Indeed, these humanitarians were acting out of love for this complex country and its people. They were not naive do-gooders: Tom Little, 61, an optometrist and the group's leader, spoke Dari and had worked in the country for 35 years, even under Soviet occupation and Taliban rule. Dan Terry, 64, had also spent decades in the country and spoke Dari; in Taliban times, he had sometimes provided saline solution to armed men with eye problems.
Christine Woo, 36, a British surgeon, quit a lucrative practice in order to treat Afghan women. Glen Lapp, a nurse from Lancaster, was following the long-standing Mennonite tradition of doing humanitarian service abroad.
So why were these good people killed?
Afghan officials speculated that the murders were committed by robbers, with the Taliban falsely claiming responsibility. Yet the aid workers were shot execution-style, which doesn't fit this explanation.
The murders took place in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, far from the Taliban heartland in the south. This is an area populated by ethnic Tajiks who fought fiercely against Taliban rule in the 1990s and would have been hospitable to foreign aid workers. Only recently has there been some Taliban infiltration into this area.
So what really happened in Badakhshan?
The details are still unclear. But Michael Semple, a savvy former European Union representative in Kabul with extensive knowledge of the Taliban, puts forward a credible thesis in the Financial Times. "Perhaps the best way to understand the politics of the killing of the [aid workers]," he writes, "is that it is a product of the social breakdown caused by two competing systems failing to control Afghanistan."
