U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 12
22 - 28 June 2001


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Aid community sets up camps in north
AFGHANISTAN: UN asked to vacate Kabul political office
AFGHANISTAN: Taliban urged to improve working conditions for UN staff
AFGHANISTAN: IRIN interview with UNDCP representative
PAKISTAN: Jalozai screening negotiations continue
PAKISTAN: Eviction deadline for Nasir Bagh approaches
PAKISTAN: Death sentence on editor brings strong condemnation
PAKISTAN: Nearly 2,000 arrests in arms recovery campaign
PAKISTAN: Islamabad objects to UN AIDS draft
UZBEKISTAN: HIV on the rise
IRAN: UK grants US $820,000 for health and education

AFGHANISTAN: Aid community sets up camps in north

The humanitarian situation in northern Afghanistan has reached crisis
point, prompting the UN and the wider aid community to step up assistance
to existing displacement camps, as well as to set up new ones in the
northern region. Previously, the move to establish large camps for
internally displaced people (IDPs) was discouraged by the humanitarian
community in a bid to keep Afghans near their place of origin. However,
with an estimated 150,000 displaced in the north, camps were deemed
necessary. Many IDPs have been hosted by local families. With settlements
scattered over large areas, any formal assistance has been difficult. "It
was initially determined that it was best to leave people in their homes,
where it was felt they could best survive," Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman
for the UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in
Afghanistan, told IRIN on 22 June. "Now, however, there has been more
population movement, and the local people who have been helping the
displaced have become more impoverished and their assets depleted," Bunker
said. While camps were not the "ideal option", from a logistical point of
view, they made humanitarian assistance easier, Antonio Donini, UN Deputy
Coordinator, told IRIN. [For complete details see:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/asia/countrystories/afghanistan/20010622.phtml]

AFGHANISTAN: UN asked to vacate Kabul political office

Taliban officials have asked the United Nations political office to
Afghanistan to vacate its office in the capital Kabul, a UN official in
the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, confirmed to IRIN on Thursday. While the
Taliban have cited 15 July as the deadline for vacating the property, the
UN official said: "We are currently looking for alternative premises and
we hope the Taliban authorities will grant us sufficient time to make the
move."  The office, also known as the United Nations Special Mission to
Afghanistan (UNSMA), does not view the move as politically motivated. UN
special envoy for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, who is working to broker
a political solution between the Taliban and opposition Northern Alliance,
said the Taliban had assured him that the move had no political motives.
In May, the Taliban closed the UN mission's offices in the cities of
Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Jalalabad in protest against the world
body's sanctions on them.

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban urged to improve working conditions for UN staff

Welcoming the release of four Afghan aid workers on Saturday, UN
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kenzo Oshima called upon
Taliban authorities who had detained the staff to improve in "real terms"
the working environment for humanitarian personnel in Afghanistan. In a
statement released that day, Oshima said he had been relieved to learn
that the four women working with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the
capital, Kabul, had been released from custody after a three-day
detention. The statement went on to say that Oshima "is concerned,
however, about the increasing harassment and abuse of Afghan national
staff of the UN and non-governmental community, and restrictions against
programmes which attempt to help women as well as men".  With the
humanitarian community reaching more than four million people in the
country - one of the world's worst crisis areas - the statement stressed
that the recent pattern of harassment represented a general narrowing of
space available for humanitarian agencies to operate effectively, and
might limit the ability of aid agencies to continue helping Afghans in
need.

AFGHANISTAN: IRIN interview with UNDCP representative

Since 1990, Afghanistan has been firmly established as the main source of
illicit poppy in the world. More specifically, it had become the source of
79 percent of global illicit opium production in 1999, with a record
harvest of 4,600 mt. Today, the opium poppy has been effectively
eliminated in those parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, who
imposed a ban on its cultivation, an act in which the United Nations
Office for Drug Control (UNDCP) was particularly instrumental. However,
the successful ban on poppy cultivation is only one part of the equation
in the war against drugs. In an interview with IRIN, UNDCP representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bernard Frahi, highlighted what still needed
to be done to sustain the ban, and why immediate action by the
international community had never been so important. [For full details
see:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/asia/countrystories/afghanistan/20010625a.phtml]

PAKISTAN: Jalozai screening negotiations continue

Screening of an estimated 59,000 Afghans at the makeshift refugee camp at
Jalozai in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) has yet to begin
as UN and Pakistani officials continue to wrangle over the final draft of
the agreement. UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler told IRIN on Thursday that
the draft had just been received from the government, and UNHCR was
currently reviewing the amended text. Asked when he expected the agreement
to be concluded, he said they were not yet at a stage to say when.
However, he added: "Once a mutually acceptable text is found, we are ready
to begin screening within an agreed upon 14-day period." The objective of
the screening is to distinguish legal refugees from economic migrants.
Some 100 teams have been assigned the task once the agreement is reached.
According to the Pakistani daily 'The News' on Sunday, government sources
said the UN wanted to restrict screening to Jalozai, while the government
wanted to extend it to the entire province.  "We want that Jalozai should
be followed by Nasir Bagh camp and others in the province," the source is
reported to have said.

PAKISTAN: Eviction deadline for Nasir Bagh approaches

Government officials in Pakistan's NWFP remain determined that Saturday's
deadline for 120,000 Afghans to vacate the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in
Peshawar be met as planned. "There has been no change in the order, and
the deadline remains the same," the head of the Commission for Afghan
Refugees (CAR), Naeem Khan, told IRIN on Tuesday. The news follows the
invalidation of an agreement reached earlier this month which would have
allowed for a three-month extension. According to Khan, the 11 June
agreement between the CAR and camp representatives was rejected by NWFP
Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah. Not only did he reject the agreement,
which would have given residents a respite until October, but he ordered
the suspension of the official who signed the document. [For complete
details see:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/asia/countrystories/pakistan/20010626.phtml]

PAKISTAN: Death sentence on editor brings strong condemnation

A court in Pakistan sentenced the editor of the English daily 'Frontier
Post' to death on drug charges on Wednesday. Rehmat Shah Afridi, who owned
and operated the Peshawar-based paper, well known for its independent
stance, was arrested two years ago following the seizure of cannabis worth
US $800,000 by anti-narcotics agents from his car. According to the
ruling, Afridi was running a drug ring with two others, who were also
found guilty, but sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In a letter to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, Reporters
Sans Frontieres (RSF), a Paris-based watchdog group for journalists,
condemned the sentence and called upon the new president to intervene with
judicial authorities in the western city of Lahore, where the court
decision was made.  RSF called for the rights of the defence and
international legal standards to be respected during the appeal hearing
and asked if in the event of the sentence being confirmed on appeal, the
president would issue a pardon. After more than two years of preventive
detention and following an unfair trial, this death sentence confirmed
that influential people would like to definitively gag this critical
editor, RSF secretary-general Robert Menard wrote.

PAKISTAN: Nearly 2,000 arrests in arms recovery campaign

Pakistani authorities have arrested 1,908 people for non-compliance so far
in its crackdown to recover illicit arms which began on 21 June. According
to the Pakistani daily 'The News' on Wednesday, authorities in the western
province of Baluchistan were hardly putting in any effort to make the
drive a success. So far, the provincial administration had arrested only
one person and recovered eight weapons. Other provinces are said to be
doing well. During the first five days of the crackdown, 858 people were
arrested in Punjab Province, 542 in Sindh and 507 in the NWFP, the report
said. The crackdown follows a government deadline for the voluntary
surrender of illicit arms on 20 June.

PAKISTAN: Islamabad objects to UN AIDS draft

Following complaints from Pakistan and other Islamic nations, an
international UN AIDS conference struck out a reference to the groups most
vulnerable to the killer disease from the Declaration of Commitment to
combat AIDS, a Reuters report said on Thursday. Officials from Pakistan,
Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Iran objected on religious and cultural grounds to
any reference being made to homosexuals, prostitutes and drug-users. The
189-member General Assembly approved the declaration without naming the
groups.  At least 3,000 representatives from governments, drug companies
and AIDS victims took part in the three-day conference, held at UN
headquarters in New York. During the session, UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan urged nations to take concrete steps and increase spending to combat
AIDS.

UZBEKISTAN: HIV on the rise

An Uzbek AIDS official on Tuesday warned that the actual number of HIV
cases was significantly higher than shown by official figures. "There are
302 officially registered cases of HIV infection in Uzbekistan today, an
increase of 72 in the first six months of this year," Bulat Kumaev,
project manager for HIV and AIDS prevention in the Uzbek capital,
Tashkent, told IRIN.  "Despite a low prevalence for HIV in the country, we
are seeing a rapidly increasing tendency for growth," he warned.

According to Kumaev, from 1988 to 1999, there had been 76 cases of HIV. In
2000, that figure rose to 230. Some studies indicate that one third of all
intravenous drug users in the country are HIV infected. Meanwhile, AFP
reported on Wednesday that the number of addicts in the former Soviet
republic had nearly doubled over the past year, amid an increase in heroin
smuggling from Afghanistan. Some 26,000 drug addicts are registered in the
Central Asian state today compared to 14,000 last year, the deputy head of
Uzbekistan's national centre for drug control, Kamol Dusmetov, said. The
report added that the country had seen a sharp increase in the number of
heroin seizures - from 325 kilogrammes in 1999 to 675 kilogrammes in 2000.
    
IRAN: UK grants US $820,000 for health and education

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iran announced on Monday
that it had received two grants totalling US $820,000 from the United
Kingdom government's Department for International Development (DFID)
towards supporting health and education services for Afghan refugees in
Iran. "This is a key contribution from the British government," the
programme officer for UNICEF in the capital Tehran, Luc Chauvin, told IRIN
on Wednesday. "We see it as a sign of trust in what UNICEF is already
doing for Afghan refugees in Iran, mainly with DFID funding," he added.
These two new grants will enable UNICEF to continue and increase its
support for Afghan refugees living in Iran, as well as for their immediate
host families. According to Chauvin, some 190,000 people in three
provinces, half of them Afghans, will continue to be provided with basic
health care under the move, while UNICEF's education programme will be
expanded to cover 12,000 Afghan women, doubling the number reached the
previous year. DFID is UNICEF's main donor in Iran, having contributed
over US $2 million since last year.

Islamabad, 28 June 2001


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