U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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Integrated Regional Information Network for Central Asia

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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 39
29 December 2001 - 27 January 2002


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: UN to clear coalition cluster bombs
AFGHANISTAN: ICRC to increase humanitarian effort
AFGHANISTAN: Measles vaccination campaign launched
AFGHANISTAN: WFP says famine threat receding
AFGHANISTAN: Mine clearance crucial for reconstruction
IRAN: Spontaneous returns of Afghan refugees continue
PAKISTAN: Human cost of border closure

AFGHANISTAN: UN to clear coalition cluster bombs

The United Nations has initiated the daunting task of clearing an
estimated 25,000 unexploded cluster bomblet units (CBUs) dropped on
Afghanistan by US warplanes. The move comes after coalition forces
provided the United Nations Mine Action Programme (MAPA) with a list of
103 sites where cluster bombs were used. "Failed CBUs pose a significant
threat to people returning to areas where they have been targeted, due to
their instability and the random nature of dispersal," Antonio Donini, UN
deputy humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, told IRIN on Wednesday in
the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Survey activities were now under way to
effectively quantify the threat, he said.

According to the MAPA programme manager, Dan Kelly, cluster bombs, the
main casing of each of which contains about 200 bomblets, are designed to
scatter over a specific area, causing significant damage to buildings and
people. Shaped like a soft drink can, the bomblets - bright yellow,
weighing one and a half kilogrammes - are designed to fragment at high
velocity into hundreds of pieces of shrapnel.

[Full report at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18295&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: ICRC to increase humanitarian effort

With access to vulnerable and isolated groups inside the country improved,
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has established a
clearer picture of the most pressing needs within Afghanistan and reviewed
its operational priorities. The agency has prioritised food and other
emergency relief to destitute families in rural parts of the central
highlands. The move is expected to reduce the flood of people currently
fleeing to displacement camps in search of assistance. "We have identified
the central highlands as an area of particular need," an ICRC spokesman,
Michael Kleiner, told IRIN on Monday from the Afghan capital, Kabul. "They
are surviving with local coping mechanisms, but due to destroyed shelter
and cold, conditions are extremely harsh and the effects of three years of
drought are also being felt," he said. Since mid-November, ICRC was doing
its utmost to enable people to remain in their rural villages, he noted.

According to an ICRC assessment earlier this year in the central province
of Ghowr - the country's least accessible province - there were
approximately half a million people in need of assistance there. From
mid-November to mid-December, ICRC succeeded in assisting 112,000 of them.
Although an assessment in neighbouring Bamian Province remains ongoing,
some 26,000 have been helped there. Both provinces had been cut off from
humanitarian assistance following the terrorist attacks on the US on 11
September. "During our absence there was no contact", he said. ICRC is now
racing against the onset of winter to get in as much assistance as
possible, an effort overshadowed by the constant threat of snow blocking
access to remote valleys.

[Full report at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18269&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Measles vaccination campaign launched

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health
Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday launched a countrywide vaccination campaign
against measles - one of the deadliest of preventable diseases - which
claims the lives of at least 35,000 children each year in Afghanistan.
"The measles vaccination campaign has begun. It's going on in Kabul from
Tuesday,"  a UNICEF spokesman, Chulho Hyun, told IRIN on Wednesday in the
Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He said the target was to vaccinate 1.2
million children throughout the Kabul region.

Hyun said the campaign would later be taken to other parts of the country
to immunise a total of nine million children, though an exact time-frame
for each region was not immediately available. "Over the course of the
next three months, it will continue in other areas of the country,
reaching children in the most difficult areas to access, as well as
displaced children," Hyun told a news briefing in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, on Monday.

[Full report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18290]


AFGHANISTAN: WFP says famine threat receding

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday that the threat of famine
appeared to be ending in most of Afghanistan by virtue of a record 116,000
mt of wheat having been sent into the country in December. "It certainly
looks like we have averted a widespread famine in Afghanistan," a WFP
spokesman, Jordan Dey, told IRIN. "But we are still concerned about
pockets of people... in small villages and in hard-to-reach areas."

Earlier, however, after more than 20 years of war, the worst drought in
living memory - in its third year now - and a military campaign against
the Taliban, the spectre of a severe famine in Afghanistan had grown
significantly. Several aid workers had reported in the past few months
that some Afghans had been in such dire straits as to be reduced to eating
grass.

Then, between 1 October and 31 December, the WFP sent in 200,000 mt of
food, far exceeding its target of 165,000 mt needed to feed about six
million impoverished Afghans. "This record level - reached against the
backdrop of looted warehouses and destroyed offices, ripped up phone lines
and trashed computers, stolen trucks, treacherous roads, snowed-in
communities, inter-factional fighting, and active militias - will cover
the food needs of six million Afghans for two months," Dey told a news
briefing on Monday.

[Full report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18281]

AFGHANISTAN: Mine clearance crucial for reconstruction

MAPA sent a security assessment team to the eastern city of Jalalabad on
Friday, 28 December to determine whether full-time land-mine clearance
could commence in order to clear the way for reconstruction and
rehabilitation work. "It is paramount that mine action happens before any
reconstruction or rehabilitation can start," Richard Daniel Kelly, MAPA's
programme manager, told IRIN on Friday, 28 December. The security
assessment team was due to make recommendation by Sunday on whether mine
clearance could start full-time in and around the city.

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL),
Afghanistan is one of the world’s most heavily mined countries, where two
to three people die every day due to land mines.  "This was the case even
before the current conflict, and will remain the reality long after a new
government is in place. And, now de-miners getting back to work for the
first time since mid-September have the added burden of clearing cluster
bombs, along with the countless anti-personnel mines and other unexploded
ordnance," said a ICBL statement on its web site.

Afghanistan's estimated eight to 10 million land mines and unexploded
ordnance - the result of two decades of war - claimed 88 casualties a
month last year, according to one mine action group.

[Full report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18251]

IRAN: Spontaneous returns of Afghan refugees continue

The number of Afghan refugees spontaneously leaving Iran for home has
increased following a significant decline in the second half of December.
UNHCR officials in Iran confirmed on Thursday that since the start of this
year, over 2,500 had returned to Afghanistan. "The number of spontaneous
returnees to Afghanistan from Iran has increased after a major drop in the
last two weeks of December," a UNHCR spokesman, Mohammad Nouri, told IRIN
from the capital, Tehran. While initially 1,300 people a day during the
first two weeks of December were returning, by the end of the month that
figure dropped to around 300. With the advent of the new year, however,
those numbers rebounded with 954 Afghans returning on Tuesday and another
1,559 on Wednesday, Nouri explained.

Asked whether this represented any type of new trend, he replied:
"Although we have seen an increase, it is impossible to predict whether
this will continue." According to UNHCR, the total number of spontaneous
(unassisted) returnees from Iran for the year 2001 was 140,373. This was a
dramatic jump from the previous year, in which only 50,000 spontaneously
made the move from mid-July through December 2000.

[Full report at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18333&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN
]

PAKISTAN: Human cost of border closure

Pakistan and India on Tuesday suspended road, rail and air links with each
other amid escalating tension between the two neighbours. The move could
leave thousands of people stranded and force thousands to drop travel
plans. Earlier, India slapped a sanction on air travel following its
earlier decision to close rail and road links from Pakistan effective from
1 January. Islamabad quickly responded by announcing the same curbs.

Travel agents told IRIN that the move would affect thousands of people on
both sides, and some may even become stranded if they were unable to find
ways of travelling back before Tuesday. Many of those who made it were
unhappy at having to cut short long-awaited visits. "I am, perhaps, seeing
my sister for the last time, as I am not sure how much longer will I
live," a 70 year-old Indian national, Mariam Bibi, told IRIN, as she
embraced her younger Pakistani sister, Bismillah, maybe for the last time.
"At my age, I am not hopeful to come back to Pakistan," she said with
tears in her eyes.

The suspension of travel came in the wake of rising tensions between the
two nuclear-capable rivals, who have fought three wars since independence
from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of
Kashmir.

[Full report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=182688]


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