Smudged thumb prints and scrawled signatures on a hastily-prepared petition are a sign of hope for Michaela Franz, whose colleagues are accused of plotting to kill an Afghan official. More than 12,500 signatures of support have been gathered in the rugged Panjsher Valley, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Kabul, where Franz is medical coordinator of a 100-bed hospital for the Italian medical charity Emergency.The hospital is one of three in Afghanistan, along with 28 clinics and an orphanage, run by Emergency, which says it has treated 2.5 million people in the country in the past decade. "The people need us, that's why we are here," said Franz. "If we go, they have nothing, we are the only hospital. We will fight for it, justice will win."
Fears are growing, however, that the arrest of three Italians working for Emergency in Lashkar Gah, capital of southern Helmand province could see the charity forced to quit Afghanistan as the authorities become increasingly hostile towards foreigners. "They have not been very clever politically but what is happening to Emergency could be part of a wider trend," said a Western aid worker who asked not to be identified.
The Italians were arrested on April 10 with six Afghan colleagues, accused of being part of a plot to kill Helmand provincial governor Gulab Mangal. Emergency's international logistician Marcello Costite described the charges as "absolutely ridiculous" and called on the authorities to allow the Italians "their rights under the Afghan constitution". "We want to know if they are accused of something, and if so what it is," he told AFP.
Mangal said the three -- Emergency's medical coordinator in Afghanistan, a surgeon and a logistical technician, all being held in Kabul -- were part of a plot bankrolled by the Pakistani Taliban. Mangal also accused the Italians of being behind the death of Ajmal Naqshbandi, an Afghan interpreter who was seized by the Taliban with an Italian journalist in April 2007. Emergency officials brokered the reporter's release but Naqshbandi was beheaded. The charity has dismissed the plot claims and suggestions the arrested men were involved in Naqshbandi's death.
Aid workers and officials in Kabul said Afghan authorities, including the NDS intelligence agency, still believed Emergency was connected to the Taliban and through them was linked to Naqshbandi's death. Emergency had been incautious, they said, in treating Taliban fighters at its Lashkar Gah hospital, and allowing an international television station to interview them.
"If the biggest (NATO-led military) operation is in Helmand it is because they think there are more Taliban there than anywhere else," Costite said. "So of course we will receive them too. We don't care. We simply don't care."
Another international aid official said, on condition of anonymity, that Emergency "haven't been careful enough, perhaps because they don't understand the political climate.
"The climate for expatriates in Afghanistan is becoming much tougher, with the government becoming harder to deal with, visas harder to get," he said. He noted "undiplomatic comments" by Emergency officials, including president Cecilia Strada who described the arrests as "an action to discredit us".
"Add that together with the treatment of Taliban fighters, letting a foreign TV crew interview them and show them swearing jihad against the government, the bad PR and public accusations -- then this is what can happen," he said. "They might have excellent doctors but they are not clever politically."