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 35
01 - 07 December 2001


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on security
AFGHANISTAN: Mass female participation in Kabul food survey
AFGHANISTAN: IRIN Interview with UNDP's Mark Malloch-Brown
AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR warns of rising tension in tribal areas
AFGHANISTAN: Human rights groups call for tribunal
AFGHANISTAN: Bonn agreement met with cautious optimism by Afghans
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Pir Gailani
AFGHANISTAN: ASG meeting opens in Berlin
PAKISTAN: 'Invisible refugees' moving to new camp
PAKISTAN: Experts fear rise in drug addiction
IRAN: Focus on relief to Afghans displaced


AFGHANISTAN: Focus on security

With the security situation worsening in northern and southern
Afghanistan, the international aid community fears that deteriorating
access could leave hundreds of thousands of Afghans without food in the
coming months, UN and humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday. While
the northern region of the country has seen increased incidents of
looting, robberies and kidnapping, allowing for only minimal assistance to
be provided in the city of Mazar-e Sharif, the southern province of
Kandahar has been completely off limits to many international aid
agencies.

Security problems continue around Kandahar due to the US bombing targetted
at terrorist training camps, Taliban military positions and possible
al-Qaeda hideouts. Security concerns in parts of the western region have
also limited international relief efforts. Meanwhile, aid workers in the
east near Jalalabad were forced to leave their posts following intense
US-led bombings in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his followers.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17260&SelectRegion=Central_Asia


AFGHANISTAN: Mass female participation in Kabul food survey

The World Food Programme (WFP) this week concluded a major survey on food
needs in the Afghan capital Kabul, just weeks after the departure of
Taliban hardliners led to the lifting of oppressive restrictions on female
employment. "This isn't just the largest survey of its kind done in Kabul,
but one that involves the largest number of women ever paid by WFP in
Afghanistan," agency spokeswoman, Lindsey Davies told IRIN on Friday in
the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Of the 3,612 surveyors employed, some
2,400 were women.

The house-to-house-survey, which began on Tuesday and is set to finish
this weekend, will be followed immediately by food distribution. Surveyors
will issue each household with a token for one 50 kg bag of wheat, roughly
enough to feed a family for one month. The food agency will then use local
radio and TV stations to announce where families can collect their food.

During the Taliban's rule, WFP-sponsored bakeries represented one of the
few job opportunities open to women. The food agency supplied flour that
allowed women, particularly destitute war widows, to produce the country's
traditionally flat bread at about one sixth of the market price for women
and children. Additionally, it provided the bakers with some kind of
income.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17357&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: IRIN Interview with UNDP's Mark Malloch-Brown

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator, Mark
Malloch-Brown visited the Afghan capital Kabul on Friday, to see at first
hand the enormity of the challenge facing UNDP and partner agencies
assisting in the rehabilitation of Afghanistan. With development dependent
on political stability, the UNDP head said there was an urgent need to
demonstrate a peace dividend to Afghans, starting with immediate public
works projects and revitalising education for children.

While remaining cautious about Afghanistan's future, Malloch-Brown said
that Afghans now had "a once in a lifetime chance". In Kabul, he told IRIN
that there needed to be a programme idea in place at the end of January,
in which the broad outlines are sustained, but that there would be plenty
of space and time to draw Afghans in, for consultation, assessment and
design in each sector.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=16844&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR warns of rising tension in tribal areas

The UN's refugee agency UNHCR, on Tuesday warned of increasing tension
between Afghan refugees and local people in tribal areas of Pakistan's
North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The news followed last week's killing
of hundreds of Taliban prisoners-of-war at a fort outside the northern
Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif. Some of those who died were from tribal
areas of NWFP and others from the same region may seek revenge, it was
reported. "We are very much on alert," agency spokeswoman, Maki Shinohara
told IRIN. "Our field team says the situation is becoming tense," she
added.

She said that many new arrivals at the Jalozai camp near Peshawar in the
NWFP meant it was overflowing, and the agency had been trying to relocate
them to a proper site. However, the only areas the government had granted
permission for were in the tribal areas, she added. UNHCR has already
transferred over 5,000 refugees from Jalozai to the Kotkai camp in the
Bajaur tribal agency of NWFP, about 175 km north of Peshawar, while over
14,000 have been transferred to Roghani from the Kili Faizo staging site
at Chaman border. Those taken to Koktai were primarily ethnic Pashtuns,
the same group which make up the core of Taliban support.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID16967SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Human rights groups call for tribunal

Human rights activists in Pakistan have called on the UN to establish a
war crimes tribunal for Afghanistan. "I want to request the UN human
rights commission to set up a panel of experts to investigate war crimes
and mass executions carried out in Afghanistan over the past two years,"
chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Afrasiab
Khattak, told IRIN on Monday. Khattak's comments follow a statement issued
by international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday, urging the US and
Britain to take immediate measures against three Afghan commanders accused
of committing war crimes.

Two of the three in question are Mullah Fazil, accused of killings in the
northern Takhar province, and Mullah Dadullah, linked to the burning of
4,000 homes in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim central area of Yakaolang and
massacres in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998. The third,
Mawlawi Nurullah Nuri, former governor of the northern Balkh province, has
been accused of involvement in the massacre of Afghans of Uzbek ethnic
origin in the region.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=16895&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Bonn agreement met with cautious optimism by Afghans

Afghan factions meeting near the German city of Bonn have agreed on the
first steps towards future governance of their country. Following news of
a plan for the formation of an interim government and elections within two
years, some Afghan experts were cautiously optimistic that the move
signalled the beginning of the end of the Afghan conflict. Professor in
law at the Afghan University in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), Tahir Borgai, told IRIN that he hoped the agreement meant the end
of 20 years of bloodshed, displacement, disease and misery.

The Bonn agreement concluded that former deputy foreign minister and
Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai would lead the 29 member interim
executive council. Karzai was expected to assume his responsibilities when
the caretaker authority became effective on 22 December. In parallel, a
21-person special commission would convene an emergency Loya Jirga
[traditional gathering of tribal elders] to meet in six months time.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17226&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Pir Gailani, head of the 'Peshawar Group'

Pir Syed Ahmed Gailani is leader of the Assembly for Peace and National
Unity of Afghanistan (APNUA), more commonly known as the 'Peshawar Group'
- one of three exile groups represented at the Bonn talks. Gailani told
IRIN in an interview on Thursday that despite some bias towards one Afghan
faction, the Bonn agreement was a positive step. "The Bonn agreement is a
good step forward if it allows peace to return to Afghanistan and a good
government is formed, which is acceptable to, and will bring benefits for
Afghans. However, this is not an easy task. Regrettably, there was not
sufficient equity in the Bonn conference," he said.

He added that most of the portfolios had remained with former president
Rabbani's government representatives, who stayed in power. But he hoped
that after a Loya Jirga [traditional gathering of tribal elders] was
established a better government would be formed that would reflect the
people's will more fully.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17256&SelectRegion=Central_Asia


AFGHANISTAN: ASG meeting opens in Berlin

A two-day meeting on the reconstruction of Afghanistan organised by the
16-member Afghan Support Group (ASG) began in the German city of Berlin on
Wednesday. Various aid and development initiatives for Afghanistan were
discussed, including measures for refugees who've fled into neighbouring
countries, the internally displaced and returnees, as well as the
reconstruction.

In addition to the major donor countries, top UN officials such as the UN
Secretary General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar
Brahimi, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers and the Administrator of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Mark Malloch Brown, nominated
to lead early recovery plans, would also attend. Representatives from the
International Rescue Committee (IRC) also took part in the conference and
country director for IRC in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Sigurd Hanson told
IRIN on Wednesday they hoped that donor nations would concentrate on
"consistent political action" in Afghanistan.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17209&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


PAKISTAN: Experts fear rise in drug addiction

The price of heroin in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi has
dropped to less than one US dollar per gram, raising fears of a rise in
heroin consumption in the city. Drug rehabilitation experts say
traffickers have been dumping large quantities of heroin from stockpiles
in neighbouring Afghanistan in the country since the start of US-led
strikes. "The new influx of heroin at the Pakistani borders is alarming.
It will lead to a sharp boost in consumption," Dr Saleem Azam, head of the
Karachi-based drug rehabilitation NGO Pakistan Society, told IRIN.

Of immediate concern was a rise in the number of addicts who can now
afford to inject heroin, which requires a larger quantity of the drug, now
readily available. At a street cost of 80 US cents per gram, Azam feared a
rise in HIV infection if injecting and needle sharing became more
frequent. Last year's national assessment survey by the UN's Drug Control
Programme (UNDCP), estimated that there were 500,000 chronic heroin
addicts in Pakistan.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=16957&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: 'Invisible refugees' moving to new camp

Some 250 newly arrived Afghans termed "invisible refugees" by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were moved on Thursday from
the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta to a camp 85 km away. It was the
start of the refugee agency's campaign to move so called invisible
refugees - Afghans who have crossed into Pakistan but do not have refugees
status. "We have teams out in the city who are gathering information about
these refugees," UNHCR spokeswoman in Islamabad, Fatoumata Kaba told IRIN.
Most of the refugees crossed into Pakistan unofficially, through back
roads and across mountains, fleeing the US-led air strikes on Afghanistan.
Most travelled to Pakistani cities to live with relatives in cramped
conditions, often with little food or medical assistance.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=16795&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


IRAN: Focus on relief to Afghans displaced

The French-based NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Thursday reiterated
its call for Iran to facilitate relief distribution to over 2,000
unregistered people outside two camps inside Afghan territory set up by
Tehran. With the Mahkaki and Mile 46 camps each holding 5,000 people
already, the Iranian Red Crescent remains reluctant to register more
people for assistance. The impasse highlights the difficulties relief
agencies sometimes face trying to reach Afghan asylum seekers along the
Iranian border.

"The problem is we are only receiving administrative responses," MSF head
of mission in the Iranian capital Tehran, Bruno Jochum told IRIN on
Thursday. "Already three children have died and we are worried more will
follow," he exclaimed. He added that MSF had requested authorities both in
Tehran and at the local level to allow them to distribute food as well as
blankets and shelter to the people but had received no reply. Unlike the
people inside the camps, those outside had no shelter whatsoever, nor did
they receive any food distribution, he explained.

Jochum's comments followed a call by MSF on Wednesday for Tehran to remove
obstacles to aid operations in the area. According to the statement, the
newly displaced had arrived over the past 10 days in the camps 4 km inside
Afghan territory near the town of Zaranj in southwestern Nimruz province.
MSF, working in both camps, had requested authorisation to begin
distribution of assistance to the newly displaced people, but the Iranian
Red Cross had refused to register the new arrivals.

Iran currently has well over two million Afghan refugees inside the
country. Following 11 September, fearing an additional influx, Tehran
closed its 900 km border with Afghanistan, opting to provide assistance at
camps inside Afghan territory instead. Mahkaki and Mile 46 are the only
such camps operational.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17354&SelectRegion=Central_Asia


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


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