IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the forgotten province of Nurestan
8 February 2005


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]

BARG-E-MATAL, 8 February (IRIN) - Nurestan is one of Afghanistan's most
isolated and poverty-stricken provinces. The presidential election,
foreign aid and the optimism of Kabul seem a world away. Just getting
there from the capital in winter requires stamina, commitment and a
degree of luck. It's a two day drive from the eastern province of
Nangarhar through snow capped mountains and several hours on foot
battling through more than a metre of snow.

When you finally reach the tiny provincial capital, close to the
Pakistani frontier, the vista is bleak. Local authority offices are
closed and there is no sign of any aid agencies. There are gutted houses
and bombed bridges everywhere. An empty health clinic is serving as
winter quarters for someone's private militia. The people look exhausted
with thin, colourless faces.

In Barg-e-Matal and Kamdish, the two most troubled eastern districts of
Nurestan, there is no sign of any government activity anywhere. In
central Barg-e-Matal, Karim, a 40-year-old aid worker, stood behind the
closed door of the Afghan Aid NGO's office that was recently burned down
by insurgents.

"Everyone here is at risk, [both] aid workers and government officials,
from insurgents and people from local disputes," he said.

Nurestan, meaning 'land of light', lies on the southern slopes of the
Hindu Kush. The inhospitable region used to be known as Kafiristan, or
'land of the infidels' because it was inhabited by an ethnically
distinctive people, who practiced animism until their forcible
conversion to Islam at the end of the nineteenth century. Nurestanis
live in isolated villages in deep, narrow mountain valleys, surviving on
subsistence agriculture, growing wheat, fruit and raising livestock,
mainly goats.

The province was the scene of some of the heaviest guerrilla fighting
during the 1979-89 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Like
many rural areas in the south and east, the province can be a dangerous
place for aid workers, the army and government agencies.

The area is used as a route into equally isolated regions of the North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) on the Pakistani side of the open border,
by Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants. Several government officials including
two soldiers and aid workers on the way to the valley have been killed
in insurgent attacks since the beginning of the year.

The lack of security or central government presence means development
aid has all but dried up. The last operational NGO in the troubled
valley, Afghan Aid, ceased work after an armed attack on its sub-office.
Karim said the NGO had been the only source of employment in the area
and that more than fifty people have lost their jobs while several
public utility projects have been abandoned before completion.

LACK OF GOVERNMENT PRESENCE

"We don't blame aid NGOs but we blame the government. They never come to
see what is happening and provide security for aid delivery," he said.
He added that even the US-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs)
stationed in neighbouring Konar province did not visit the area.

"People need a government presence here. This is the most important
thing," Karim noted.

A local resident who declined to be named told IRIN that extremist
religious elements continue to dominate the entire province.

"The top people here are people from conservative groups or linked to
those people who don't want aid, stability and peace," he said.

IRIN eventually found the district administrator, Sarmalem Kamdishi,
cowering in a bunker on the outskirts of Barg-e-Matal. After several
attempts to get him to speak, he said the security situation in the area
was "tense" and that journalists were not welcome in the province.

"You find all sorts of problems here. We have very tense local disputes
and very high rates of attack by insurgents. Poverty, health issues and
lack of roads are major humanitarian concerns," Kamdishi told IRIN
nervously. He said NGOs wanted to help but no one could guarantee
security.

"As a district administrator I do not feel secure even though I am from
this locality," he said. Kamdishi said rival tribes often fire missiles
at each other or plant landmines on agricultural land or on what pass
for roads in the region. He pointed to the Kushtuz Valley, where tens of
people were killed and several hundred displaced after their houses were
completely burned by armed men in January.

"All the problems here originate from local disputes. Every year many
people are killed or injured due to missile attacks or land mine plots
as a result of local disputes," he said. The district administrator
added that the absence of police, judges or public institutions means
that the law rests with traditional tribal councils which are unelected,
uninformed and very conservative in outlook. He added that eastern
Nurestan has several connecting border points with the neighbouring
Pakistan and extremists easily cross the border after launching attacks
in Afghanistan.

"We need a strong border police force to help us prevent this
happening," he said.

WIDESPREAD POVERTY

People IRIN interviewed said poverty and health problems are their main
concerns. Tuberculosis, malnutrition, maternal and infant mortality are
common. As a result of poor health awareness and a lack of adequate
nourishing food, almost every household has malnourished members,
usually the women and children.

The nearest health clinic is in the town of Chitral, two days walk
across the border into Pakistan. There isn't a doctor in the entire
province according to Zulaikha, a 45-year-old midwife. She and two male
tuberculosis technicians are the only health workers serving nearly
100,000 residents in the two populated districts. There is a single
clinic in Bargmatal, where the sign above the rusty door says "Funded by
the World Bank and CARE" but the building has been used as a government
office and home to bodyguards protecting the district administrator.

"This is a health clinic but neither Kabul nor any aid agency have been
able to send health workers and run the clinic. Therefore, it is used as
the district administration office," Zulaikha explained. Zulaikha
graduated from high school and later attended a midwifery training
course in Pakistan. She is the only literate women in the valley and a
ray of hope for many mothers and children in the valley. She regularly
walks for hours to visit patients and often has to deliver babies and
cope with birthing problems in the most primitive of conditions.

"Unfortunately, often mothers die before I can reach them. Because of
the lack of roads I have to walk or go by horse," she said. "I know
which medicine is needed for certain health problems. But the problem is
medicine takes at least 48 hours to bring from Konar or Pakistan," said
Zulaikha.

RULE OF THE GUN

Abdul Karim, a local lawyer in Barg-e- Matal, sat in his empty office
said he had not processed any criminal cases since he was appointed by
Kabul early in 2002. But he pointed out that this did not mean crime
rates were low, simply that he and eleven other civil servants did not
have the means to try people in a part of the country where mass
killings, extortion, drug trafficking and forced displacement are
widespread.

"Government means nothing here because local militias are stronger than
the police," Karim said, adding that people tend to rely on tribal
councils to solve disputes rather than referring them to the local
administration.

"The provincial authorities were not able to prosecute several criminals
many of them big killers, so now we have lost the trust of people" he
added. According to local officials there are just thirty police
officers serving the Bargmatal/Kamdish region.valley and they are
without vehicles, logistical support, communications equipment or even a
police station to operate from.

PRESSURE FROM RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES

Lack of government and law has meant conservative religious leaders hold
sway in most of Nurestan. Shah Zaman, a local shopkeeper, was forced to
burn his television and a CD player by local clerics. There is no local
TV or radio and so Zaman had dared to operate a clandestine video rental
scheme to provide some entertainment for his customers.

"The religious people here said it was against Islam and I had to burn
them in front of the public," he told IRIN. A local teacher who declined
to be named said as a result of pressure by religious elders the local
high school was forced to turn girls away and transform into a Madrassa,
or religious school.

"This [school] used to be a place of learning and hope. Now we have been
forced to hand it over to the fundamentalists. You cannot talk of Afghan
progress here," he whispered sadly.


IRIN-Asia
Tel: +90 312 454 1177
Fax: +90 312 495 4166
Email: IrinAsia@IRINnews.org

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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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