The United Nations announced today that it will be removing 600 foreign staffers from Afghanistan, more than half of the total number in the nation, in response to last week’s attack against UN workers in Kabul.

The mission chief Kai Eide cautioned that there was no guarantee that the UN would remain into Afghanistan into the future, and said that while the intention right now is to eventually return those staffs, they might ultimately withdraw from Afghanistan entirely.

The move comes just days after the UN announced that it was withdrawing entirely from Northwestern Pakistan, citing the growing threat of violence to staffers there.

It seems that the United Nations is very much re-examining its role in Central Asia, after nearly a decade of presence backing the US invasion of the region, and little developmental progress to show for it.

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