Aid group Save the Children has announced that they are suspending operations in Afghanistan today, following a raid by ISIS gunmen which triggered a protracted and deadly siege with security forces.
Four gunmen dressed as police raided entered the building and attacked with a suicide bomb. Three members of staff and a soldier were reported killed, though most of the staff managed to hide in a safe room and survive.
Save the Children has struggled with its presence in central Asia in recent years, with the CIA having run a phony vaccination program under the organization’s name to mass collect DNA samples within Pakistan.
This both fueled a lot of threats against Save the Children, but ultimately to Pakistan expelling them, amid growing fears that their operations were all just CIA tricks. Hostility toward the group among Islamist factions, it seems, is alive and well.