AFGHANISTAN: World governments must send more peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan or risk seeing the central Asian nation crumble into chaos, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned on Dec. 18. If the security situation does not improve, "we may lose Afghanistan," he told a news conference. Mr. Annan had been asked whether he agreed with his special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who said recently the United Nations might leave Afghanistan if security could not be ensured. "I think it was legitimate that he sounded the alarm, and I urge member states to pay attention to it and help us in improving security in Afghanistan so that we can get on with our work," he said. The news comes as The Chicago Tribune reports that at the very moment when Afghanistan's reconstruction effort should be shifting into full gear, rising insecurity is forcing a wholesale retreat of international aid operations across the south and east of the country. The U.N. has halted all road travel in the high-risk provinces, confining staff members to their offices in the cities of Jalalabad, Kandahar and Gardez. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, responsible for one of Afghanistan's biggest aid operations, has withdrawn from those areas. CARE, Doctors Without Borders, Catholic Relief Services and the International Committee of the Red Cross are among the agencies that have temporarily wound down relief operations.
