Twenty plus years ago at the beginning of this business relationship neutrality could be argued, and today the participates in NGO’s can still individually argue their personal “neutrality”, but the fact is they are a business today and a big business at that.

Why would anyone be surprised “simple” people see NGO officials staying in the highest priced hotels, driving expensive vehicles, interacting with the military forces, and living a very high standard of life compared to the locals simply by the fact they arrived by plane from abroad and wear Western clothes as part of the problem rather than the answer.

Ten years in Latin America have taught me you are not welcome at the table of an NGO in a cafe as a fellow American even though you live and work in that country. There is a definite elitist form of self righteous arrogance that is blatant to the locals, even if the NGO workers would strike you in the face to voice it.

NGO’s are paternalistic at best, skim vast portions of the money dealt out by USAID, but are a structure to pass aid to that the US Government can use and is comfortable with.

It is no surprise NGO workers were targeted in Afghanistan.

But the way the NGO/Army line has blurred lately is just incredibly dangerous for precisely that reason: any NGO becomes an instrument of Empire.

Combatants in Afghanistan no longer believe that, or are not organized enough to enforce rules. Mourning the end of neutrality is a dangerous sidetrack that keeps the real issue from being addressed.

That is appalling.

Anyway, as Lance and the Ignoble Savage have already pointed out important aspects I won’t repeat them. However, rest assured that I DO know the difference between AQ and “the Taliban” and their sometimes somewhat complicated relationship.

Still, I believe that, given az-Zawahiri’s function (along with bin Ladin) as ideological mentor of a broader movement, his writings might also serve as justifications for various insurgents operating in Afghanistan. If only because they pretend to serve an ideological goal. I’m also aware that, like in other insurgencies, there’s a number of people fighting for personal gains or because they were coerced to do so.
Sometimes financial interests and ideology (real or pretended) go hand in hand.

Besides that, even if an attacker is primarily motivated by financial reasons, what’s that to do with the “militarization of aid”? Unarmed NGOs seem to be fair game for someone seeking profits. They have modern equipment and won’t be hard targets.

More on do no harm here: http://www.cdainc.com/cdawww/project_profile.php?pid=DNH&pname=Do%20No%20Harm

Still it was a pious fraud to proclaim neutrality. (Even Ms. Chayes’s previous writings leave little doubt as to exactly where her loyalties lay and she can hardly claim neutrality as an aid worker–even though that may be how she is always presented.)

To make things short, there is no such thing as a neutral aid worker, the Pentagon has made it worse. Enterprising aid workers such as Ms. Chayes further blur this line.

While the Taliban is not al Qaeda, it is the Taliban, and they have never been friendly with NGO’s, if more accepting than Bin Laden’s crew. They are, as their cooperation with al Qaeda prior to our invasion demonstrated, nasty enough. If we had organized our effort differently, undoubtedly this state of affairs would have come to pass anyway, as the Taliban has repeatedly demonstrated that they will resort to extreme measures to weaken and destroy Kabul if it is to their advantage. Ideologically and strategically they view the NGO’s as a threat, and they are right.

If they were concerned about such distinctions to any large degree, it wouldn’t matter. The same goes for other insurgents as well. They are not trying to be particular about it because they don’t care. Once that is realized it becomes rather inevitable that they would, if it was felt beneficial, target them, as well as any number of noncombatants.

This isn’t new, it has happened before in many different settings. So no new theory is required to explain it, even if it may be a small contributing factor.

Viewing the country simplistically produced strategic blindness. I think we’ve had enough of that, thanks.