder how long it takes some people (including Obama!) to get it—they don’t want us in the Middle East (once we have helped destabilize things) and the Middle East isn’t going to change as long as Islam is the dominant organizing force. Yet, the new incoming President of the IRC says we must embrace political Islamism. Are they just naive?
Here is the sad breaking news from AP:
Insurgents shot and killed 12 civilians in two separate incidents over the weekend, including six aid workers employed on government projects, officials said Tuesday.
The bodies of six victims were found in the Gulran district of western Herat province, said Jamel Danish, media adviser for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation.
Five were Afghan employees of the International Rescue Committee who had been kidnapped on Sunday, and the U.S-based group said it was temporarily suspending operations. It has worked in Afghanistan since 1988. The sixth victim worked for the ministry.
“The IRC is devastated and grief-stricken by the deaths of our colleagues who were all working to make a better Afghanistan,” IRC president George Rupp said in a statement.
President Hamid Karzai and the United Nations office in Afghanistan also condemned the killings, which the U.N. said could be classified as a war crime. The Taliban regularly target government employees.
Danish said the six were kidnapped by the Taliban and killed after negotiations to free them failed. His ministry with help from international groups seeks to improve the lives of Afghans in remote parts of the country.
We wrote critically about the IRC’s embrace of Karzai here, and questioned what the IRC is doing in Afghanistan anyway.
For new readers the International Rescue Committee is one of nine major federal contractors working to bring refugees to your towns. The chief executive of this ‘non-profit’ pulls down more than $450,000 a year in salary and benefits thanks to the US taxpayer.