Reversing Course, Pakistan Says Save the Children Can Stay
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Version 0 of 1. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Under pressure from Western allies, the government of Pakistan on Monday reversed its decision to expel Save the Children from the country, indicating that the aid agency could continue its operations albeit on a smaller scale and with tighter restrictions. On June 11, the Interior Ministry gave the agency 15 days to leave Pakistan, after years of hostile scrutiny from Pakistani intelligence agencies, which accused it of having become involved in the C.I.A.’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. Save the Children denied those accusations, and the sudden expulsion order, which saw the police seal the group’s Islamabad offices, drew unusually public protests from Britain and the United States. Pakistani officials initially insisted they were standing by their decision, and warned that any foreign aid organization that broke the law or used aid work as a cover for espionage would face similar sanctions. Yet private pressure over the past week from British and American officials — some of whom threatened to cut millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan unless the ban was reversed, according to local news reports — appeared to have worked. Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, the interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said Monday that 13 of Save the Children’s 73 offices in Pakistan would be allowed to continue operations. He denied that the group was being singled out. “No one said it is working against Pakistan,” he said. The statement was a significant step in what appears to be a gradual about-face on the part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government, which had already announced that Western aid groups could continue to work as normal for at least six months. It was not clear what led the government to move so drastically against Save the Children in the first place, but it likely involved some quiet pressure from the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has been working for some years to deter any Western espionage under the cover of aid work. Save the Children has been under scrutiny since 2011 when Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who helped in the efforts to track down Bin Laden, told military interrogators that American spies had recruited him at the home of Save the Children’s then country director. The aid agency, which has been working in Pakistan for more than 35 years, denied any link to Mr. Afridi. But in 2012 it was forced to send its foreign staff out of Pakistan, and since then its operations in the country have been run by an entirely local staff of about 1,200 people. Mr. Khan, the interior minister, said intelligence officials had recommended unspecified action against Save the Children in 2012, and he blamed the previous government for not acting on that advice. In the future, he said, the aid group would not be allowed to operate in the northwestern tribal belt or other restricted areas. There will be greater scrutiny of financing for foreign aid groups, he added. “We should know where their money is coming from and what it’s being used for,” he said. Yet despite numerous public statements in recent weeks, Mr. Khan has failed to specify if the government possessed any substantive evidence against Save the Children, or whether the expulsion order was just part of a broader effort to clamp down on the movement of foreigners around Pakistan. The latest moves are likely to be most keenly felt in the tribal belt which, as well as being the focus of most Taliban violence, is one of the poorest and least developed parts of Pakistan. Until recently, the limited amount of foreign aid reaching the area provided help for things like polio prevention. Aid workers worry that the crackdown could endanger even that meager assistance. |