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 128
6 - 12 September 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: US aid package leaves Afghans feeling short-changed
AFGHANISTAN: Aid agency suspends operation after deadly attack
AFGHANISTAN: Multi-million dollar programme to address Afghan youth
AFGHANISTAN: Funding needed in order to clear landmines by 2010
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with UN Special Rapporteur on Housing
PAKISTAN: Focus on anti-polio campaign in the NWFP
PAKISTAN: Critical reservoirs silting up
PAKISTAN: Provinces ordered to raise inter-provincial border police force
PAKISTAN: Oil tanker cleanup behind schedule
KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on mental health in the south
KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Focus on illegal labour migration in southern
  border regions
TAJIKISTAN: WFP consolidates feeding programme in schools
TURKMENISTAN: Father of human rights activist forced into internal exile
UZBEKISTAN: Human rights campaigners ask OSCE for protectio
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap



AFGHANISTAN: US aid package leaves Afghans feeling short-changed

Less than one percent of the money requested by US president George W
Bush, in an overall funding request of US $ 87 billion to cover post-war
activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, would go towards Afghan
reconstruction, the representative of a leading NGO in the country said on
Wednesday. "Actually, less than half of a percent, as much of this money
will go to security priorities of training and supporting the ANA [Afghan
National Army] and police," Paul Barker, country director for the US-based
humanitarian organisation CARE International in Afghanistan, told IRIN
from Kabul.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36495&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Aid agency suspends operation after deadly attack

Following an armed attack on a Danish aid agency in the central province
of Ghazni on Monday which killed four aid workers and wounded one, the
Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR) said it had suspended
activities pending a security assessment. "It is still being considered
how should we react but now we have suspended all our operations until
further notice," Gorm Pedersen the director of DACAAR, told IRIN on
Wednesday in the capital Kabul.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36498&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Multi-million dollar programme to address Afghan youth

The Afghan government have unveiled a multi-million dollar project
designed to address some of the needs of Afghan youth, IRIN learnt on
Monday. "Seventy percent of two million unemployed Afghans are the youth
who have been deprived of education during the years of war, mainly during
the Taliban time," Mohammad Ghuas Bashiri, a deputy minister in the
ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, told IRIN in Kabul. According to
the World Bank, which administers the US $2.98 million Japanese-funded
youth project, recent studies indicate that there are over five million
young people in Afghanistan, many of whom are severely disadvantaged.
Despite the influx of developmet aid in the post-Taliban era, there are
currently very few programmes aimed specifically at the development of the
country's youth.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36469&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Funding needed in order to clear landmines by 2010

Afghanistan could be free of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO'S) by
2010 if aid donor support is sustained and clearance operations continue
at their current rate, according to a report released by the United
Nations Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (UNMACA). "We have been
working closely with the government and devised a 10-year strategy plan,"
programme manager for UNMACA, Richard Daniel Kelly, told IRIN from the
Afghan capital, Kabul on Monday. Within the first five years of the plan
it is hoped that high impact areas, those which are heavily populated and
where economic activity is hindered by the threat of landmines and UXO's,
would be cleared. In the following five years, low impact areas would be
cleared.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36432&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with UN Special Rapporteur on Housing

Lack of adequate housing is becoming critical in both rural and urban
parts of Afghanistan. Two decades of conflict have left hundreds of
thousands of Afghans homeless with an equal number living in temporary or
sub-standard accomodation. In an interview with IRIN, Miloon Kothari, a
Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the United Nations Commission
of Human Rights said that lack of housing and land rights is feeding
instability and insecurity in some parts of the country. Kothari has been
invited by the Afghan government to look at housing, land rights and
displacement in the country.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36561&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN: Focus on anti-polio campaign in the NWFP

An old man carrying a small child threaded his way through a group of
bearded men who had assembled around a visiting provincial minister and
health officials in the courtyard of a small, rural hospital in
Landikotal, close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. He held the
two-year-old girl firmly, tipping her head back and squeezing her cheeks
gently so that her mouth remained open long enough for the minister to
position a little vial(bottle containing polio drops) above it: a few
polio drops later, a small coup had been achieved. The campaign to
eradicate polio in Pakistan's tribal areas had begun in earnest.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36428&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Critical reservoirs silting up

The rapidly dwindling capacity of Pakistan's three major water reservoirs,
Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma is an issue of grave concern, with the storage
capacity of the facilities rapidly depreciating due to silt, adding to the
deficit in Pakistan's water resources, a government official told IRIN on
Wednesday. "This is of very serious concern. The loss is about 25 percent.
I have been there and seen an aerial view of Tarbela and there is an
island which is all silt nearing the dam," Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, the
Minister for Water, Power, Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, said. The
Tarbela reservoir is on the river Indus, about 80 km northwest of the
capital, Islamabad. Mangla Dam is on the river Jhelum, about 30 km
upstream of Jhelum city (120 km from Islamabad).

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36499&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Provinces ordered to raise inter-provincial border police force

An elite provincial border police force is to be set up along the
confluence of the Sindh-Punjab-Balochistan borders in southern and central
Pakistan, where growing lawlessness and sabotage have contributed to a
certain amount of unease, a government official said on Tuesday. "The
respective provinces have been asked to build up their police forces in
the trouble-areas," Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told IRIN in the
capital, Islamabad on Tuesday. Earlier, a leading national English
broadsheet in Pakistan reported that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister
Zafarullah Khan Jamali approved, on Monday, a Rs. 600 million (US
$10,805,554) budget to enable the recruitment of some 1,500 policemen and
high-tech hardware so that the trouble-spot could be policed better.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36457&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Oil tanker cleanup behind schedule

Cleanup operations following the oil spill just off the coast of the
southern Pakistani port city of Karachi from a grounded tanker in August
are taking longer than expected, a port official said on Thursday. "The
cleanup has not gained momentum, I am not happy with it at the moment. It
has not gained the support it needs," Brigadier Iftikhar Arshad, the
manager of the Karachi Port Trust, told IRIN from Karachi. The
Greek-registered Tasman Spirit, which veered off course and ran aground on
27 July, carried about 67,000 mt of crude oil. More than 15,000 mt spilled
into the sea following the high-velocity impact, causing a huge oil slick
that spread quickly across a large portion of the coastline and caused a
popular beach along a thickly populated shorefront to be closed to the
public after it was swamped with a thick layer of oil.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36529&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on mental health in the south

Health authorities in southern Kyrgyzstan are concerned that mental
illness is becoming more common. Official statistics indicate that the
number of mentally ill people in the southern Osh province alone has risen
almost 20 percent over last year. Nearly 7,000 more people went to a
doctor with a stated mental condition in 2002 compared to 2001, while, law
enforcement agencies say a rise in certain categories of crime is related
to an increase in psychiatric disorders. "The demon has got into me," a
businessman in Osh, which had killed his wife, two neighbours and injured
three people, recently told police following his arrest. Some health
specialist have noted that more and more young people with obvious signs
of mental disorder were on the streets of Kyrgyz towns and villages and
that the number of suicides was growing. One young woman ended her own
life last month by setting fire to herself in public in the city of Osh.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36483&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN

KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Focus on illegal labour migration in southern
border regions

Experts and some government officials have expressed concern over illegal
labour migration in the south of Kyrgyzstan. They say that a growing
number of illegal labour migrants from neighbouring Uzbekistan cause
social tensions, drive down wages and could spark unrest. But local NGOs
argue labour has moved across the region for generations and new
agreements need to be reached to regularise the practice.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36527&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN: WFP consolidates feeding programme in schools

The World Food Programme (WFP) in Tajikistan is consolidating its feeding
programme for schools by directly assisting 64,710 pupils and teachers in
the mountainous Badakshon region in the east of the country. "These people
were already being fed one meal a day at school, but now WFP has assumed
direct responsibility for the programme in that region," Ardag
Meghdessian, WFP country director for Tajikistan, told IRIN on Thursday
from the capital, Dushanbe. Throughout Tajikistan, WFP currently serves
more than 336,000 students, teachers and support staff a nutritious, hot
meal through programmes at 1,707 schools. "That's roughly half of all
schools in the country," Meghdessain pointed out. The food agency is
taking over in Badakshon as it now has the capacity to do so.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36528&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN: Father of human rights activist forced into internal exile

The father of a human rights activist has been forced into internal exile,
allegedly due to his daughter's activities, namely founding an
organisation to tackle human rights violations in Turkmenistan, the most
reclusive Central Asian nation. According to Tajigul Begmedova her father,
Sazak Begmedov was seized by Turkmen police in Ashgabat late August. "It
happened on Sunday [31 August] day time, he [Sazak Begmedov] was coming
back from a drugs store and he saw four policemen near [his] house who
stopped him and demanded that he get into a car," Tajigul Begmedova, head
of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation and Sazak Begmedov's daughter, told
IRIN from the eastern Bulgarian town of Varna.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36438&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN: Human rights campaigners ask OSCE for protection

Human rights campaigners in Uzbekistan recently met with the OSCE
[Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe] mission and asked
for protection against abuses targeting some rights defenders in the most
populous Central Asian nation. "OSCE in Uzbekistan, Ambassador Ahmet
Erozan invited human rights campaigners [for a meeting] and we had a very
useful discussion," Tolib Yakubov, head of the Human Rights Society of
Uzbekistan, a local rights group, told IRIN from the Uzbek capital,
Tashkent on Tuesday. According to Yakubov, before the meeting, held on 4
September at the 'Poyitaht' hotel in Tashkent, a group of human rights
campaigners also staged a protest, demanding protection from international
organisations, including the OSCE.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36462&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

Kazakhstan and Belarus signed an agreement on joining the international
North-South transportation corridor on Thursday in Russia's second largest
city of St. Petersburg at an international Eurasian conference on
transportation. The North-South corridor aims to connect Asian and
European countries through the Persian Gulf, Iran, the Caspian Sea, Russia
and onwards to Europe. Kazakhstan hosted an international conference of
landlocked developing countries in late August focusing on freedom of
access to the sea, infrastructure development, efficiency of transport
operations and international support measures.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36542&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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