Weekly Round-Up - IRINCAS-58: 17-May-02
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 58
11 - 17 May 2002
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy rains continue in Badakhshan
AFGHANISTAN: Think tank warns of war if Loya Jirga fails
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Governor of Kandahar
AFGHANISTAN: NGOs slam higher UN salaries
AFGHANISTAN: Threat of increasing disease as refugees return
PAKISTAN: Robbers attack returning Afghan refugees in the south
PAKISTAN: Afghan refugees complain of police harassment
PAKISTAN: Focus on water crisis
PAKISTAN: Focus on cross border trade and smuggling
PAKISTAN: UNHCR increases planned repatriation figures to 850,000
KYRGYZSTAN: Landslides threaten radioactive waste dumps
TAJIKISTAN: Urgent funding needed to stop locusts
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy rains continue in Badakhshan
Heavy rains continue to flood districts in the northeastern Afghan
province of Badakhshan, which could cause considerable damage if
prolonged, a UN official told IRIN on Friday. "It has been raining heavily
for the past three days," UN resident coordinator for Badakhshan, Paola
Emerson in the provincial capital Faizabad said. Although there had not
been any significant damage or injuries reported in the affected areas,
Emerson warned that the situation could worsen. Up to 100 houses were
damaged by bad weather in the districts of Teshkan, 90 km west of
Faizabad, Khash 40 km southeast of the town, and Argu, which is adjacent
to the provincial capital. "Access is a big problem as roads are being
blocked off for several hours, making it difficult for us to move around,"
she maintained.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27813&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Think tank warns of war if Loya Jirga fails
An independent think thank has warned that the failure of the upcoming
Emergency Loya Jirga or grand council might plunge Afghanistan back into
civil war. It has urged the international community to initiate confidence
building measures between the hostile Afghan factions, and to ensure
security and assistance to the UN and the Loya Jirga commission during the
event. "Expectations [from the event] are unreasonably high. Visions of a
great leap forward in reconciliation are misplaced, and the danger of
missteps are grave," said a report on the Loya Jirga by the International
Crisis group (ICG), a private multinational organisation working on
conflict prevention.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27815&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Gul Agha Sherzai, Governor of Kandahar
The governor of Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, Gul Agha
Sherzai, has only recently resumed his post after an absence of almost six
years. But like Rashid Dostum in the north, Ismail Khan in the west and
Haji Qadir in the east, Sherzai is a survivor. Indeed, following the
demise of the Taliban regime, he has re-emerged as one of the most
prominent political and military figures in the country. In an interview
with IRIN, he said he was satisfied with the security and ongoing poppy
eradication efforts in the former Taliban stronghold that once produced
more than 50 percent of the country's opium, and maintained that the
upcoming Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, in June would succeed in
ultimately bringing peace and stability to his war-torn homeland.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27777&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: NGOs slam higher UN salaries
In the backdrop of increasing efforts by the assistance community to
rebuild Afghanistan, many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have
criticised the UN for paying higher salaries and depriving them of a much
needed talented workforce. "It is [creating] a kind of dominos effect,"
assistant country director of the international NGO CARE Hassan Mohmed
told IRIN on Monday from Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar. "The UN
is paying too high salaries, which is counter productive to the
reconstruction effort in Afghanistan," he said. Out of some 500 staff
members of CARE, at least 10 have joined the world body after being
offered more lucrative salaries. "The issue is not that people are
leaving, but the kind of people that are leaving," he added.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27732&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Threat of increasing disease as refugees return
Health experts on Tuesday warned of an increase in the spread of
infectious diseases as Afghans return home to a country which has no
health-care system. "We are seeing increasing cases of diarrhoea since
people started returning," Stethane Robin, the medical coordinator for
Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Afghan capital, Kabul, told IRIN. He
said there had been a dramatic rise in the number of patients they were
seeing as the repatriation drive continued to grow. "Last month we saw
6,000 Afghans, and in the first week of May we have already seen more then
1,000 patients." Robin pointed out that there was also a high risk of
disease being contracted during the returnees' journey home. "They are
travelling in terrible conditions," he maintained, adding that many
pregnant women were being forced to give birth on the way, without proper
health-care facilities.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27756&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN: Robbers attack returning Afghan refugees in the south
An international NGO has called for increased security on a main highway,
following an incident in which a convoy carrying Afghan refugees was fired
on and robbed. The convoy, comprising seven buses, was passing through the
Shikarpur District in the north of the country's southern Sindh Province
when robbers stopped the vehicles. "This route is notorious for robberies
and we need to protect these poor refugees," the director of the Focus
NGO, Rafiq Halani, told IRIN on Wednesday from the southern port city of
Karachi. Focus staff members were travelling with the convoy to oversee
the repatriation of the refugees, and informed their managers soon after
the incident, which took place at 03:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
"Our programme manager was at the scene by 8 a.m. and contacted the
relevant people, including the police," he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27776&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Afghan refugees complain of police harassment
Afghan refugees going home after years of exile are complaining of
harassment and extortion by the Pakistani police, citing it as one of the
reasons for their decision to leave. "I have no complaint against the
[Pakistani] people. They were kind," one refugee, Aslam Khan, told IRIN
outside the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. "But the police were terrible.
They extorted money from us poor people," Khan said while waiting along
with hundreds of other Afghans to go home. Khan had been a refugee for 18
years and was now leading his small family back to his country - ravaged
by more than 20 years of war. "I hear things are much better there now, so
I am leaving," he noted, adding that being a refugee meant living without
dignity.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27754&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Focus on water crisis
Imagine a city of over a million people without water. Such a scenario
looms over Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern province of
Balochistan, where drought and intensive exploitation of ground-water
reservoirs mean a crisis could manifest itself within the next few years.
While the upper replenishable alluvial aquifers are already stressed by
the ongoing drought and the drilling of too many tube-wells in the valley,
the government is digging more deep wells to extract water from the
hard-rock aquifers to bridge the gap between supply and demand in the
city.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27814&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Focus on cross border trade and smuggling
His shop brimming over with western-made telephones, fax machines and an
assortment of used Japanese computers, Abdul Ghafur, could not be prouder.
Situated in the small border market of Wesh near the Pakistani border
crossing point of Chaman, but just inside Afghanistan - a country with
hardly any functional communications network - the shop's location is
unusual, but business could hardly be better. The ethnic Pashtun
businessman told IRIN that he earned between US $250 and $500 a month and
- apart from a few dollars a month for rent - paid no taxes. Like other
shopkeepers and traders in the market, his home was a few kilometres away
inside Pakistan. "There is no other work to do, and my shop gives me
enough money to look after my family," he said. Abdul Ghafur and his two
younger brothers also operate another shop to take care of another 20
family members, but they are hardly alone.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27728&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: UNHCR increases planned repatriation figures to 850,000
Despite serious funding concerns, as the number of Afghans wanting to
return to their homeland from Pakistan intensifies, UNHCR has had not
choice but to revise this year's original planning figures to an ambitious
850,000. The joint voluntary repatriation programme between Islamabad and
the UN refugee agency had originally called for up to 400,000 Afghan
refugees to return this year. Sunjic's comments follow Saturday's landmark
turning point for the programme when the half million mark was reached and
quickly surpassed - already well beyond the expectations of original
estimates. On Sunday, a total of 513,808 Afghans had returned to
Afghanistan since the programme began on 1 March. As part of the
assistance package, returnees are provided with food and non-food related
assistance, as well as a small monetary grant.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27731&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN: Landslides threaten radioactive waste dumps
Recent landslides in southern Kyrgyzstan threaten to flood nearby areas,
including radioactive storage sites containing Soviet-era uranium waste,
UN and government officials said. Amanbai Sarnogoev, an official of the
Kyrgyz Ministry of Ecology and Emergency, had told the United Nations on
Tuesday that the overall situation in the area was stabilising, but the
ministry was monitoring the threat of the landslides daily, a UN official
told IRIN from the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Olga Grebennikova, the United
Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Public Affairs Officer, said that
according to information provided by the ministry, a landslide started to
move in Mayluu-Suu city of Jalal-Abad Oblast on Sunday, partially covering
the channel of the Mayluu-Suu river. This had led to the flooding of the
Kyrgyzelectroizolit power plant.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27757&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Urgent funding needed to stop locusts destroying crops
Thousands of hectares of farmland in northern and southern regions of
Tajikistan would be destroyed this year by locusts unless funding to
tackle the problem was made available soon, an official from the UN's Food
and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told IRIN on Monday. The agency
currently has US $30,000 but estimates that between US $200,000 to US
$300,000 was needed in order to save thousands of hectares of land.
However, with only 10 days left before the locusts start flying, there was
little hope of the additional money being raised in time.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27733&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap
Iran has strongly protested about an agreement between the presidents of
Russia and Kazakhstan to divide up the northern section of the energy-rich
Caspian sea. "The bilateral accord cannot be considered a legal regime for
the sea," foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, was quoted by the
official Iranian news agency IRNA as saying on Wednesday. Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev
signed an accord on Monday in Moscow dividing the northern quarter of the
Caspian sea between their countries. The agreement followed an
unsuccessful summit last month of the five nations - Russia, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan - bordering the sea.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27833&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
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