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 70
03 - 09 August 2002


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: WFP fear food shortage in November
AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR notes drop in repatriation
AFGHANISTAN: MSF concerned over relocation of Chaman asylum seekers
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Pakistan's Ambassador
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on shelter
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap
IRAN: UNHCR lauds agreement on screening programme
KAZAKHSTAN: Boosting nutrition with a pinch of salt
PAKISTAN: Six killed in Christian school attack
PAKISTAN: Groups demand protection for minorities
PAKISTAN: Four killed in latest church attack
PAKISTAN: Efforts underway to assist Afghan prisoners
PAKISTAN: MET office warns of reemergence of drought
TAJIKISTAN: Relief efforts to flash flood victims underway
TAJIKISTAN: Dreaming of a cow
TAJIKISTAN: Focus on AIDS

AFGHANISTAN: WFP fear food shortage in November

The World Food Programme (WFP) expects a food shortage of about 60,000 mt
in Afghanistan by November if donors do not step up their help, a WFP
spokesman told IRIN on Monday. Alejandro Chicheri said from the Afghan
capital, Kabul, that the latest WFP estimates put the shortfall at about
60,000 mt for the month of November and close to 20,000 mt for December.
However, the situation could change if more donor help was there, he
added. "We expect the donors to be as generous as they have been in the
past because the need [of food] is still acute," Chicheri noted.

[To see the report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29166&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR notes drop in repatriation

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported a
decline in the number of Afghans repatriating from Pakistan in recent
weeks. Last week alone witnessed a drop of 21 percent in returns from the
previous week. "There has been a slight decline over the past two weeks,
but nothing dramatic," UNHCR spokesman Jack Redden, told IRIN in the
Pakistani capital, Islamabad. "The numbers still remain high." According
to an agency statement on Tuesday, while total returns from surrounding
countries during the month of July numbered more than 303,000 people, this
was three-quarters of the number in May, when 412,738 persons returned to
their homeland.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29191&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: MSF concerned over relocation of Chaman asylum seekers

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has expressed its concern over the possible
relocation of tens of thousands of Afghan asylum seekers languishing along
the border with Pakistan. Stranded since February at a waterless waiting
area camp at the Chaman border crossing, just inside Pakistani territory,
as well as in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, the Afghans could be
returned to a UNHCR-proposed camp at Zarey Dasht, 30 km west of the
southern Afghan city of Kandahar. "We don't think that the asylum seekers
have access to all the information," MSF project coordinator in Chaman,
Jose Hulsenbeck told IRIN on Wednesday. "Only 400 families are willing to
relocate at the moment and they are the minority of the refugees in
Chaman," she said.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29212&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Pakistan's Ambassador

As a former commissioner for refugees in Pakistan, Rustan Shah Mohmand,
Pakistan's Ambassador to Afghanistan says his government's first priority
is to help facilitate the safe return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan
refugees to their homeland. In an interview with IRIN in the Afghan
capital, Kabul, Mohmand said he hoped for improved relations, maintaining
Pakistan had a vital role to play in the reconstruction of the battered
country.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29184&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on shelter

Providing shelter to millions of returning refugees or displaced persons
throughout Afghanistan remains a key challenge for the international
humanitarian community, in spite of ongoing efforts. As winter fast
approaches, this challenge is going to increase, particularly in the
Afghan capital, Kabul - a city which is experiencing a major influx of
returnees. "We had no choice but to return," Mohammad Yusuf told IRIN.
"Now we have nowhere to live because our house was destroyed."

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29167&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap

Kazakhstan has started large-scale exercises involving all branches of
troops on the coast of the Caspian Sea, in western Mangistau Region,
international media reported this week. Shells with radio detonators would
be used for the first time in the country, a report by Kazakh Khabar
television said. According to the report, the Sea of Peace-2002 military
exercises have started in the western Mangistau Region. All branches of
the Kazakh armed forces will be practicing interaction between the various
troops of the Western Military District [WMD]. Preparations for the main
event are under way, in which the military will have to deflect an attack
by a mock enemy.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29251&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA]

IRAN: UNHCR lauds agreement on screening programme

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
has lauded an agreement reached with Iranian officials, allowing them to
establish a refugee screening programme for undocumented Afghans who are
put under arrest. "This is a significant breakthrough," UNHCR Chief of
Mission, Philippe Lavanchy told IRIN on Friday from the Iranian capital,
Tehran. Following an agreement reached during his meeting with the
Director General of Iran's Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants
Affairs (BAFIA), Ahmad Hosseini on Wednesday, UNHCR would have access to
detention centres throughout Iran where Afghan nationals threatened with
deportation are being held and be able to conduct interviews with them.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29252&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN]

KAZAKHSTAN: Boosting nutrition with a pinch of salt

Five-year-old Dina plays gently with her friends around a small public
swimming pool in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty. But unlike her
13-year-old sister Svetlana, Dina will never go to school and is unlikely
to ever reach her full intellectual and physical potential. Dina, like
thousands of other under-fives throughout Central Asia is mentally
retarded simply because her mother Marya did not consume enough vital
nutrients, such as iodine, during pregnancy. Marya was pregnant with her
first child during the Soviet era. At that time most salt consumed in
Central Asia was iodised. But following independence in 1991, the old
centralised production and distribution system collapsed.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29232&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KAZAKHSTAN]

PAKISTAN: Six killed in Christian school attack

Unidentified gunmen opened fire at a Christian school in a hill resort in
northern Pakistan on Monday, killing six people and wounding at least
three others, local authorities and hospital sources told IRIN. The
incident, the latest in a series of terrorist attacks, will only
exacerbate growing security concerns amongst the international community -
mostly diplomats and aid workers in the country. The school, was
reportedly frequented by foreign students, including children of
diplomats, stationed in Pakistan.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29164&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Groups demand protection for minorities

In a strongly worded statement, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
(HRCP) called upon the government on Tuesday to end all kinds of
discrimination against religious minorities, one day after a brutal attack
on a Christian school in northern Pakistan killed six people. "The
targeting by gunmen of a Christian school in Murree for their latest
attack on citizens highlights the increasing threat to security faced by
minorities in the country," said an HRCP statement to IRIN from Lahore,
capital of the populous Punjab province.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29185&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Four killed in latest church attack

At least four people were killed and 23 wounded in a grenade attack on a
missionary hospital outside the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Friday,
the second incident against Christians in less than a week. A hospital
official told IRIN by telephone from the historic town of Taxila, 25 km
northwest of the capital, that one nurse, two nurse assistants and one of
the alleged attackers were killed in the attack. The incident comes just
four days after six Pakistanis were shot dead in a gun attack at a
Christian missionary school northeast of Islamabad.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29250&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Efforts underway to assist Afghan prisoners

Afghan officials in Pakistan have asked Islamabad to allow them to visit
jails where more than six thousand Afghans are imprisoned under various
charges. "We want to determine the charges against them but we don't want
to get the criminals out," Afghan diplomat Abdul Jabbar Naeemi told IRIN
on Friday in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. "The Pakistani authorities
have been helping us whenever we asked for assistance," he said. Afghan
diplomats in Pakistan believe there are at least 6,242 Afghan prisoners
languishing in different prisons across the country. Their charges range
from drug smuggling, murder, theft and fraud, while others have been
imprisoned for being illegally present in the country. Some 241 Afghan
women and another 100 children under the age of 16 are also included in
these numbers

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29249&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: MET office warns of reemergence of drought

The head of Pakistan's meteorological department warned on Thursday that
drought conditions were again emerging in the country owing to lower than
expected monsoon rains. Chaudhry Qamaruz Zaman told IRIN in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad, that drought was most likely to grip the southern
Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan province of the country. "Sindh,
Baluchistan and some other parts of the country are under stress, largely
because of below normal rains," he explained, adding that the crisis could
become severe because the underground water levels had also fallen
sharply. "It has gone down by 10 to 25 feet in just six months," he noted

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29231&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

TAJIKISTAN: Relief efforts to flash flood victims underway

Relief efforts continued on Thursday, one day after a devastating flash
flood ripped through the village of Dasht, 524 km east of the Tajik
capital, Dushanbe. The early morning disaster, which killed 28, left
hundreds of people homeless. "There has been an immediate response by the
international humanitarian community here," Andrea Recchia, humanitarian
affairs officer for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Assistance (OCHA), told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "Despite
the distance in reaching the affected area, we have been able to support
local authorities in reacting quickly."

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29230&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN]

TAJIKISTAN: Dreaming of a cow

In poor communities a little help can go a long way. When US Congressmen
and women recently visited two women's credit groups in the semi-rural
Leninskii district outside the Tajik capital Dushanbe, the women were
asked what kind of help was most needed. Several responded "It's our dream
to own a cow!" The comments were not forgotten. Several months after the
delegation returned to the US, some members of the group wrote cheques to
provide cows to seven women within the framework of CARE's credit
programme. Tajikistan remains the poorest of the five Central Asian
republics formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 with three
out of four people living below the poverty line.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29168&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN]

TAJIKISTAN: Focus on AIDS

A blue-eyed 21-year-old Tajik beauty, Ramina has been addicted to heroin
for the last two years. When her habit proved too expensive, she turned to
prostitution on the streets of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, enabling her
to shoot up four times a day. "If I don't take it, I feel ill and can't
function," she told IRIN. But having over-dosed once, she said she was
more careful in how much she took. Ramina was also now more weary of
exchanging needles after she visited a needle exchange centre and was
warned of the threat of HIV/AIDS. As an intravenous drug user and
prostitute she is in the two highest risk groups of catching the killer
disease. Now a volunteer at the centre, Ramina says she's spreading the
word about the exchange among drug addicts in the hope that her friends
will also be safe.

[To see the full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29210&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002


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