Attacks mount on relief workers

When suspected extremists armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb burst into a World Vision office in northwestern Pakistan this week, killing six employees of the Federal Way-based relief organization, it was the latest example of the escalating violence that aid groups increasingly face.

In the past 10 years, attacks have risen, with some 122 humanitarian workers killed around the globe in 2008 alone, according to InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international nongovernmental organizations.

"We tend to be quiet about this reality," said Sam Worthington, chief executive of InterAction. But it's important to recognize "the lives lost are mostly local people who made a choice to help their villages."

Few places are as dangerous as Pakistan. Four employees of Portland-based Mercy Corps remain missing in Pakistan since they disappeared during a field visit from the group's Quetta office Feb. 18. In 2008, four Pakistanis working for Plan International, a British-based charity, were killed by militants in the same area where World Vision's office was targeted.

Since the attack Wednesday, some aid groups operating in northwest Pakistan are evaluating whether to continue working in the area, said Worthington, whose coalition includes World Vision, Mercy Corps, CARE, Save the Children and others.

"This area begins to raise questions about long-term viability," he said, adding that 40 organizations with about 2,000 employees are operating in the tribal region.

"There will be extensive conversations among organizations on the ground, both listening to villagers as to why this happened and getting a general sense of the viability of staying," he said.

World Vision has temporarily suspended its operations in Pakistan, where it has about 180 staff members, including five expatriates, said spokesman Dean Owen.

Wednesday's attack was the worst in World Vision's history. The six staff members killed were all Muslim, as are the 30 other employees of that office, opened in 2005 to help the area recover from a 7.6-magnitude earthquake.

"We typically lose one staff member a year in violence," Owen said. "Never, in 60 years, have we lost more than one or two at the most at a time."

A dozen or so armed assailants corralled the staff members, stole their jewelry, wallets, cellphones and computers, and proceeded to shoot them and detonate bombs and grenades.

Owen said World Vision is working with local law enforcement, as well as conducting its own investigation. He wouldn't speculate about the motivations for the attacks or whether religion played a role.

World Vision, founded by an evangelist, focuses mostly on emergency relief operations and community development in Pakistan, where it has worked since 1992. Most of its employees are Christian, including all of its U.S. employees and 83 percent of its staff worldwide.

It does not hide its Christian identity, but the organization also says it doesn't proselytize.

Mercy Corps has 450 employees in Pakistan, many working in the mountainous northern region where fighting between Taliban militants and the Pakistan army displaced 2.5 million last year. The Taliban are fighting to impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Afghanistan.

Spokeswoman Rinn Self said the four missing employees, all local Pakistanis, are presumed to have been kidnapped.

"We think they are alive and we think they are being held," she said.

Mercy Corps has worked in Pakistan since 1986 and has four offices there. All of its programs are still operating, though under heightened security, Self said.

The nonprofit is doing everything it can to locate the missing employees.

A former Mercy Corps employee from California, Stephen Vance, was killed in 2008 in Pakistan. "We've been concerned about security in Pakistan for a long time," Self said.

For nonprofits working in such danger zones, security is based almost entirely on trust within the local community, especially among tribal elders, Worthington said.

To remain safe, large organizations have to be "as decoupled as possible from a Western or Christian identity," he said. They take pains to ensure that "staff are local, come from the villages and see the projects as their own efforts."

Violence rises whenever there is a government-led counterinsurgency, he said. To cope with threats, InterAction manages the central security network for its members to share information and provide an "hour-by-hour pulse of what is going on," he said.

"Our community constantly wrestles with when it is appropriate to pull people out," he said.

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com. Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com