Several weeks of worse than usual attacks against targets inside the Afghan capital city of Kabul have several major aid agencies announcing that they are planning temporary withdrawals from the country.

How temporary remains to be seen, but most believe they’ll be back at some point, when the latest surge in violence moves back out of the capital, where most of them are based.

Afghanistan has seen nearly as many aid workers killed this year as the whole rest of the world combined, and the perception of these groups working hand-in-hand with the NATO occupation has made them a target in a way they wouldn’t be in most warzones.

The problem of suspicion toward aid workers is compounded in Afghanistan by the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011, as it was revealed that his death was the result of a CIA plot in which they pretended to be vaccination workers in neighboring Pakistan to collect the DNA of locals and test them for potential terrorists.