Pakistan on Wednesday told the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders to stop its work and leave the country’s impoverished tribal areas that border Afghanistan, the organization said, ending its 14-year stay in the volatile region.
Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, works out of two health facilities in the Kurram district of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region in Pakistan, which has been plagued by militancy over the past decade and was the location of many American drone strikes targeting commanders from Al Qaeda and other militant groups.
Though security has improved in the tribal areas in recent years, sectarian militant attacks, primarily against Shiite Muslims, still occur. Twin blasts in Kurram’s most populous town, Parachinar, killed dozens of people and wounded many more in June. Local officials said that Doctors Without Borders provided essential medical care in the tribal areas, which have some of Pakistan’s poorest health services and lowest literacy rates.
“We have been asked to close our medical activities in Kurram Agency,” the organization said in a statement to the news media, adding that Pakistan had refused to issue a document known as a no objection certificate for the organization to work in the tribal areas.
Catherine Moody, the country representative for Doctors Without Borders in Pakistan, said in the statement that the organization was “saddened by the decision” to force it to halt its work in the region, noting that it had provided medical services there for 14 years.
Foreign citizens and organizations working in Pakistan require a no objection certificate to operate in certain areas. Pakistani nongovernmental organizations and journalists also face restrictions when working in the tribal areas.
Doctors Without Borders provided “diagnosis and treatment facilities to the community” and immunizations for children and it responded to “emergencies, disease outbreaks and mass casualties,” the organization said. The region’s health authorities did not respond to requests for comment, but Dr. Mohammad Ishaq, who works there, said Doctors Without Borders was asked to leave because it did not have valid documents. Dr. Ishaq said he thought the organization “was doing a great job for the patients” in the tribal areas, adding that he did not know why its license to work there was revoked.
An employee of Doctors Without Borders, who asked not to be identified, said the organization had never been denied the operating certificate in the past. He said he feared that the decision would affect many patients in the region, where, he added, the organization had 70 staff members working at its two sites. The official who notified Doctors Without Borders that its operations would need to be shut down said that he was simply following orders from officials in Peshawar, the administrative and economic hub of the tribal areas, and did not have any information about the reasons for the decision.
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