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 106
05 - 11 April 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Floods in the west kill at least two
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy fighting in the northwest 
AFGHANISTAN: Health profile one of the worst in the world
AFGHANISTAN: UN lifts suspension of movements in the south
AFGHANISTAN: First-ever human development report
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy toll on civilians in years of war
AFGHANISTAN: Women want new constitution to reflect their needs
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with irrigation and environment minister
PAKISTAN: Interview with foreign minister
PAKISTAN: Special report on drugs and refugees
PAKISTAN: Need to close gender gaps in education
PAKISTAN: Focus on Afghan refugee education
PAKISTAN: Peasant farmers protest for ownership rights
PAKISTAN: Gas supplies restored following possible sabotage
PAKISTAN: Measures in place to contain possible SARS outbreak
TAJIKISTAN: WFP increases aid for recovery
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

AFGHANISTAN: Floods in the west kill at least two

People are continuing to suffer as a result of heavy floods which struck
last week in Gulran and Koshk districts of the western province of Herat,
while no aid agency or government body has so far responded. "The
situation is very bad. Seventy-two families have lost their houses and are
living in shops or in tents," Sayed Zabiullah, of the Agency Coordinating
Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) told IRIN from Herat city on Wednesday.
"The floods killed one person and injured two," Zabuillah said, adding
that many head of livestock had also died. The floods lasted four days.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33397&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Heavy fighting in the northwest leaves 13 dead, curtails aid

United Nations and international aid agencies were forced to close their
offices when severe fighting between two rival groups in Meymaneh, the
capital of the northwestern province of Faryab, erupted on Tuesday
afternoon. "The fighting began between Jamiat [Jamiat-i Islami or Islamic
Society led by Burhanuddin Rabbani] and Jonbesh [Jonbesh-e Melli-ye Eslami
or National Islamic Movement led by Abdul Rashid Dostam] following the
killing of a high-ranking Jamiat commander in the city," Manoel de Almeida
e Silva, a spokesman of the United Nations Assistance Mission for
Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN in the capital, Kabul, noting that at least
13 people, including two civilians, had been killed and 17 injured in the
skirmishes.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33400&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Health profile one of the worst in the world

On Monday - World Health Day - Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed
deep concern for millions of women and children being threatened by
increasing rates of maternal and infant mortality in his war-ravaged
country. "Afghanistan’s need for health services is deeper than any other
country’s," the president said while addressing a ceremony at the health
ministry in the capital, Kabul. He said the average life expectancy in
Afghanistan was 45 years, which was indicative of how severe poverty
remained for the majority.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33315&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: UN lifts suspension of movements in the south

Following a six-day suspension due to deteriorating security, the United
Nations announced on Sunday a resumption of movement in the southern
provinces of Afghanistan. An earlier suspension of movement followed the
murder of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate in
the southern province of Oruzgan on 27 March. "We will resume movements in
the region [all southern provinces] on Monday," Manoel de Almeida e Silva,
a UN spokesman in Afghanistan, told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
According to the spokesman, several hundred troops, mostly from the new
Afghan national army, along with US-led coalition forces, have been
deployed in and around the areas of high risk to curb elements threatening
security in those areas.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33309&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: First-ever human development report

After a decade of lack of reliable information, Afghanistan is taking the
first steps to prepare its first-ever National Human Development Report
(NHDR). Currently, very little relevant and reliable information exists
for policy makers and stakeholders. "Consultation will be meaningless
unless stakeholders are equipped with information," Hanif Atmar, the
Afghan minister of rural rehabilitation and development, told IRIN in the
capital, Kabul, on Tuesday. The Afghan government and the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) on Saturday signed a US $200,000 project
agreement to produce an NHDR through the Afghan rural rehabilitation and
development ministry.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33355&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Heavy toll on civilians in years of war

Almost a quarter of a century of war in Afghanistan has taken a heavy toll
of the population, estimated at 25 million. Still locked in abject
poverty, millions of Afghans have been killed, maimed, displaced or forced
to leave their country in a series of some of the most gruesome conflicts
of modern times. There are widely divergent estimates of the dead, but,
since 1978, up to two million Afghans have been killed, another two
million internally displaced, and some seven million turned into refugees.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33369&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Women want new constitution to reflect their needs

As tentative steps are taken towards nation building in Afghanistan, women
are calling for full participation in the formulation of the nation's new
constitution. "If we have a good constitution but we cannot implement it
in a good way, this means the country will not go in the right direction,"
Afghan Women’s Affairs Minister Habiba Surabi told IRIN on Tuesday at a
meeting on women and constitutional reform in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
"The newly drafted constitution is taking women into consideration, but my
concern is on its implementation," she said.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33378&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with irrigation and environment minister

In Afghanistan, more then 85 percent of the population of 25 million
depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. With hundreds of thousands of
people returning to the country seeking work, the revival of such a key
sector in this drought-plagued nation depends on the rehabilitation of
irrigation systems - both traditional and modern - which were destroyed by
years of fighting and neglect. That is by itself a formidable task, but
the new Afghan minister for irrigation and environment, Yusuf Nuristani,
also faces ecological challenges such as diminishing wetlands, forests and
wildlife. Here is what Nuristani had to say on these issues during a
recent interview with IRIN.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33347&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Interview with foreign minister

At a time when regional security in Central and South Asia is once again
under the spotlight due to the conflict in Iraq, Pakistan has raised
concerns over instability in the region. In an exclusive interview with
IRIN, Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khurshid Kasuri called for improved
security in Afghanistan, as well as a leading role for the UN in a
post-Saddam Iraq as the best way of diplomatic bridge-building given the
level of international opposition to the war.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33319&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Special report on drugs and refugees

Seventy-year-old, Maryam was sitting on a broken wooden bench in her mud
hut at the Kababian Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, the provincial
capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), looking dazed.
"My son introduced me to opium. He used to take it, and offered it to me
when I had a cold and cough. It helps me sleep," she told IRIN at the
camp. Maryam has been addicted to opium for the past six years. She said
her stock had just run out and she was waiting for relatives to bring more
from the fields near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. "We don't have
to pay for it. It grows wild, and if I don't eat some every week I get
chest pains and constant headaches."

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33304&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Need to close gender gaps in education

As part of the Education For All (EFA) week by the UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) that began on Monday, aid
workers have urged Islamabad to close gender gaps in its educational
system by encouraging girls' and women's education. Only about half of the
country’s 140 million people are literate. “We have to help them catch
up,” UNESCO’s director, Ingeborg Breines, told IRIN in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad. The theme for the education week this year is: “All
for Girls’ Education", in line with the major goals of the Dakar framework
of action that aims to eliminate gender disparities in education by 2005.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33366&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Focus on Afghan refugee education

As hundreds of thousands of Afghans return to rebuild their homes and
communities from the ashes of 23 years of conflict, most come poorly
equipped with little or no education to assist them. According to the
office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 87 percent of the
1.6 million Afghans returning from Pakistan to their country last year had
no education. Shakila Jan, a bright-eyed seven-year-old Afghan refugee
schoolgirl at the mud-built school of Maskeenabad Afghan refugee informal
settlement near Pakistan’s sprawling capital, Islamabad, knows a little
about the country she has never seen, but that's about all.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33339&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Peasant farmers protest for ownership rights

Hundreds of thousands of poor tenant farmers on land owned by the military
in the eastern province of Punjab continue to press for ownership rights
over land they have been tilling for generations, IRIN learnt on
Wednesday. Their forebears began working the land during the British
colonial administration early in the 20th century and were allegedly
promised ownership, but under Pakistani law they remain landless. However,
legal experts believe that efforts to evict them or change their status
might go against the law.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33379&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Gas supplies restored following possible sabotage

Up to 80 percent of gas supplies had been restored to the Punjab and North
West Frontier provinces of Pakistan on Thursday, following explosions on
gas pipelines in central Pakistan. "The pipes have been fixed and it is
all under control and the rest of the supply will restored by the end of
today," the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited [SNGPL] chief public
relations officer, Naeem Khan, told IRIN from the eastern Punjabi city of
Lahore on Thursday. "We don't know who is responsible, but we fear this
could be sabotage, and our investigation teams are looking into it," he
added. The gas supply to the provinces was interrupted after two out of
the three pipelines were blown up on Tuesday at Ahmadpur Lamsa, some 15 km
from the district of Rahimyar Khan in the Punjab province, some 500 km
from the capital, Islamabad.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33404&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

PAKISTAN: Measures in place to contain possible SARS outbreak

Although there have as yet been no known cases of the deadly Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the country, health officials in Pakistan
have established measures to contain its possible spread. "We have issued
detailed instructions and information about the disease to all the port
health authorities [airports and seaports], and are watching the situation
closely," Athar Saeed Dil, the executive director of the National
Institute of Health (NIH), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on
Thursday.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33437&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN]

TAJIKISTAN: WFP increases aid for recovery

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has increased its assistance to
Tajikistan by 40 percent under its Protected Relief and Recovery Operation
(PRRO), marking a transition from humanitarian relief to recovery and
development in the country, IRIN was told on Wednesday. "Tajikistan is a
low-income and food-deficit country needing food assistance," the WFP
country director, Ardag Meghdessian, told IRIN from the Tajik capital,
Dushanbe. "The shift of emphasis from relief to recovery indeed indicates
increased stability in the country, as well as an improvement of the
overall humanitarian situation," he said, adding that the devastating
two-year drought in 2000 and 2001 was over.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33380&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN]

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

In Central Asia this week, authorities in Uzbekistan forcibly detained a
rights activist on Tuesday, two days after he staged a protest demanding
the resignation of the president, AP reported, quoting his wife. Oleg
Nikolayev, 42, drove his car around the capital, Tashkent, on Sunday with
the placards attached to the windows reading "President Karimov Resign!"
and "Uzbekistan's Government Resign!" Public protests are rare and harshly
suppressed in this former Soviet republic, which is still run by a former
communist boss, and incidents of anyone openly demanding that the
president and the government go are particularly unusual. Nikolayev was
driving his car on Tuesday when another car cut him off, and about 15 men,
some wearing police uniforms, attacked him, as well as his wife, a son and
a friend, who were also in the car, his wife Tatyana Nikolayeva said.

[For a full copy of this report see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33452&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA]


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