Live Aid

David Douglas Duncan / Photography Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
The good doctor Tom Little was slain in August

Bad news is so relentless in Afghanistan that the small expatriate community of diplomats, aid workers and journalists keeps its spirits up by focusing on what little is positive. Even when friends are kidnapped, as they often have been of late, people try to remain optimistic. They curb their fear and remind one another that kidnappings in Afghanistan usually end with the hostage safely released. The defensive instinct is to hope, because not to do so would make the dangers of life in Afghanistan too hard to bear. Thus, when British aid worker Linda Norgrove was kidnapped last month in Afghanistan's hinterland, the expectation was that she would eventually return home unharmed. (I was based in Kabul until this summer and still share the feelings of friends who are there.) When Norgrove was killed in a failed rescue attempt on Oct. 8, the blow was doubly raw: the world lost a dedicated, caring woman committed to improving the lives of Afghans and the community in which she lived lost hope.

The death of Norgrove, who was 36, came just as the wounds over a recent brutal slaying were beginning to heal. That was the August massacre of 10 medical aid workers, including American Dr. Tom Little, a 61-year-old optometrist who had spent the past 44 years delivering medical succor to ailing Afghans, and Briton Dr. Karen Woo, an ebullient 36-year-old physician who had fallen in love with the country and its people.

These deaths, along with those of the five Doctors Without Borders workers killed in 2004 and the four International Rescue Committee activists ambushed by the Taliban in 2008, were rendered more profane by the fact that the victims did not take sides. They were in rural areas, helping needy Afghans regardless of their political leanings or their insurgent affiliations. But no matter how painful or shocking the deaths have been, they must not provoke a security response that mandates conducting aid from walled-off compounds via remote control. To do so would undermine what Norgrove, Little and Woo, along with scores of their Afghan colleagues, were trying to achieve.

The Taliban's insurgent campaign has evolved from a disruptive force into one competing with NGOs, the Afghan government and the international community for Afghan hearts and minds. Foreign development projects and medical missions are so threatening to the Taliban's stake on leadership that they will kill anyone who might supplant their ascendancy. For that reason, Norgrove's death (she may have been killed by a grenade thrown by her would-be rescuers rather than by her kidnappers) is unlikely to be the last of a foreign aid worker in a far-flung corner of Afghanistan.

Yet it is vital that people like Norgrove continue to go into the field. While quick-impact projects say a bridge, a culvert or a schoolhouse can usually be conducted by proxy using local construction firms, they can do as much harm as good. A bridge may benefit the family of a hated power broker, the culvert could be built by a corrupt subcontractor and the school constructed too far from village homes for girls to walk. Preventing such abuses and mistakes requires a neutral, trusted and knowledgeable monitor. Norgrove spoke fluent Dari, dressed in local clothes and, even though she was not Muslim, wore a headscarf because it smoothed her working relationship with locals. Her commitment to working directly with the people she served made her both an effective administrator of aid and a target. It was a chance she was willing to take.

Western donors like the instant gratification of a completed medical clinic, but that clinic will do little good for a community lacking competent doctors and nurses. While farming projects that promote pomegranates over opium poppies appeal to international funders, they bring little long-term stability if they are not accompanied by access to markets. Norgrove, who worked on U.N.-sponsored alternative-livelihood programs for three years before moving to a USAID-affiliated program, understood the need for a holistic approach. Asking communities to change centuries-old business relationships, like the one between moneylender and opium farmer, takes time and, above all, trust. Why would a farmer risk switching from a lucrative, albeit illegal, crop if he feared he couldn't pay back his debts by selling grapes in an already saturated market? An aid worker close to the community understands such fears and can design better solutions.

Norgrove, Little and Woo knew of the dangers of abandoning the security of fortified compounds and armored vehicles. They believed that the benefits of doing so far outweighed the potential threats. Their friends say they would be appalled if their deaths were to force other aid workers to stay behind the barricades. Risks are an inherent part of doing aid work in a war zone. They should not be taken needlessly. But if an aversion to risk undermines the effectiveness of aid, the sacrifice of all those who have died will be in vain.

This article originally appeared in the October 25, 2010 issue of TIME Asia.