MSF - Photographs From Afghanistan, US Intervention

US Intervention (2001-2004)

In the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, all MSF international volunteers working in Taliban-controlled areas evacuate, while programs continue in the hands of Afghan staff. In November, MSF volunteers are among the first to return after US forces dislodge the Taliban.

In 2002, the return of more than two million Afghan refugees exceeds the war-ravaged country’s capacity to absorb them. More than 100 MSF international volunteers and 1,000 Afghan staff treat 45,000 patients in 16 provinces. In the north, teams care for 4,000 children in feeding centers and distribute food to people at risk of malnutrition.

As war continues in the south, insurgents deliberately kill aid workers and other civilians as a strategy of war against the US-led Coalition forces and the government of President Hamid Karzai. At the same time, the US government’s strategy of combining relief and military operations increases the vulnerability of humanitarian aid workers, whose work is now perceived as a component of the military effort.

With the killing of five MSF aid workers in June 2004, MSF withdraws from the country after 24 years.

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A child is weighed to see whether he is malnourished at an MSF nutritional center in Meymaneh, a city in northwest Afghanistan.

2001©Tim Dirven

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Internally displaced Afghans gather for a funeral at the Maslakh camp in western Afghanistan's Herat province.

2001©Kadir van Lohuizen

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At an MSF clinic in Kandahar, a young boy receives a six-month dosage of vitamin A, which is given during vaccination campaigns to reduce the severity of measles and incidence of measles-related complications. The boy is one of 60,000 Afghans returning from refugee camps in Pakistan.

2002©Sebastian Bolesch

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A Hazara horseman passes an MSF vehicle that is heading toward a mobile clinic in the Bamiyan province. The MSF team established the clinic inside an old Shiite Muslim mosque that was destroyed by the Taliban.

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The MSF mobile clinic in Bamiyan province receives patients from surrounding communities, who have traveled across a snow-covered landscape to receive medical attention. Fifty-six people visit the clinic in one day.

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Three young boys stand atop the remnants of the Kamaz II clinic in the Mazar-I-Sharif region. The clinic was built halfway underground so that it would stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The clinic was situated in the middle of a camp for internally displaced people from Kabul. The camp dissolved once people settled in the city of Mazar-I-Sharif.




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