International aid workers become targets "Caught in the crossfire, executed in cold blood or simply hounded out of violent regions, aid workers seem more under fire than ever before and their killers are rarely, if ever, brought to justice...In 2006, 85 aid workers — almost all of them local staff employed by international groups — were killed, the most since 2003, when numbers were swollen by a bomb attack on the United Nations' compound in Baghdad that killed 22 persons." Expanding world? The world becoming a more dangerous place? International organisations such as the Red Cross, médecins sans frontières, Oxfam and others can be understood as spearheads of "late" Western "soft power" (i. e. cultural). The fact that they appear to be encountering growing difficulties and outright hostility may be seen as an expression of growing international discohesion and as in accordance with the west's diminishing overall leadership.