Curbing compassion

Failure to investigate groups 'selling' high-value targets to militants has encouraged trend of kidnappings.

It is a strange country, where people doing good work are targeted for abduction and whisked away by persons whose motives are unclear. It is hard to understand why these persons would wish to hurt the interests of local people by attempting to remove individuals working in their field of interest. It is, of course, the poor who suffer the most may be as a result of these actions with many foreign organisations engaged in charitable work having already closed their doors and left the country.

In an incident which has shaken aid workers across Karachi, unknown men abducted two Christian men employed at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Orangi. The kidnappers, who intercepted the van which is used to transport staff to the hospital, appeared to be looking for Korean staff, with around five Koreans stated to be engaged in charitable work carried out at the facility. Not finding any foreigners in the vehicle, it is said that the abductors settled for the two passengers wearing shirts and pants, pushing them into their car, while leaving the others untouched. Witnesses say that the kidnappers were clean-shaven and as such did not appear to be militants. Meanwhile, the distraught families of the victims wait for any news as to where those kidnapped may be. Many thousands of miles away, in Tank, five local workers of an NGO were kidnapped while visiting a village near South Waziristan. Their organisation had been involved in government-supported development work in the area.

Such incidents have occurred before in places across the country. Unfortunately, in too many cases, the culprits have never been nabbed. Reports suggesting the operation of groups in urban centres, who then sell ‘high-value’ targets to militants have never been fully investigated or arrests made. This failure can only encourage more such kidnappings, and as a result prevent organisations from working among impoverished communities. This would, of course, be a further tragedy for people who have little and who depend on services offered by both local and foreign charity organisations.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2012.