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 112
17 - 23 May 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Refugee returns diminishing due to insecurity
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Kabul housing shortage
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on road reconstruction 
AFGHANISTAN: New beginning for national police force
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with the chief justice
AFGHANISTAN: New centre for malnourished children in the north
AFGHANISTAN: Second round of nationwide polio campaign begins
PAKISTAN: Flood relief fund in pipeline
PAKISTAN: Waiting area on Chaman border closing down
TAJIKISTAN: IOM concerned about new migrant agreement
TAJIKISTAN: World Bank approves US $20 million for education
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap


AFGHANISTAN: Refugee returns diminishing due to insecurity

Over 100,000 Afghan refugees have so far returned home this year, but this
is just one-quarter of the number of those repatriated over the same
period last year, the reduction being due to deteriorating security in
their country, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
confirmed to IRIN on Friday. "It was never expected that we would have the
same figures as last year, and those whom we were anxious to see go left
immediately. But we know that security is also an influencing factor," the
spokesman for UNHCR in Pakistan, Jack Redden, told IRIN from the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad. Of the 100,000 returnees this year, more than 65,000
were from Pakistan and nearly 35,000 from Iran.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34287&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Kabul housing shortage

Roaming damaged western Kabul, Laldana and her children were asking every
passer-by if they had seen an unoccupied ruined building so that the
homeless widow could live there with her seven-member family. "It is more
than misfortune when you cannot find even vacant ruins to live," the
mother of seven told IRIN in Kabul, noting she had come from Pakistan
seven months ago and lived in a school building. "I am doing laundry for
people and cannot save anything after paying for three meals to pay house
rent," she noted. As the unpredictable Afghan spring yields to summer,
many homeless people like Laldana are trying for refuge in war-damaged
buildings and houses in the western part of Kabul. Most have either come
from Pakistan and Iran or they are Kabul locals fallen on hard times
following huge rent increases last year.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34261&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the reconstruction of the country's principal road

A major project to rehabilitate the 1,200 km main highway connecting the
Afghan capital, Kabul, with the southern city of Kandahar and Herat in the
west was launched last November. "We'll help develop a modern
infrastructure so that Afghan entrepreneurs will be able to move products
from one city to the next, and so that people will be able to find work,
they'll be able to put food on the table," pledged US President George
Bush at the time. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has stated that
reconstruction of the country's principal road system is key to
Afghanistan's economic recovery.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34175&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: New beginning for national police force

As Afghanistan faces growing instability, the government has launched a
vast training programme to create a 50,000-strong national police force.
The new programme, launched on Sunday, is supported by the US and will
train thousands of policemen and women each year. "The initiative is aimed
to strengthen central government's national capacity and a significant
step towards the creation of a 50,000 trained national police force and
12,000 border police within next five years," Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Afghan
interior minister, told IRIN on Sunday at the inaugural ceremony of the
National Police Training Centre (NPTC) in the capital, Kabul. "The first
participants of the centre are 40 police officers, who will be trained in
police-instructor development," Nazar Mohammad Nikzad, the interior
ministry's deputy director of education, told IRIN, adding that after
three weeks these officers would become the first members of the
constable-level police-training instructors.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34177&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with the chief justice

Having imposed a ban on cable television and been accused of curtailing
women's rights, the 75-year-old cleric and chief justice of Afghanistan,
Fazl-e Hadi Shinwari, is one of the most controversial figures in
President Hamid Karzai's administration. In an exclusive interview with
IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Shinwari spoke of the difficulties
affecting the task of reconstructing the judicial system and explained why
he opposed cable television. He told IRIN that Islam needed to be given a
prominent role in the new constitution, but that women should be free to
work and get educated.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34192&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: New centre for malnourished children in the north

Pakai, aged 25 looks happy for the first time in months as she cradles her
sickly young baby. "We thought that he would certainly die because he was
so weak but now he is improving," she told IRIN in the northern Afghan
city of Mazar-e Sharif. Pakai and a dozen more mothers nurse their
malnourished babies in the first Therapeutic Feeding Centre (TFC) to be
opened in a government hospital in northern Afghanistan. This new centre
is being established and operated with assistance from the international
NGO, Save the Children and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
According to several nutritional surveys carried out by different aid
agencies over the past year, up to 16,000 children in northern Afghanistan
were severely malnourished and needed supplementary feeding to recover and
survive.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34201&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Second round of nationwide polio campaign begins

The second round of a three-day nationwide campaign to immunise over six
million children under the age of five against polio was launched in
Afghanistan on Tuesday. On the same day, the UN announced that the country
stood on the verge of eradicating the crippling disease. The message came
as the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF reported that no cases of
polio had yet been identified in Afghanistan this year. "This year we know
that there is no case of polio found in the country, this is the first
step towards a polio-free Afghanistan," said Edward Carwardine, a UNICEF
spokesman, noting that a country had to have three consecutive years with
no cases of polio in order for it to be declared polio free.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34211&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN: Flood relief fund in pipeline

An emergency relief fund for flooding is to be established in Pakistan,
the government announced on Tuesday, following warnings of severe water
incursion this year. "We have been suffering from a drought but now it's
over and the meteorological office is warning of flooding this year so we
need to be prepared," Public relations officer for Pakistan's Ministry of
Water and Power, Abdul Akbar told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. "The
severe drought that started in 1998 is taking its toll and this is going
to have an effect on the ground as it has remained dry for so long even
though we expect normal rainfall this year, there could be severe
flooding," an official at the meteorological office in Islamabad told
IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34215&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Waiting area on Chaman border closing down

The waiting area for Afghan asylum seekers on Pakistan's southwestern
border with Afghanistan will close at the end of July, the office of the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed to IRIN on Monday. "It
is unclear how many people don't want to move, but it is a tense area and
we feel this is a good opportunity for those who want to return to go
home," the UNHCR spokesman for Pakistan, Jack Redden, said. "The makeshift
refugee camp was inside Pakistani territory, and the government did not
want it to continue there," he added. The move follows the first meeting
between the two governments and the UN refugee agency under the Tripartite
Commission established earlier this year.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34174&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN: IOM concerned about new migrant agreement

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Tajikistan has said
that an agreement soon to be signed by Tajik and Russian officials to
improve the rights for Tajik migrants travelling to Russia would not make
much difference. "This agreement is OK, but does not really solve the
problems Tajik migrants face, as it is so vague and has very little [in
the way of] implementation mechanisms," the head of the IOM mission in
Tajikistan, Igor Bosc, told IRIN from the capital, Dushanbe, on Monday.
"It will satisfy the politicians, and has been deliberately kept vague,"
he added.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34182&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN: World Bank approves US $20 million for education

The World Bank (WB) has approved US $20 million for an "Education
Modernization Project" to be carried out in Tajikistan in collaboration
with the country's Ministry of Education. "The education system in
Tajikistan has been in decline due to war and economic collapse for over
10 years. This has affected the quality of education in most areas, but
particularly in rural areas and for the urban poor," the project manager
for the World Bank (WB), Eluned Schweitzer, told IRIN from Moscow on
Wednesday. Tajikistan inherited a quality education system during the
Soviet era, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with civil
war from 1992 to 1997, the system crumbled and will take years to rebuild,
experts say. The education system has suffered greatly from lack of
resources, and many skilled teaching staff have left or are not entering
the profession due to poor wages and conditions. Most of the schools were
looted and qualified teachers fled abroad.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34244&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

Three people died in a powerful earthquake that rocked southern Kazakhstan
early on Friday, the Central Asian state's emergencies agency said.
"According to the information we have at this moment, three people died. A
woman with fractured legs was hospitalised," the agency's duty officer
told Reuters. The epicentre of the tremor, which measured up to 6.5 on the
Richter scale, was in a steppe area some 300 km west of Kazakhstan's
commercial capital and largest city, Almaty, the agency said. Only two
houses were destroyed near the epicentre, where there are three villages.
But the duty officer added: "Practically all the mud-brick houses there
were seriously damaged." He said around 24,000 people lived in the
quake-affected area. In Almaty itself, the quake was measured at about 3.5
on the Richter scale, but no damage was reported in the city. The tremor
was also felt in Bishkek, the capital of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, but no
casualties were reported there.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34284&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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