Ambush of US worker underlines perils of policy

Danger hobbles effort to aid Pakistani tribes

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For the six months he helped execute the "hearts and minds" outreach of the United States in one of the most dangerous front lines of the American battle against militants, Stephen D. Vance had to balance a strategic mission with nearly daily concerns about his personal safety.

Yesterday, as he was arriving at his office in a residential area of turbulent Peshawar, he was killed by gunmen, becoming the most prominent casualty of an increasingly troubled effort to use economic aid to undercut the hold of Al Qaeda and the Taliban on Pakistan's tribal areas.

The assassination of Vance, 52, and his Pakistani driver highlighted the problems inherent in the effort to bring development to one of the most underdeveloped and volatile regions of the world. It also raised new doubts about American efforts to undermine a major adversary in a stronghold that has proven largely impervious to political and military pressure.

The US Agency for International Development is spending $750 million to support economic development in the tribal areas of Pakistan. But congressional critics of the program have already questioned how the spending could be effective, or even monitored, if Americans could not visit the areas where the projects were under way.

"He was worried about his security, he was always talking security with me," said Khalid Aziz, a Pakistani development analyst, who worked with Vance since his arrival earlier this year.

A contractor hired by the development agency, Vance was forbidden for safety reasons to travel to the nearby hostile tribal region that was the focus of his efforts, colleagues said. He was confined to Peshawar, where he lived with his wife and five children, ages 1 to 13. But he traveled in an unarmored car, unlike American diplomats working at the US consulate in Peshawar, who are required to be driven in bulletproof vehicles.

Lynne Tracy, the top US diplomat in Peshawar, narrowly escaped an attack in August as she was driven in an armored vehicle in the same neighborhood, called University Town.

Colleagues described Vance as committed to bringing American aid to trouble spots, yet they said he felt frustrated that he could not go out and meet people.

Vance's death comes as a vigorous debate is under way in Washington over whether more American military effort or more American development assistance - or more of both - is necessary to combat the growing power of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal belt.

Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the author of legislation that calls for $15 billion in civilian aid over the next decade for Pakistan, a dramatic increase over the current level.

Despite the questions about the effectiveness of the aid to the tribal region, there was a feeling in Washington that such assistance had to be tried, said Craig Cohen, the author of a study on US and Pakistan relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"There is a sentiment that we need to be out there, but we know its danger," said Cohen. "There's a belief we want to do something more than military. We need an aid presence."

Vance, who had a degrees from the University of California and the University of Paris, worked in what is known in the international aid trade as some of the toughest hell holes. He was a project manager for USAID in Zaire from 1986 to 1991. He went to East Timor after the place was ravaged by the Indonesian military in 1999.

But he found his metier in Mongolia, where from 1999 to 2002 he established microfinancial services for the rural poor under the auspices of the nongovernmental group Mercy Corps. "He was a visionary," said Joy Portella of Mercy Corps.