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 140
29 November - 5 December 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Voter registration begins in Konduz
AFGHANISTAN: EC funds reconstruction of Kabul-Torkham road
AFGHANISTAN: Key humanitarian route reopens
IRAN: Interview with Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office for Drug 
  Control and Crime Prevention
PAKISTAN: ADB backs reform programme in Punjab Province
PAKISTAN: New HIV/AIDS cases in Sindh
PAKISTAN: Literacy rates need boosting
UZBEKISTAN: Living with disability in the south
UZBEKISTAN: Rights groups discount announced amnesty
KAZAKHSTAN: Focus on the rise in juvenile alcoholism
KYRGYZSTAN: Early marriages on the rise, say experts
CENTRAL ASIA: No casualties or damage from China quake
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap


AFGHANISTAN: Voter registration begins in Konduz

Murad Khan, a farmer, waited patiently in a long queue on Tuesday. He was
lining up to register as a voter, keen to take part in the first
democratic initiative in Afghanistan in more than a generation, as
UN-backed voter registration got under way in the northeastern city of
Konduz for the country's national elections due to be held next year.
Murad Khan told IRIN that even if the election went ahead, people in his
village were unlikely to be able to vote for their choice of candidate.
"They would not dare to vote against the wishes of the local commanders
[warlords] and authorities if they continue to rule us and manipulate
[local] government structures," he said quietly, anxious not to be
overheard.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38195&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: EC funds reconstruction of Kabul-Torkham road

The EC has awarded a €26 million (about US $31.5 million) contract to a
Chinese engineering company, China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation, for
the first reconstruction phase of the vital 222-km Kabul-Jalalabad-Torkham
(Towr Kham) road.  "We are now glad to get started. As Afghanistan's
economic recovery accelerates, the road will need to bear thousands of
heavy vehicles every week. We want to ensure that the road we build is
very strong so it will be a contributing factor to Afghanistan economic
growth, its trade and transport for many years to come with a minimum of
maintenance," the head of the EC Representation Office in Kabul, Karl
Harbo, said at the signing of the contract on Sunday.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38233&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Key humanitarian route reopens

Aziz Agha, a driver, told IRIN that since the closure of the Salang tunnel
in July it had been taking him five days to drive his 20,000-litre diesel
tanker south to the capital, Kabul, from the northern city of Heyratan
along unmade roads across the Hindu Kush mountains. Now, this key route
via the tunnel has been partially reopened, coinciding with the blocking
of the high passes by snow and ice. "It is only a day and half now that
the tunnel has been reopened," the 35-year- old said in Salang. According
to the Kabul-Salang highway department, the tunnel is now operational for
traffic from 1800 to 0600, with 70 percent of the reconstruction work
having been completed. The route will become fully operational in
mid-December, then enabling between 1,500 and 2,000 vehicles a day to
bypass the hazards and delays otherwise incurred by having to cross the
mountains.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38212&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


IRAN: Interview with Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office for Drug
Control and Crime Prevention

During a visit to the desolate border area with Afghanistan and Pakistan,
senior Iranian officials told Antonio Maria Costa, the director of the
United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, of the battle
the Iranians were facing against drug trafficking. In the last eight
months alone, 17 Iranian soldiers have been killed in nearly 200
shoot-outs with traffickers. As Costa viewed the rugged, porous mountain
passes, Iranian commanders warned him that this was not a war they could
fight on their own, and increasingly sophisticated equipment was needed to
keep up with the smugglers. In an interview with IRIN, Costa stressed that
stability in neighbouring countries was needed in order for the endless
flow of drugs through Iran to be stopped.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38247&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN


PAKISTAN: ADB backs reform programme in Punjab Province

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is assisting the government of Punjab,
Pakistan's most populous province, by way of a US $204-million loan
package approved on Thursday, with an ambitious reform programme that will
make service delivery more efficient and pro-poor, according to an
official. "There is a major effort in the Punjab Province. We selected it
because of the large population," Marshuk Ali Shah, the ADB country
representative, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. The Punjab Resource
Management Programme is the first part of a planned cluster of three loans
envisaged to amount up to $500 million over five years, aiming to improve
Punjab's socioeconomic indicators and curb rising poverty levels, as
outlined in the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), an
ADB press release said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38232&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: New HIV/AIDS cases in Sindh

Seven new HIV-positive cases have been diagnosed in the southern province
of Sindh, bringing the total of identified cases to 31 since September,
according to an official. "Almost all the cases are intravenous drug
users, with only a few attributed to sexual contact," Dr Qamar Abbas of
the Sindh AIDS Control Programme (SACP) official, told IRIN from Karachi
on Wednesday. The SACP scrambled to screen other jails in the province
after seven HIV cases had been diagnosed in a jail in the town of Larkana
in late August, and subsequently found three more in Karachi, and then
another four in Hyderabad and Sukkur, Abbas said. "HIV-positive cases in
intravenous drug users appears to be a new trend. Previously, all the
cases we found were due to sexual contact," he added.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38210&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: Literacy rates need boosting

Pakistan is lagging behind in its efforts to achieve a higher literacy
rate by 2015, as part of the global Education For All (EFA) movement, but
is on the right track to meet the six goals outlined in the Dakar
Framework for Action, an agreement which came into effect in 2000 and is
supported by over 180 countries, the UN system and other international
agencies, according to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) official. "Our assessment is based on an
EFA global monitoring report from 2002, and statistics at the time, but I
think the government is putting in a fair amount of effort to reform the
educational system, and we are assisting them in proving that the
estimates are wrong," Ingeborg Breines, the UNESCO country representative,
told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. According to the Dakar agreement,
which was concluded 10 years after the birth of the EFA movement in 1990,
all children in the 184 countries that have signed up to the World
Education Forum should have access to free and compulsory primary
education of good quality, with vulnerable and disadvantaged children in
particular being provided with comprehensive early childhood care and
education.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38193&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Living with disability in the south

Sitat Mukimova, 35, is from the southwestern Uzbek province of Bukhara,
having left her family, including five brothers and four sisters, who had
rejected her. She now lives in a nursing home for disabled and elderly
people in Yakkabag District of the southern Kashkadarya Province. "I am
suffering from poliomyelitis," she told IRIN, stuttering as she spoke. "In
1996, when I finished school, my father died and it was a shock for me. I
was so grieving, and for some reason my legs stopped obeying me. Since
that time I became an invalid." The nursing home she lives in was built in
1984 with a capacity for 160 persons. Normally, an elderly person unable
to live with a family, or someone lacking housing of his own, would be
taken care of there. After Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, the
establishment was renamed Good Deed House and now accommodates not only
elderly but also young people with disabilities.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38214&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Rights groups discount announced amnesty

Rights activists have dismissed a proposed amnesty by the authoritarian
government of President Islam Karimov to free up to 7,000 prisoners,
describing the move as mere window dressing to appease international
pressure groups. "There was such an amnesty last year. The government is
under international pressure as thousands of Muslims have been wrongly
prosecuted and imprisoned following court hearings that were unfair,"
Tolib Yokubov, the head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, told
IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, on Wednesday. His comments came one
day after a decree published in government newspapers said repentant
prisoners serving up to 10 years for a first offence of belonging to
"extremist religious organisations" might be freed, a Reuters report said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38220&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


KAZAKHSTAN: Focus on the rise in juvenile alcoholism

The number of juvenile alcoholics in Kazakhstan is rapidly increasing
despite the state's efforts to curb the nation's alcohol drinking habit. A
national centre designed to introduce a healthier lifestyle to Kazakhs
reports that this year 610 children in the country were diagnosed as
alcoholics. In 1999, only 29 such cases were recorded.  "These figures do
not reflect the gravity of the situation, because they register only kids
who have been forced to see a doctor or caught by the police," Raisa
Kolokina, the anti-alcohol programme's coordinator at the national centre,
told IRIN on Wednesday from the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38237&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KAZAKHSTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: Early marriages on the rise, say experts

Officials and experts have expressed concern over early marriages in
Kyrgyzstan, a tendency observed in most of the country's rural areas. "I
got married when I was 15, because I was pregnant," Nazira, a teenage
resident of Kyzyl-Suu village in the northeastern province of Ysyk-Kol,
told IRIN. "I didn't know that such relations could lead to a birth of a
child. I got to know that I was pregnant when it was too late," she added.
In order to hide her shame, she had to get married. Osipa Usenbayeva, the
headmistress of the Lenin school in the Kyzyl-Suu village, told IRIN there
were many similar incidents. "On average, 10 to 15 girls from our school a
year get married," she said, noting that there were 20 girls in each
class. "I couldn't say whose fault it is, whether it was the fault of
parents who failed to take proper care of their daughters or our fault for
not informing them about sexual relations between men and women," she
added.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38172&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


CENTRAL ASIA: No casualties or damage from China quake

There have been no casualties or damage reported in the Kazakh commercial
capital, Almaty, and the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, IRIN learnt on Tuesday.
This after an earthquake struck northwestern China a day earlier, killing
at least 11 people. "The earthquake measured four on the Richter scale in
Almaty. We don't have any casualties or damage," Kairzhan Turezhanov, a
press-secretary for the Kazakh emergency situations agency, told IRIN from
Almaty, adding that in two districts close to Chinese border, Uygur and
Kegen, small cracks in some buildings had been reported due to the fact
that houses there were mainly made from mud brick, but no collapsed
buildings. The earthquake was felt in Almaty in the early hours of Monday,
followed by at least 10 minor aftershocks, which measured up to 1.5 on the
Richter scale. According to the Kazakh seismology institute, more powerful
tremors are not expected. Turezhanov noted that in conjunction with the
governorship, their Almaty provincial department on emergency situations
was conducting the necessary operations on the ground.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38192&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

The Uzbek government was hushing up foot-and-mouth disease to protect its
reputation, a local media report said on Tuesday. According to some
veterinary sources, cases of foot-and-mouth disease were recently detected
among cattle in the country. Neighbouring Kazakhstan has also been trying
to keep its record on the disease "clean" in an attempt to secure its meat
exports to neighbouring Russia. However, Russian authorities recently
banned meat imports from Kazakhstan, asserting that "suspect" products
could otherwise find their way into Russia via the Central Asian nation's
vast territory. The Open World Leadership Center (OWLC), established by
the US Congress in 1999, on Tuesday announced pilot exchange programmes
with Ukraine and Uzbekistan. It will be hosting a total of 99 political
and civic leaders from the two countries in the US in December 2003,
thereby demonstrating its interest in and commitment to the two ex-Soviet
republics.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38257&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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