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

Tel: +92-51-2211451 Ext 484 
Fax: +92-51-2211 450 
e-mail: irin@irin.org.pk


Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 133
11 - 17 October 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: ISAF must expand to areas of insecurity, say experts
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with governor of Paktika province
AFGHANISTAN: Kabul warns northern warlords
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Nadya, rural teacher
AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR Turkmenistan ends humanitarian deliveries
AFGHANISTAN: Ceasefire between feuding warlords holds
AFGHANISTAN: Hospital closure could leave Paktika without health care
IRAN: Reformists welcome Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi
KYRGYZSTAN: Elderly call for improved conditions
TAJIKISTAN: ADB grant for irrigation development
TURKMENISTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Evidence of forced displacement, says report
UZBEKISTAN: Ferghana emergency preparedness needs to be regional
PAKISTAN: UNHCR returnee iris testing tops 200,000
CENTRAL ASIA: Interview with Felix Corley, religious rights activist
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap


AFGHANISTAN: ISAF must expand to areas of insecurity, say experts

The decision by the United Nations Security Council to expand the
International Security Force for Afghanistan (ISAF) beyond the confines of
the capital, Kabul, has evoked cautious optimism among regional analysts
who want to see the force address the country's most pressing security
needs. "Potentially, it's very significant," Vikram Parekh, a senior
analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Kabul, told IRIN.
"Everything now depends on how the actual expansion and deployment is
carried out." While welcoming the decision, he cautioned that the strength
of the force, where it would be stationed, and exactly what it would be
mandated to do, had yet to be decided, pending the arrival of a Security
Council delegation to the capital later this month. "It all depends on
what the Security Council decides after their delegation comes to Kabul,"
he said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37203&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with governor of Paktika province

Ongoing insecurity in southern and eastern Afghanistan has meant that
much-needed aid and development work has been severely curtailed in the
region. Mohammad Ali Jalali is the governor of the isolated and unstable
southeastern province of Paktika. The mainly-Pashtun province borders
Pakistan, and has seen ongoing attacks by renegade Taliban and their
sympathisers on Coalition forces, Afghan police and army, as well as on
aid workers. In an interview with IRIN he said that hardly any
reconstruction and development work had taken place in his vulnerable
province either by the Afghan government or international aid agencies.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37253&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Kabul warns northern warlords

Following a ceasefire signed on 9 October after serious fighting between
two feuding warlords in Afghanistan's troubled north, the interior
ministry told IRIN that Kabul had told Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum and Gen Ata
Mohammad - the two warlords responsible for the violence - that they would
be removed from their government posts if they violated the fragile peace
agreement. "We have warned the two generals that if they fail to stick to
the agreement and create any disturbance the government will seriously
decide on their fate and they will be sacked from their current positions
and will not have any role in the government now and in future,"
Helaluddin Helal, the Afghan deputy interior minister, said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37256&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Nadya, rural teacher

Nadya is a 25 year-old female teacher who lives in Mashkhail, a remote
district 15 km from Sharan, the principal town in the conservative
southeastern Afghan province of Paktika. Her experiences highlight many of
the problems the government faces in bringing education to the millions
who need it.In an interview with IRIN, she said that many more girls would
be at school if there were more female teachers like her. She added that
Afghanistan needed more female professionals in general as a means of
promoting greater women's participation in this male-dominated society.
Her classroom is a tent pitched in the corner of a compound in Mashat
Kheyl village. As far as she knows, she is the only female teacher in the
province. Following the fall of the Taliban regime nearly two years ago,
the Afghan government has prioritised education in the war-ravaged
country, with the result that over 3 million children, including hundreds
of thousands of girls, have returned to school. But after such a long
period of war, lack of teachers, school buildings and equipment, as well
as cultural resistance to the education of girls, are some of the key
issues facing Kabul.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37183&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: UNHCR Turkmenistan ends humanitarian deliveries

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
has dispatched its last humanitarian consignment to Afghanistan via
Turkmenistan. "This marks the end of a very successful cross-border
humanitarian assistance programme," Ruven Menikdiwela, the agency's head
of office in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, told IRIN on Friday. "We
particularly want to thank the Turkmen authorities for making it the
success that it was." According to the UNHCR official, following the
initial downfall of the Taliban regime in December 2001, Turkmenistan,
sharing a 744-km border with Afghanistan, proved an invaluable logistics
hub in dispatching tonnes of much-needed food and non-food related
assistance to the north of the country. Since October 2001, UNHCR
Turkmenistan has dispatched some 500 mt of non-food related assistance
through its southern border, including considerable quantities of tents,
jerry cans, blankets, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and plastic sheeting
destined for returning Afghan refugees.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37184&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Ceasefire between feuding warlords holds

A ceasefire signed last week between two feuding warlords in Afghanistan's
troubled north continues to hold, with rival forces withdrawing from
front-line positions, according to a United Nations spokesman. "The
agreement, signed on Thursday, is being implemented and we hope that this
will continue to be the case for the Saturday agreement as well," the
spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan
(UNAMA), Manoel de Almeida e Silva, told IRIN in the Afghan capital,
Kabul, on Sunday. "However, as you know, the north does not have a very
good record of implementing their agreements, so we have to keep [up] our
hopes," e Silva said, adding that caution was the need of the hour.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37186&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Hospital closure could leave Paktika without health care

Sitting in the waiting room at the provincial hospital, Bibi Bakhtewazir
told IRIN she had travelled several hours by car to reach the facility in
Shiran, the principal city of the southeastern province of Paktika, to get
medical care for her malnourished child. "The doctor told me to take him
to Ghazni [a neighbouring province around 250 km from Shiran] as the
province's only hospital is closing down due to lack of funding," the
mother-of-12 said. Bakhtewazir said she was from Barmal, a border district
of Paktika, where there was no health facility or medical doctors.
Bakhtewazir is one of thousands in the border province who will soon have
to go to neighbouring provinces via unpaved roads to reach the nearest
health facility as the province's only hospital in Shiran is due to close
soon. "We don't have a car nor can we afford to take a special taxi to
Ghazni," she stressed.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37212&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

IRAN: Reformists welcome Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

Thousands of Iranians descended on Tehran's city airport on Tuesday
evening to welcome their new national hero: the country's first Nobel
Laureate, 56-year-old Shirin Ebadi. Some had travelled for hours, from
cities other than Tehran to be here. Now they were clutching flowers and
waving banners, many of them wearing white to symbolise peace. The party
atmosphere was joyous and emotional, with people linking arms to sing
Iran's pre-revolutionary national anthem and chant anti-government
slogans. Hundreds of police with batons lined the streets, but looked
bemused by the euphoria, and no animosity ensued between them and the
revellers. "Tonight is an exceptional night - it's a momentous moment for
children's rights and women's rights," said Ja'far Vakili, who had come
with his wife and daughter from Karaj, a town an hour's drive from the
capital.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37217&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN

KYRGYZSTAN: Elderly call for improved conditions

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, together with the
comprehensive health care it the offered its citizens, elderly people in
the mountainous state of Kyrgyzstan are increasingly feeling sidelined by
a system that no longer cares. "I bought an apartment in Soviet times and
lived well. I planned to live on a fairly-earned pension," Svetlana
Valentinovna told IRIN in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. But following
independence and the introduction of a new national currency - the som -
the 78-year-old soon saw her plans fall apart. "My pension was not
sufficient for anything," she cried. Adding to her pain, her own son
deceived her by selling her home with a promise of taking his elderly
mother in afterwards. "Now I have to live in a nursing home. I have
nowhere else to go," she said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37222&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN

TAJIKISTAN: ADB grant for irrigation development

A technical assistance (TA) grant of US $600,000 is being prepared by the
Asian Development Bank (ADB) to develop and repair irrigation facilities
in order to help poor farmers in Tajikistan, according to an official.
"The TA amount is just to prepare the project for ADB's pipeline for next
year," Emile Gozali, a project economist in the Agriculture, Environment
and Natural Resources Division at ADB headquarters, told IRIN from the
Philippines capital, Manila on Tuesday. A loan of about $20 million would
cover between 60,000 and 80,000 ha, or about 10 percent of the country's
irrigation command area, he said, adding that twofold project goals
envisaged the prevention of operational failures of key irrigation
facilities, as well as capacity-building for local government and farmers
to run the water systems on a sustainable basis.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37201&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Evidence of forced displacement, says report

The Geneva-based Global Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Project
(GIDPP), initiated by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) at the request
of the United Nations, has cited two Central Asian countries as part of
its global report on IDPs. "Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are two examples
of arbitrary forced displacement in Central Asia today," Christophe Beau,
a senior information officer with the Norwegian Refugee Council's GIDPP,
told IRIN on Monday, noting, however, there had been a lack of information
on both countries. According to the report, released on Friday at the
annual human rights conference of the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Warsaw, 13 of the 55 OSCE member states -
covering Europe, North America and Central Asia - were impacted by
internal displacement. The 13, comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia,
Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldavia, Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, currently accounted for
12 percent of the world's 25 million IDPs.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37180&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN-UZBEKISTAN

UZBEKISTAN: Ferghana emergency preparedness needs to be regional

Emergency preparedness and tackling natural disasters in the Ferghana
Valley needs a regional approach, experts told IRIN on Thursday. "The
problem of natural disasters is an issue for all the parts of the Ferghana
Valley, because it is surrounded by the Tien-Shan and Pamir Mountains.
There is a risk of landslides and earthquakes," Nilufar Begibayeva, Mercy
Corps's natural disaster preparedness project instructor, said in Andijan,
an Uzbek town on the eastern edge of the Ferghana Valley. "The situation
on natural disasters is a little bit better this year compared to the
previous one," Vladimir Huraliev, Mercy Corps's national project officer,
told IRIN in Andijan, adding that in some cases there were incidences of
rising ground waters.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37252&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN

PAKISTAN: UNHCR returnee iris testing tops 200,000

The number of Afghan refugees checked through a unique iris-recognition
system before they are repatriated to Afghanistan under an assistance
programme run by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) passed the 200,000 mark last week, according to a UNHCR
official. "Iris testing has been considered a great success because it
allows us to maintain a check on legitimate returnees and discourages any
cheating," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad, on Monday, adding that his agency was very pleased
with the performance of the state-of-the-art technology, often under
adverse conditions. The use of the biometric data enabled UNHCR to detect
anyone who had previously been through the test and was seeking assistance
for a second time, an agency press statement said. Returnees are entitled
to a travel grant that varies with the distance to be travelled, as well
as food and some non-food items like shelter material. If the test reveals
that the refugee has been enrolled before, the individual is refused
assistance.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37185&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Interview with Felix Corley, religious rights activist

While human rights have long proven a source of concern in the five
Central Asian nations, the issue of religious freedom has gone largely
unreported. Felix Corley, the editor of Forum 18 News Service, an agency
monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern
Europe, is endeavouring to change that. In an interview with IRIN from
London, he called on the international community to pay greater attention
to this pressing issue.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37257&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap

Relations between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan took a downturn this week
following several incidents on their common border. On Thursday, Bishkek
expressed "deep concern" over Tashkent's decision to drop an official
inquiry into the killing of a Kyrgyz citizen by Uzbek border guards last
July. Whereas Uzbek foreign ministry spokesman Ilkhom Zakirov described
the shooting as accidental and provoked by an attack on the Uzbek border
patrol, a statement by his Kyrgyz counterpart dismissed the explanation,
saying such a categorical attempt to defend its servicemen without
objective consideration of the circumstances only caused tension and
damaged the atmosphere of friendship, stability and trust in the border
area. His comments follow a second incident in less than a week, when
Uzbek border guards shot two people dead and injured two, including a
Kyrgyz citizen.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37275&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


IRIN-Asia
Tel: +92-51-2211451
Fax: +92-51-2292918
Email: IrinAsia@irin.org.pk

[This Item is Delivered to the "Asia-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to
change your keywords, contact e-mail: IRIN@ocha.unon.org or Web:  
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this
item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
sites requires written IRIN permission.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003


distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International                  web: www.cidi.org
    Disaster Information             listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Central Asia                       www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/casia