Iraq: who will Save the Children?

This week Save the Children became the last of the major British charities to leave Iraq. The charity said that the security situation in the country made it impossible either to protect their staff or to reach the children they wanted to help.

Save the Children announced its intention, and the reason for the decision, in June last year:

The decision is linked to the deteriorating security situation in large areas of the country — which makes it increasingly difficult for our work to achieve significant impact for children. The insecurity affects our ability to monitor our work effectively and maintain organisational standards: it also means that we are unable to extend our development programme from the North of the country, to the Centre and South as we had planned. (source: Save the Children)

That the charity has stuck to the withdrawal timetable announced then rather gives the lie to Tony Blair’s claim last week that British troop levels in Iraq are to be reduced because initiatives like Operation Sinbad, aimed at allowing Iraqis to take the lead in frontline security in Basra, have been successful.