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KABUL A week after a jarring predawn attack killed five members of its Kabul staff, the U.N. announced plans Thursday to scale back its operations in the city temporarily while it re-evaluates dangers in the country.
While the U.N. said the decision to relocate about half of its international staff shouldn't be seen as a diplomatic retreat, the move comes amid concerns that Taliban fighters have been emboldened by the deadly attack and may try to strike again.
One of the biggest worries is that insurgents in Afghanistan are trying to duplicate the strategy of Iraqi extremists who forced the U.N. to shutter its Iraqi operations in 2003 after a devastating truck bomb hit the U.N. headquarters, killing 22 people, including the top U.N. official in the country.
If the U.N. were to pull out of Afghanistan, it would force all other international aid groups to rethink their work in the country and undermine President Hamid Karzai's shaky government.
Kai Eide, the Norwegian diplomat who heads the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, said there were no plans to abandon the country.
"We are not talking about pulling out," Eide said at a news conference in Kabul. Instead, he said, the U.N. is going to relocate hundreds of international workers while it figures out how to protect the staff better.
The U.N. has about 1,200 international staff members in Afghanistan. About 600 nonessential staff will be relocated temporarily to other parts of Afghanistan or to nearby regional offices, said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the U.N. operation in Afghanistan.
Currently, many staffers live in a well-known network of guesthouses - small, lightly guarded compounds - spread out across Kabul.
Last week, three militants wearing Afghan police uniforms exploited the vulnerability of the guesthouses by scaling the walls of one compound and staging an attack that killed five U.N. workers, two Afghan security guards and the relative of an Afghan politician.
Afghan officials said six men had been arrested and accused of planning the attack.
Over the coming weeks, Siddique said, the U.N. will search for ways to consolidate its housing to reduce the dangers.
