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A HUGE HOWITZER sits at the entrance of Baghdad's Al-Yarmouk Hospital to guard it against looters. Some work areas of the 1,000-bed facility seem startlingly bare—except that there's no shortage of patients. One Iraqi man pleads for help to pay for an operation he cannot afford, and a middle-aged woman barges into the middle of a conversation, demanding to know why U.S. forces have failed to deliver peace and security.

The tension in the air and the overwhelming needs are typical of many medical centers in Iraq. But there's another factor in the mix that some predicted would make the situation even worse: workers from Samaritan's Purse, the humanitarian aid organization headed by evangelist Franklin Graham. This summer, its team of technicians has delivered several truckloads of medical supplies and installed medical equipment to replace what had been looted after the war broke out. The Americans also trained the Iraqi hospital staff.

Following Graham's description of Islam as a "very evil and wicked religion" shortly after September 11, 2001, some newspaper columns and TV talk shows speculated that field workers from Samaritan's Purse would be insensitive, and that their delivery of humanitarian aid would be just a veneer to cover efforts at conversion. Despite the controversy Graham's comments generated around the world, actual reporting on how the Samaritan's Purse staff is interacting with Muslim communities has been almost nonexistent. Have Samaritan's Purse's relief efforts indeed done more harm than good, as was so widely feared? Though Graham declined to comment, people on the ground did not hesitate.

Inside a small and nearly unfurnished office, the newly elected director of the Al-Yarmouk Hospital, Muslim Dr. Mahdi Jasim Moosa, says the religion of the staff or patients or aid workers simply doesn't matter. "What is wrong with a Christian? We are dealing with humanity—never mind [religion]," he says, adding that two of his surgeons are Iraqi Christians, and that Christians have been living in Iraq for centuries. As for Samaritan's Purse workers, he flips through a thick list of supplies and equipment they brought to outfit four operating rooms.

"They were very easy to work with," Moosa says. "Please, tell them we are so grateful. They said they would come back—and we hope they come back." Workers with Samaritan's Purse didn't preach or attempt to convert people, he adds.

Missing from almost all of the public debate about the Iraq mission is a look at the ministry's record for the past 18 months in Afghanistan, a situation similar to Iraq in many ways. If the presence of evangelical Christian aid workers in a war-torn Muslim country is a recipe for disaster, there should be signs of that.

Omar Ghafoorzai, a spokesman for the Afghan Embassy in Washington, said in April that he has "not heard any complaints" about the Samaritan's Purse operation in his country. "From what we hear, they are doing a good job."

The group runs "the best equipped hospital in all of northern Afghanistan," he added, and the situation is apparently so stable that the Samaritan's Purse director of operations for the country agreed to speak to CHRISTIANITY TODAY about his work there, his faith, and his evolving feelings about his Muslim neighbors.

Samaritan's Purse began working in Afghanistan in January 2002, and Ben Cuthbert moved to Kholm in July of that year. Most aid groups are based in Kabul or other larger cities, but Kholm is an isolated town on the edge of the Hindu Kush Mountains in northern Afghanistan. There are no international peacekeepers stationed there, so Cuthbert and his staff rely on the local community for security.

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November 2003, Vol. 47, No. 11