Afghan war getting worse for civilians, ICRC says
By Rob Taylor and Mirwais Harooni
KABUL | Mon Oct 8, 2012 6:34am EDT
KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghanistan war is getting worse for civilians, with armed groups on the rise across the country and access to healthcare deteriorating as foreign combat troops depart, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.
Outgoing head of the ICRC delegation in Afghanistan, Reto Stocker, a seven-year veteran of Afghan aid efforts, said as the NATO-led war against the Taliban dragged into a twelfth year, the outlook for ordinary Afghans was increasingly bleak.
"Since I arrived here in 2006, local armed groups have proliferated. Civilians have been caught between not just one, but multiple front lines," Stocker told journalists in Kabul.
With NATO combat forces due to depart in 2014, aid groups and some Western diplomats are worried about a repeat of the vicious 1990s civil war that raged between rival ethnic-based factions, giving rise to the austere Taliban government.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-afghanistan-civilians-idUSBRE8970CT20121008
