Weekly Round-Up - IRINCAS-60: 31-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 60
25 - 31 May 2002
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: Heritage conference draws up priorities
AFGHANISTAN: WFP warns of food shortage
AFGHANISTAN: Violence raises concern about the Loya Jirga
TURKMENISTAN: Turkmenabad to remain key humanitarian hub
KYRGYZSTAN: Political dissent a potentially rising tide
TURKMENISTAN: President travels to Pakistan
TURKMENISTAN: Delay in road repair could impede assistance
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap 31/5
AFGHANISTAN: Heritage conference draws up priorities
After two decades of fratricidal bloodshed, a three day conference
co-hosted by the UN cultural organisation UNESCO and Afghanistan's
Ministry of Culture and Information has prioritised the rebuilding of
Kabul's shattered museum. The gathering deferred plans to rebuild the two
giant Buddha statues that stood near the village of Bamiyan 200km west of
Kabul since the 8th century until the Taliban destroyed them.
Afghanistan's interim minister of culture and information, Mukhdoom Raheen
maintained that besides the Taliban, Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was also
involved in the indiscriminate act of cultural vandalism. "We believe that
Al-Qaeda and other Taliban sympathisers were involved in the destruction,"
he told IRIN from Kabul on Wednesday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28034&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: WFP warns of food shortage
The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it had been forced to
scale down some food aid programmes in Afghanistan because of shortages of
cash and food. "We have immediate cash needs," Alejandro Chicheri, a WFP
spokesman, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We are more or less
48 percent underfunded," he added. Last week, a WFP situation report said
the agency faced a shortfall of 254,000 mt of food worth US $138 million.
The agency had appealed for $285 million of which it has received only
$105 million from donors so far. It had about $42 million carry-over from
the previous year. "Because of an immediate shortfall of 50,000 mt through
June, WFP has had to take measures to scale down distributions, disrupting
and suspending school feeding, food-for-work and food-for- asset-creation
activities," the report said. Under the school feeding programme, WFP
provides more than a million children with a meal a day.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28009&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Violence raises concern about the Loya Jirga
The recent murders of Loya Jirga, or Grand Council, delegates, along with
complaints about improper representation of various ethnic groups and a
terrorist threat has raised concerns about the key event set to determine
Afghanistan's political future in less than two weeks. Eight candidates
have been murdered, four in the southern province of Kandahar, one in the
capital Kabul and three in the central province of Ghor. "We are deeply
disturbed and profoundly regret that several people have been killed," the
spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan
(UNAMA), Manoel de Almeida e Silva, told reporters in the capital, Kabul,
on Tuesday. He also expressed concern over the detention of several
delegates in the western province of Herat. UNAMA is facilitating the
process towards holding the Loya Jirga.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28015&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Huge number of women involved in anti-polio drive
More women than ever before have taken part in national immunisation days
in southern Afghanistan, and particularly in the former Taliban stronghold
of Kandahar, IRIN learnt at the weekend. "This is a milestone as we draw
closer to stopping the polio virus in Afghanistan," the resident programme
organiser for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in southern
Afghanistan, Douglas Higgins, told IRIN at a ceremony held in conjunction
with local authorities to launch the programme in Kandahar on Sunday. Some
75 vaccination teams, each comprising two Afghan female volunteers, will
be visiting homes in the city to administer polio drops to children over a
three-day period, from Sunday to Tuesday. "It is important to have more
women leading the teams, as women at home with children will be more
welcoming," he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27983&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
TURKMENISTAN: Turkmenabad to remain key humanitarian hub
As part of the United Nations' ongoing humanitarian commitment to millions
of people inside Afghanistan, Turkmenabad - Turkmenistan's second-largest
city - will continue to play a key role in relief efforts to the country.
"Turkmenabad is the most important hub for humanitarian assistance in
Central Asia today and will remain so for quite some time," a logistics
officer for the World Food Programme (WFP), Abdul Jabbar Bhatti told IRIN
on Wednesday. Since 11 September, over 194,000 mt of food assistance had
been dispatched to Afghanistan from the city, a fact often unacknowledged
or unreported by international media, he asserted. According to WFP
figures, in October 2001, 7,128 mt of food assistance was dispatched from
the city, jumping to a staggering 54,318 mt in December. "This was the
real crisis month in Afghanistan. We had to cover the food gap, Bhatti
explained.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28013&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN: Political dissent a potentially rising tide
The resignation of the Kyrgyz prime minister and his government last week
in a move to defuse protests over the deaths of demonstrators, detention
of opposition politicians and a controversial border pact with
neighbouring China, may have "very serious" implications for the whole
Central Asian region, experts said on Tuesday. Rashid maintained that
authoritarian Central Asian regimes had used the situation arising after
the 11 September events as an opportunity to suppress opposition and
political dissent. "Unfortunately, the renewed interest and heightened
engagement of the West in the region does not translate into strengthening
of democracy and civil society," he said, adding that the resources
committed by the US-led coalition against terrorism in the region were
exploited by the regimes to perpetuate their rule.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27984&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN
TURKMENISTAN: President travels to Pakistan
Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov will travelled to the Pakistani
capital Islamabad on Wednesday for high level meetings with Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai over a
proposed 1,500 km pipeline linking his country to Pakistan via
Afghanistan. Turkmenistan, with its immense gas reserves, has long sought
alternative routes to international markets. Ashgabat currently has only
one major export route through Russia, but provides small volumes of gas
to neighbouring Iran. Should the project through Afghanistan - which
shares a 744 km border with Turkmenistan - become a reality, Niyazov may
achieve a long-held dream of securing his country's future development.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27986&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
TURKMENISTAN: Delay in road repair could impede humanitarian assistance
Efforts to repair and restore a critical 60-km stretch of road between
Turkmenistan and Afghanistan were being delayed due to bureaucracy, an
official from the World Food Programme (WFP) charged on Sunday. "We're
frustrated," a WFP civil engineer, Peter Risch, told IRIN in the Turkmen
town of Kerki, a dusty frontier town north of the Afghan border. "We have
teams and equipment on standby just waiting," he maintained. As part of
the United Nations ongoing humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered
country, the route leading southeast from the eastern Turkmen city of
Turkmenabad towards the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif provides a
crucial access link to Afghanistan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27957&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap 31/5
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed a memorandum of
understanding (MOU) this week over a US $2.0 billion natural gas pipeline
project that will supply Ashgabat's natural gas to Islamabad and maybe
beyond to the huge Indian market. The proposed 1,460-km pipeline will
supply natural gas from Turkmenistan's giant Dauletabad field, which holds
around half of the country's known gas reserves of more than a 100
trillion cubic feet. The pipeline will pass through Afghanistan. Kabul
would profit from the deal by charging lucrative transit fees for the
fuel. Pakistan says the proposed gas pipeline will be beneficial to the
entire region and not just the three countries involved. Though the MOU
has been signed, the three countries need financial sponsors for the
project.
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