U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for Central Asia

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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 33
16 - 23 November 2001


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Factions agree to meet in Germany
AFGHANISTAN: Concern over fate of Konduz fighters
AFGHANISTAN: Need to end impunity for war crimes
AFGHANISTAN: International aid workers begin returning
AFGHANISTAN: Women view opposition promises with caution
AFGHANISTAN: Unexploded bombs posing threat
IRAN: Spontaneous repatriation of Afghans continues
PAKISTAN: Relocation of Jalozai refugees begins

AFGHANISTAN: Factions agree to meet in Germany

The UN's confirmation that a meeting to bring together various Afghan
groups and other interested parties would be held in Germany to pave the
way for a broad-based government and peace has been welcomed by Afghans in
Pakistan and Europe. "The participants will gather over the weekend, and
the meeting will start hopefully on Monday," Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN
Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, told reporters
in New York on Tuesday.

He said the meeting would be attended by the Northern Alliance, which
comprises several groupings united in fighting the Taliban,
representatives of the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, and other Afghans
interested in being involved in the political process.

The UN Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan,
Francesc Vendrell, who has been in the Afghan capital, Kabul, since 17
November, managed to secure the agreement of the various Afghan factions
to attend. The discussions were conducted in the context of Brahimi's
five-point formula, presented to the UN Security Council on 14 October.

The formula provides for the convening a conference of Afghan parties,
electing a provisional council, and proposing a transitional
administration to be in place for no longer than two years, and to be
endorsed by a Loya Jirgah (supreme national tribal assembly). According to
the plan, a second Loya Jirgah should later be convened, which would
approve the constitution and create the government of Afghanistan. [Full
report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15551]

AFGHANISTAN: Concern over fate of Konduz fighters

Following their retreat from the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, about
20,000 Afghan Taliban fighters and up to 10,000 Pakistanis, Arabs,
Chechens, Central Asians, Chinese and other foreign supporters are holed
up in the city of Konduz, the last Taliban stronghold in northern
Afghanistan.

Although the UN lacks the means to meet a Taliban request for a
UN-mediated surrender in Konduz, the world body, along with the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Human Rights Watch
(HRW), has called on the Northern Alliance to respect its obligations
under international law. "What we are trying to do is to avert a blood
bath," an HRW spokesman in Pakistan, Sam Zia-Zarifi, told IRIN on
Wednesday. "The United States must, as the main supporting player,
pressurise the Northern Alliance that if these people surrender, they be
considered prisoners-of-war and treated accordingly," he said.

According to HRW, since surrounding the Taliban and their foreign allies
in Konduz, senior Northern Alliance leaders, while encouraging the
surrender of Afghan Taliban troops, have repeatedly stated that they will
not accept surrender offers from the foreign fighters, preferring to kill
them instead. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15591] At dusk on Thursday,
the alliance launched a full-scale tank and artillery attack on the city,
supported by US aircraft, the BBC reported. Fighting was still in progress
on Friday morning.

AFGHANISTAN: Need to end impunity for war crimes

With emerging reports of massacres in Mazar-e Sharif, debate persists over
whether warlords and fighters should be held accountable for war crimes
committed. The views of some Afghans differ, and a group outside the
country has been campaigning for those responsible for human rights abuses
to be put on trial. For example, Mirza Alam Hamidi, originally from
Khowst, the capital of Paktia Province in eastern Afghanistan, now living
in Holland, told IRIN there was a great need for those involved in human
rights abuses to be brought to justice. He said there should be a new
government in Afghanistan made up of people who "don't have blood on their
hands".

Abdul Samad Hamid, aged 71, a former vice chancellor of Kabul University,
now living in Germany, told IRIN that outside interference in the past
from countries like the former Soviet Union, Pakistan and Iran had
perpetuated human rights abuses in Afghanistan. "The human rights of
Afghans were violated by external forces," he said. "Now that Afghanistan
is going to belong back to Afghans they will uphold the human rights of
all the people." Hamid said that, if implemented in its true spirit, Islam
would guarantee basic human rights in Afghanistan.

Amnesty International (AI) this week also expressed concern over human
rights. "The rapid advance of the Northern Alliance into Kabul without any
international arrangements to safeguard civilians is a clear indication
that the military agenda has overtaken human rights concerns," AI
Secretary-General Irene Khan said. Adding that human rights abuses
committed by the Taliban could not be used to justify new abuses committed
by the Northern Alliance, Khan said the killings "must stop". [Full report
at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14737]

AFGHANISTAN: International aid workers begin returning

The UN told IRIN on 16 November it would send international staff members
back into Afghanistan as soon as possible. "We are watching the situation
closely," a UN spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker, in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, told IRIN. "Pending conducive security conditions, we are
looking to get our international staff in as soon as possible," she
explained.

Bunker's comments follow a positive security assessment in the
northeastern Badakhshan Province, where Northern Alliance control is
strongest, concluding that the situation was favourable for the return of
international staff. As of 15 November, five foreign UN staff members had
returned to Faizabad (Feyzabad) including members of the World Food
Programme (WFP), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). One
international staff member from the International Organisation for
Migration (IOM) was also expected, and more staff were expected to follow.
[Full report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14741]

However, insecurity in many parts of the country still poses a threat to
ongoing humanitarian operations. Chris Johnson, director of the Strategic
Monitoring Unit in Islamabad, told IRIN on Monday that the security
situation was as bad, if not worse, than a few weeks ago. "Afghans in
Peshawar have reported that security along the Jalalabad road is
appalling. This is a main access route into the country. If security is
really this bad, then I cannot see how access [to vulnerable groups] is
improving," she said. Johnson said not only expatriates were at risk.
"Even Afghans are afraid of travelling in now. There's a high level of
anarchy, and the amount of looting going on is far worse than when we saw
the Taliban flee," she said.

Despite the insecurity, significant efforts are being made to resume
humanitarian operations. WFP successfully resumed its trucking operations
from Pakistan to Jalalabad on Monday, after a lull of one week. Khaled
Mansour, a WFP spokesman, said the food agency planned to send 48 trucks
carrying more than 1,300 mt of wheat to Kabul, sufficient to feed 160,000
people for a month. Deliveries to the northern provinces and the "hunger
belt" were also under way. Moreover, 18 female Afghan staff members -
formerly banned from working by the Taliban - had reported for work on
Monday, said Mansour. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15572]

AFGHANISTAN: Women view opposition promises with caution

Statements by Northern Alliance leaders to the effect that women would be
able to participate fully in their homeland were met with caution by
Afghan women's groups on Thursday. "They are talking about women and their
situation, but we should note that women's lives were also destroyed under
the Northern Alliance," Fatana Gilani, the president of the Afghan Women's
Council based in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), told IRIN
on Thursday.

The reaction follows an announcement on Wednesday by the UN Coordinator
for Afghanistan, Michael Sackett, following talks with the Afghan foreign
minister, Abdullah Abdullah, in Kabul. "Dr Abdullah welcomed Afghan
women's full participation in society, and confirmed to us that there was
now no restriction on the employment of Afghan women by UN agencies,"
Sackett told reporters in Islamabad.

As for women participating in a new Afghan government, Gilani said not
enough was being done to ensure that they were involved in initial talks
on the political future of Afghanistan. "We have heard that one women will
be taking part in the talks in Germany next week, but this is not enough.
We should have equal representation," she said. Gilani's views were echoed
by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

"The Northern Alliance have said this to deceive the west," Sahar Saba,
the spokeswoman for RAWA Islamabad, told IRIN on Thursday. "We don't
believe they will carry out their word." Saba said Abdullah did not have
the right to talk about women's rights when he himself was part of the
Northern Alliance and "had blood on his hands" of all the Afghans killed
and tortured over the years. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15806; also see
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15612]

AFGHANISTAN: Unexploded bombs posing threat

Some 5,000 unexploded and highly volatile cluster bomblets may have
littered Afghanistan as a result of the US bombing. This unexploded
ordnance poses a grave threat to civilians, according to HRW. Sam
Zia-Zarifi of HRW told IRIN in Islamabad on 16 November they had evidence
of civilian casualties in Morgai village near the eastern Afghan city of
Jalalabad. "Two civilians, now admitted in Peshawar, the provincial
capital of Pakistan's NWFP, received injuries after they touched a cluster
bomblet," he said.

He asserted that the fluid situation in Afghanistan demanded an immediate
discontinuation of cluster bombs, as they posed a greater threat than the
military advantage they were expected to deliver. "Although international
humanitarian law does not prohibit the use of cluster bombs, given the
hazards they pose to civilians, this [in] itself calls for an immediate
halt," he added.

Particularly disturbing was the fact that these bombs were sometimes
dropped with parachutes, which were coloured bright yellow and could
attract children, he added. Moreover, the colour of the bomblets and food
packs that were airdropped by the US were not easily distinguishable from
each other, and the US has said it would change the colour. [Full report
at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14791]

IRAN: Spontaneous repatriation of Afghans continues

Afghan refugees in Iran are continuing to return to their country this
week, a representative of the office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the northeastern Iranian city of
Mashhad told IRIN on Monday. The news followed an announcement that more
than 1,300 Afghans had gone home through Dogharun, Iran's main border
crossing-point with Afghanistan, on Thursday, in the largest single-day
return since August.

"People want to go and see for themselves what is happening," the agency's
spokesman, Mohammad Nouri, said. "Prior to the fall of [the western city
of] Herat, people were returning to rejoin their families in hardship
situations. However, people are now returning in a far happier spirit."

Nouri explained that before the initiation of US-led retaliatory strikes
on Taliban-held positions throughout the country on 7 October, about 4,000
people a week had been spontaneously returning to the country from Iran.
Although people continued to return, the number doing so had dropped by
half of that figure for a period of about two weeks, he said.

Asked to comment on the significance of the phenomenon, he said it was too
early to be certain, but that if the situation inside Afghanistan
stabilised, a large-scale repatriation programme could follow. [Full
report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15078]

On Wednesday, Nouri told IRIN that although the Iranian side of the border
remained closed at Dogharun, the Northern Alliance had opened the Afghan
side after taking control of the area from the Taliban. He went on to say
that an aid convoy, comprising 11 trucks from Iran's Red Crescent Society
and four from UNHCR, had passed into Afghanistan that afternoon, the
second such convoy in less than a month.

The relief aid included 2,000 family size plastic sheetings and 10,000
blankets. Bound for the western Afghan city of Herat, the material would
be distributed to some of the 250,000 to 300,000 internally displaced
persons in six camps around the city, he said. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15537]

PAKISTAN: Relocation of Jalozai refugees begins

Five hundred refugees from the makeshift Jalozai refugee camp in the NWFP
were relocated to a camp in the Bajaur Agency in the province's Tribal
Areas on Monday. "We have prioritised those in Jalozai, because facilities
for new arrivals are poor and they are not being assisted here," Jan
Sigismund, a UNHCR field officer, told IRIN. UNHCR has identified some 15
sites in the NWFP for new arrivals from Afghanistan fleeing the US-led air
strikes. The relocation was postponed last week following security fears
and a delay in preparing the camp. But Sigismund said the site was now
ready and that the Pakistani authorities had undertaken to guarantee the
safety of refugees.

The capacity of Bajaur is 20,000, and Sigismund said UNHCR teams would
also be identifying refugees in urban areas to be moved to the new camps.
"Two more camps in the NWFP will be completed in about two weeks' time so
we can start moving more refugees so they are better assisted during the
winter time," he added.

Provision for camp sites at Pakistan's southwestern border with
Afghanistan is also being made. UNHCR has resettled nearly 3,200 refugees
at the newly established Roghani camp, some 16 km from the Chaman border
crossing. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=15133]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001


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