Afghanistan's remaining physicians become kidnapping targets

A growing wave of violent kidnappings are targeting high-earning Afghans, many of whom are physicians. But the country's police are looking the other way, says a recent NPR report.

The Afghan attorney general's office says that in the past 10 months, they have investigated 130 Afghan kidnappings for ransom — 23 of them in Kabul. Those are believed to be a fraction of the actual number.

NPR spoke with the father of one doctor who was snatched off the street last month, and another who was shot in the arm, blindfolded, beaten and held captive chained to a wall in a windowless basement for 19 days until his brothers put up the ransom money.

Afghan docs are some of the country's top earners, raking in $15-a-month salaries, marking them as prime ransom targets for kidnappers. (To put things in perspective, Afghanistan's nurses make 3000 rupees, or $7.50 CAD, and janitors 2000 rupees, says Canadian physician Raza M Khan.)

According to the NPR article, some of the Afghan doctors who still practise in the country have armed themselves.

Even from the beginning of the war in 2001, the state of southern Afghanistan's hospitals has deteriorated quickly, as The Guardian (UK) reported that year. These latest attacks threaten to drive the few remaining physicians from the country, raising questions about how effective NATO forces -- and its large Canadian contingent -- have been at shoring up security in Afghanistan.


Photo: Xinhua (Government of China). An Afghan doctor examines a patient in a ward of the Jamhuriat Hospital (Republic Hospital) in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 30, 2006.

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