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 57
04 - 10 May 2002


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Repatriation pace outstripping funds - UNHCR
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Saudi charge d'affaires
AFGHANISTAN: Iran closes Mahkaki and Mile-46 camps
AFGHANISTAN: Frontline agencies run short of money
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Chaman border crisis
AFGHANISTAN: IDP information campaign underway
AFGHANISTAN: Leishmaniasis reaches epidemic proportions
AFGHANISTAN: Pashtuns face persecution in western region
AFGHANISTAN: Women still suffering, says RAWA
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap
PAKISTAN: Chaman refugees set to return
PAKISTAN: Killing of French nationals suggests militants are back
PAKISTAN: Appeal filed for woman sentenced to death by stoning

AFGHANISTAN: Repatriation pace outstripping funds - UNHCR

With the number of Afghans repatriating from neighbouring countries now
standing at well over half a million, UNHCR is increasingly concerned that
operating funds will soon run out - something which could seriously derail
a critical component of Afghanistan's reconstruction process. "We are
seriously concerned about the funding situation," Melita Sunjic, a
spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on
Thursday. "Given the pace and momentum in which Afghans are returning to
their homeland, I'm afraid we will no longer be able to sustain this," she
warned.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27678&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Saudi charge d'affaires

The new Saudi charge d'affaires for Afghanistan has said his biggest
challenge during his posting will be to restore the country to its former
glory. Abdullah Fahd al-Kahlani leaves the Pakistani capital, Islamabad,
on Thursday bound for the Afghan capital, Kabul, and despite Saudi/Arab
connections with Afghanistan and the toppled Taliban regime, including
that with the wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, he was optimistic about
relations with the Interim Administration. In an interview with IRIN on
Wednesday, Al-Kahlani reiterated his government's support for the Afghan
authorities and said his major priority would be to help with the
reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country, ravaged by more than two
decades of civil war.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27655&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Iran closes Mahkaki and Mile-46 camps

Wednesday marked the closure of the Mahkaki and Mile-46 displaced persons
camps in southern Afghanistan. Part of a determined effort by Tehran to
thwart a possible new influx of Afghan refugees entering the country
following 11 September, the two camps were administered by the Iranian Red
Crescent Society (IRCS). "This is our last day," Ali Karimi, IRCS director
for Sistan-Baluchestan told IRIN from the southeastern Iranian city of
Zahedan. "All refugees have gone back to their place of origin. The two
camps are completely empty," he said. Since mid-October, the IRCS has
overseen operations at the camps, providing the largely ethnic Pashtun
residents with both food and non-food related assistance, alongside
international NGOs working on the ground. The closure, with the last of 30
Iranian personnel returning to Iran on Wednesday, marks the end to what at
times was a particularly contentious humanitarian issue.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27657&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Frontline agencies run short of money

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) told IRIN on Tuesday
that its programme to assist Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in
Afghanistan would grind to a halt by the end of May unless substantial
infusions of cash were forthcoming. "All care, maintenance and movement of
IDPs, save operations already underway will have to be halted, and that is
going to impact on hundreds of thousands of very vulnerable people," Jan
de Wilde, IOM's director of programme support told IRIN from Geneva.
Consultations are underway with partner agencies, including the UN's
refugee agency UNHCR - the newly appointed UN coordinating agency for IDPs
in Afghanistan - to coordinate the nature and timing of the cutbacks.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27634&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Chaman border crisis

With the incidence of infectious diseases soaring, aid workers along the
Pakistani Afghan border at Chaman fear a possible outbreak of epidemic
diseases if basic living standards are not improved soon. About 30,000
Afghan refugees have been languishing on the windswept site for months in
a bid to enter Pakistan. Sheyvo, a 60-year-old widow from the southern
Afghan province of Kandahar awaits assistance in the scorching heat of her
plastic tent. "Give us enough food or kill us," she pleaded. Most of the
people in her family of 15 men, women and children are suffering from
diarrhoea, coughs, vomiting, malaria and other ailments common in the
camp.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27635&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: IDP information campaign underway

In a battered lecture theatre at the end of a muddy track in Pol-e Khomri,
a small town in Baghlan province in northeast Afghanistan, 40 local men
and eight women are learning to how to get to grips with some of the
country's thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs). The group is
being trained in how to register and interview IDPs with a view to
stimulating the return of an estimated 500,000 displaced throughout
Afghanistan. The programme is part of a joint initiative between the
United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Afghan government
to begin returning some of the 24,000 IDPs in Baghlan province to their
villages of origin. There's no one system for returning IDPs, but the
training in Pol-e Khomri is part of a provincial strategy to let the
displaced know they now have some options.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27610&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Leishmaniasis reaches epidemic proportions

Leishmaniasis - a disfiguring skin disease - has reached epidemic
proportions in Afghanistan. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates
250,000 are infected with the disease nationwide, with 100,000 in the
capital, Kabul, alone. "This is now an ongoing epidemic," WHO spokeswoman
Loretta Hieber-Girardet told IRIN from Kabul. "If not properly controlled
- the risk now is it could become pandemic - leaving surrounding countries
at risk," she warned, citing neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Transmitted
by the bite of the infected female phlebotomine sandfly, leishmaniasis,
known locally in Afghanistan as "saldana", or one-year sore, can cause
serious lesions on the skin - often to the face. While not
life-threatening, and easily treatable, the cutaneous forms of
leishmaniasis are the most common, representing 50 to 75 percent of all
new cases.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27611&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Pashtuns face persecution in western region Pashtun families
are increasingly being forced out of their homes under threat in the
northwestern Afghan province of Faryab, an aid worker told IRIN on Friday.
"Over the past three months, we have worked with 2,000 displaced Pashtun
people in Badghis, who had left their homes in Faryab in fear of
persecution," the country representative for Afghanistan for the UK-based
NGO Ockenden International, Ajmal Shirzai, told IRIN in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad. "Between five and 10 families are arriving from Faryab
every day," he added, saying that many of them feared that they would not
be able to return to their homes in the near future.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27706&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Women still suffering, says RAWA

Gross violations of women's rights continue in Afghanistan, despite the
fall of the hardline Taliban regime, an Afghan women's NGO told IRIN on
Thursday. The statement followed a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on
physical violence against women. "Our informants inside Afghanistan have
reported that women are still being harassed and maltreated, especially in
[the northern city of] Mazar-e Sharif," the spokeswoman for Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, Tahmeena Faryal said. "Nothing has changed over the past six
months. Women are still oppressed outside Kabul," she added. Faryal cited
one recent case in April in which a man threw acid on a female teacher in
the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, saying she should not have been
at work. Under the Taliban regime, girls were not permitted to attend
school and women were banned from working, forcing them into lead a
restricted lifestyle.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27680&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap

A majority of the population of Central Asian countries is in danger of
being struck by AIDS, a commentary broadcast by Uzbek radio said this
week. It said various forms of venereal diseases and AIDS were on the rise
in the region. Meanwhile, foreign experts believe that the number of AIDS
patients in the region could be 10 times greater than official figures
showed. In Kazakhstan, which has officially the highest number of AIDS
cases in Central Asia, there are 2,256 AIDS patients. Uzbekistan has 779
and in Kyrgyzstan 208 cases of AIDS. In neighbouring Tajikistan there are
only 45 AIDS cases and in Turkmenistan only four.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27709&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA

PAKISTAN: Chaman refugees set to return

In a surprise move, following an emotional appeal by an Afghan diplomat on
Tuesday, elders representing up to 40,000 Afghan refugees stuck for months
at the Pakistani-Afghan border crossing of Chaman have decided to go back
to Afghanistan, either to their villages or to a displacement camp close
to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. "I am glad that my countrymen
listened to me and decided to return," Habibullah Allahyar, head of the
Afghan consulate in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, told IRIN
on Friday. He added that the Afghan government had selected a very good
site near Kandahar to resettle these refugees.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27705&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Killing of French nationals suggests militants are back

A suspected suicide bomber killed eleven French and at least two Pakistani
nationals in the southern port city of Karachi on Wednesday in a grisly
reminder that President General Musharraf's war against terrorism has not
been won. The Pakistani Human Rights Commission (HRC) condemned the attack
and said it showed that government measures to halt extremism had failed.
"Unless a genuine commitment is shown to tackling militancy, rather than
making merely cosmetic gestures under international pressure .....violence
will continue to grow," HRC said in a statement. The bomb exploded beside
a bus in which the French nationals were travelling, police officials told
IRIN from Karachi. Apart from destroying the suspected car driven by the
suicide bomber, it ripped apart the bus belonging to the Pakistani Navy,
and also shattered windows in nearby hotels and shops. Most of the
casualties were inside the bus.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27653&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Appeal filed for woman sentenced to death by stoning

An appeal for a woman sentenced to death by stoning in Pakistan's North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) was filed at the Federal Shariat Court over
the weekend, her lawyer confirmed to IRIN on Monday. "A preliminary
hearing was made on Saturday in Peshawar [capital of the NWFP] and we are
now pushing for access to see our client, because the authorities will not
allow anyone to see her," lawyer Zaffarullah Khan in the Kohat District of
the NWFP said. "We think it will be three to four weeks before the case is
heard, and we hope she will be acquitted," he added. The appeal will be
heard at the Federal Shariat Court in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27616&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


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