The Afghanistan government has suspended the activities of two Western aid groups on suspicion of proselytising, an official said on Monday.
World Church Services (WCS) and the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) were ordered to stop work as part of a government probe into the activities of aid groups after a private Afghan TV channel accused them of trying to convert Muslims — an offence that carries the death penalty in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the ministry of economy, Sediq Amarkhil, said the government had no evidence against either organisation, which started operating in the country during the rule of the Islamist Taliban, in the late 1990s. As planning ministry in those days, the economy ministry oversaw NGO affairs. “If proven after the investigation that they were involved in conversion activities, they will be introduced to the judicial authorities,” he said. “If not then they can resume their operations.” Hundreds of foreign and Afghan non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are involved in essential humanitarian projects across the country — helping out in areas ranging from health to education — but some Afghans remain sceptical of their motives and suspect they could be a front for proselytising.
Officials from one suspended group declined to comment, while there was nobody immediately available from the other. Proselytising is strictly forbidden in the Quran and illegal in deeply conservative Islamic Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of Western forces are fighting resurgent Taliban Islamists who want the expulsion of the troops as part of a holy war.
There have been bloody protests in the past in Afghanistan against the publication of images of Prophet Mohammed in Western media. Weeks before their ouster in a US-led invasion, the Taliban detained several Western aid workers after accusing them of proselytising.