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-CAS Weekly Round-up 142
13 - 19 December 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Historic Loya Jirga meets to debate constitution
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Loya Jirga delegate Sa'era Sharif
AFGHANISTAN: Key road rehabilitated - but insecurity remains
PAKISTAN: Japan pledges US $10 million for anti-polio drive
PAKISTAN: UNEP biodiversity information service launched
PAKISTAN: Alternative energy to boost power generation
PAKISTAN: US $875,000 technical assistance grant for Balochistan
TAJIKISTAN: Special report on labour migrants
TAJIKISTAN: Border-guard training centre opens with the support of IOM
TAJIKISTAN: MSF to cease operations
KYRGYZSTAN: ADB emergency loan to repair landslide and flood damage
KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on the juvenile justice system
UZBEKISTAN: UNICEF launches special salt-iodisation campaign
UZBEKISTAN: Government in denial over foot-and-mouth disease
IRAN: More Iraqis go home
KAZAKHSTAN: Media watchdog concerned over draft law on media
TURKMENISTAN: New NGO law leads to confusion and fear
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap



AFGHANISTAN: Historic Loya Jirga meets to debate constitution

Patriotic songs calling for unity sung by a choir of traditionally dressed
Afghan children from the nation's component ethnic groups marked the
launch on Sunday of the historic Loya Jirga, or Grand Assembly, bringing
together 500 representatives, ranging from conservative, illiterate
clerics to Western-educated exiles, to debate a post-conflict
constitution. The Afghan Constitutional Loya Jirga (CLJ) was opened by
Afghan former King Zahir Shah, after having been postponed twice last week
for technical reasons, according to the CLJ commission. The CLJ has
brought together 344 men and 64 women elected from Afghanistan's 32
provinces, 50 men and women chosen by President Hamid Karzai, and 42
chosen to represent various minority groups. A giant white tent at Kabul's
Pul-i-Technic Institute hosted the second big Afghan gathering since the
fall of the Taliban in late 2001. This time, the six- to 10-day meeting
will debate, and hopefully ratify, the country's new 160-article draft
constitution, which has been a key element of a UN-supervised two-year
plan to stabilise the country. The Taliban have sworn to disrupt the CLJ,
and security in Kabul was extra tight.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38425&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Interview with Loya Jirga delegate Sa'era Sharif

As the historic Constitutional Loya Jirga enters its sixth day in the
capital Kabul, the 500-member grand council has yet to tackle the
substantive business of the gathering - ratifying the country's
post-conflict draft constitution. Sa'era Sharif is a delegate from the
eastern province of Khowst, one of just 100 female representatives. In an
interview with IRIN, she gave her views on the week's proceedings and her
hopes for the gathering.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38522&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Key road rehabilitated - but insecurity remains

Sebghatullah, 35, was extremely happy to have reached Kabul in under five
hours from the southern province of Kandahar, a journey that used to take
two days along the key highway rendered unservicable by years of war and
neglect. "I had breakfast in Kandahar today and will have lunch in Kabul
in a few minutes, it is now like a journey by plane," the father of four
told IRIN in Durrani, a district of the central province of Vardak about
40 km south of Kabul.  The first phase of the multimillion dollar-, 482-km
Kabul to Kandahar highway, funded by the US, Japan and Saudi Arabia, was
completed and officially opened by President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday.
"Today we are in the first big happiness of Afghanistan reconstruction. We
are opening the first rehabilitated Afghanistan highway, which is the
prime desire of our people," he said, as he inaugurated the highway. He
was joined by diplomats, ministers and tens of delegates attending the
historic Constitutional Loya Jirga in Kabul.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38473&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


PAKISTAN: Japan pledges US $10 million for anti-polio drive

The Japanese government has pledged 1.83 billion yen, or approximately US
$10 million, to help Pakistan in its drive to eradicate polio, according
to an official from the UN children's agency UNICEF. Minoru Shibuya, the
Japanese ambassador, and Omar Abdi, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan,
signed an agreement on Thursday according to which the amount pledged by
the Japanese government would be used to procure approximately 93 million
doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), Dr Rafah Aziz, a senior UNICEF
health project officer, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. “93 million
doses of the OPV constitute about 42 percent of the total polio vaccine
requirement for 2004,” she said, adding that other donor organisations
would help UNICEF, which had been coordinating and overseeing polio
eradication initiatives in Pakistan, to acquire the remainder of the
required doses.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38508&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: UNEP biodiversity information service launched

A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) initiative seeking to create
Proteus, an electronic biodiversity information service worldwide, was
launched in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Monday. "Proteus is
intended to be an environmental database which provides easily accessible
and reliable information about biodiversity, and the prospects for its
implementation here are very good," Ali Tauqeer Shaikh, the chief
executive of LEAD-Pakistan, the focal point for the global database in
South Asia, told IRIN in Islamabad. The project, in the works for just
over two years since it was first conceived, is intended to be an
Internet-based information resource, providing simpler access globally to
information about biodiversity than ever before. "This is a historic day,
because time will tell that the outcome of the Proteus project will have
an ever-lasting effect on all our efforts since [the 1992 World Earth
Summit in] Rio to conserve biological diversity," Sheikh told a gathering
at the launch, flanked by Shafqat Kakakhel, the UNEP deputy executive
director, and Onder Yucer, the UN resident representative in Pakistan.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38424&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: Alternative energy to boost power generation

About 100 homes in a small village near the capital, Islamabad, are to be
supplied with solar power in the first of a series of endeavours to bring
alternative or renewable energy resources into the national mainstream
over the next decade, according to an official. "We intend to use natural
resources to generate alternative sources of energy," Air Marshal (retd)
Shahid Hamid, the chairman of the Alternative Energy Development Board
(AEDB), told IRIN in his office at the prime minister's secretariat in
Islamabad. A mosque in Alipur Farash, a village nestling in the undulating
countryside on the outskirts of Islamabad, had already been fitted with
solar panels in a test run before at least 100 homes in the community were
provided with the same equipment. "This is just the beginning. We plan to
provide 1,000 homes in each province with electricity through solar
energy. And this is all on a self-help basis: this is all being done
through donations from the private sector," he said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38484&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: US $875,000 technical assistance grant for Balochistan

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a US $875,000 technical
assistance (TA) grant to the Pakistani government for the preparation of
the Balochistan Resource Management Programme, according to an ADB
official. "We're helping the government to streamline operations at both
the federal and provincial levels," Marshuk Ali Shah, the ADB country
director, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. "There are so many
responsibilities that now fit into the provincial government's range of
operations. For example: health facilities and issues, education, the
uplift of rural roads - all are now the responsibilities of various
departments at the provincial and even local government level," he
explained, adding that the TA was aimed at strengthening such endeavours
within the existing framework of governance.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38502&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


TAJIKISTAN: Special report on labour migrants

As snow gently blankets her village, Saida Rasulova peers through the
cracked window of her simple four-room home and wonders. Clutching a photo
of her beloved son to her chest, she asks the same questions that mothers
everywhere who yearn the return of a lost child would ask. Is he warm? Is
he hungry? Is he safe? In 2001, 21-year-old Abdullo Rasulov, the youngest
of five children, left Rossiya, a former Soviet collective farm on the
outskirts of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, to work as a day labourer in
Moscow, joining the ranks of thousands of other Tajik labour migrants
eager to work in Russia’s burgeoning construction sector. That journey
came to an abrupt end on 6 July when, just as he was leaving a Moscow
underground station, he was arrested for failing to possess proper
documentation - a critical factor for labour migrants in Russia.
Imprisoned and facing deportation as he is, little has been heard from him
since. The Russian authorities lack the money to deport him and the family
lack the means to pay for his return journey, so Rasulov is now caught up
in a limbo.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38490&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN


TAJIKISTAN: Border-guard training centre opens with the support of IOM

A training centre has been launched in Tajikistan with the support of the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM), aimed at providing
professional training for its border guards. "We basically recommended the
establishment of such a centre, because border guard officers don't
receive any training on inspecting borders," Igor Bosc, the head of the
IOM mission in Tajikistan, told IRIN from the capital, Dushanbe, adding
that IOM believed that there were four or five very elementary issues that
they needed to know. The main training centre of the Tajik State Border
Protection Committee was opened in Dushanbe on 17 December with a ceremony
attended by Prime Minister Saidamir Zuhurov and Bosc, set to provide
professional training for border officers and enhance their skills.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38500&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN


TAJIKISTAN: MSF to cease operations

In a further sign of improvement in Tajikistan's humanitarian situation,
the international health NGO Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) is to cease
operations in the Central Asian republic from Monday. "We are pulling out
because MSF works in emergency situations. Tajikistan has now reached a
different stage in its transition, thereby requiring NGOs with a greater
emphasis on development," the outgoing head of mission, Franke de Jonge,
told IRIN in the capital, Dushanbe. Since 1997, the NGO has been an active
player in the country following five years of civil war in the wake of the
collapse of the former Soviet Union and Tajikistan's subsequent
independence in 1991. Some 50,000 people were killed during the bloody
conflict, which devastated the country's economy and left its social
infrastructure in tatters. Tajikistan has been largely dependent on
international humanitarian aid ever since.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38411&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: ADB emergency loan to repair landslide and flood damage

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced an emergency loan for
Kyrgyzstan towards repairing infrastructure badly damaged by floods and
landslides earlier this year. "The loan is [towards] carrying out 19
infrastructure sub-projects selected from a list of 52 provided by the
[Kyrgyz] government. These sub-projects are chosen because they were among
the most severely damaged areas," Graham Dwyer, the ADB's external
relations specialist, told IRIN from Manila on Tuesday. Dwyer said the
loan would assist towards expediting the repair of some of the most
severely damaged infrastructure in order to restore economic and social
activity, with the longer-term goal of sustaining economic growth and
poverty reduction. More than 128,000 people in 78 villages were expected
to benefit.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38459&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on the juvenile justice system

Davlet, 21, is a former convict at a juvenile prison, now studying at a
university in the capital, Bishkek, and working for a Canadian
international organisation. "I got there [juvenile prison] for a piece of
foolishness and served a six-year term for a public offence. At that time
the term was a kind of record, but now there are kids who have to serve
12- to 15-year terms," he told IRIN. He now helps the current inmates at
the juvenile prison as a volunteer, and also sometimes helps at a
rehabilitation centre for former convicts. "Psychiatrists and
psychologists at the centre who worked with me for six months in the past
helped me a lot. They helped me discover myself and gave me an opportunity
to feel like a person. As everybody knows, after prison you feel useless
and forgotten by everyone," he said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38479&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


UZBEKISTAN: UNICEF launches special salt-iodisation campaign

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), jointly with the government,
has launched a schools-based national campaign to address the issue of
iodine-deficiency disorders in Uzbekistan. During the campaign, over 6
million children in almost 10,000 schools country-wide are expected to
test their household salt for iodine content. The testing has been
organised by UNICEF and the ministries of health and education. "This
campaign is about promotion of the use of iodised salt, and we are doing
it through the schools," Brenda Vigo, the head of the UNICEF's Uzbekistan
country office, told IRIN from the capital, Tashkent, on Tuesday. "It is
very significant, because the children are involved and made aware of the
importance and the value of iodine and iodised salt, and also the problems
associated with the deficiency in iodine."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38444&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Government in denial over foot-and-mouth disease

Uzbekistan's southern and eastern provinces have suffered an outbreak of
foot-and-mouth disease with farmers and agricultural workers at a loss as
to how to fight or take proper precautions against it, inasmuch as local
authorities andcentral government tend to ignore the problem, according to
agricultural sources. Abdurashid Jalilov, a farmer in Mekhnatabad District
of Syrdarya Province, 200 km southwest of the capital, Tashkent, told IRIN
that the disease had begun affecting his cattle at the end of November.
"Blisters appeared in and around the mouths of the cattle, then on their
hooves. They couldn't eat or move. We called a vet and he advised us to
wash the cattle's mouth and hooves with permanganate of potash solution,"
he said. Abdurashid, together with his children, then treated their 50
head of cattle three or four times a day for a week. "And now we have only
three cows still sick, but all of my cattle lost significant weight," he
added. There are between 4 and 6 million head of catle in Uzbekistan. The
population is predominantly rural with one in two people in the
countryside relying on cattle as a source of income.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38426&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


IRAN: More Iraqis go home

Two hundred and forty-five Iraqi refugees were repatriated from Iran on
Monday, according to the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR). They travelled from the Ahvaz refugee camp in the
southwestern province of Khuzestan. As part of a highly sensitive
repatriation operation organised by UNHCR, the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) in Iraq escorted the refugees 20 km from the border to the
southern Iraqi city of Basra. Once in Iraq, each received US $20, heating
and cooking equipment, a blanket, a mattress, and those without shelter
were supplied with a tent. There have been only three convoys of Iraqis
returning home since 19 November, largely due to security concerns
stemming from instability in Iraq, with a total of 520 Iraqis being
repatriated. Half of those returning are children, most of whom have never
seen Iraq, but UNHCR sources says they are excited at the prospect of
going home.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38472&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAN


KAZAKHSTAN: Media watchdog concerned over draft law on media

An international media watchdog, has expressed concern over a draft law on
the mass media in Kazakhstan, describing it as flawed. "Basically, we are
of the view that the law is so fundamentally flawed at the moment that it
needs to be completely put aside and work on revising the existing law
started from scratch," Toby Mendel, Article 19's law and Asia programmes
director, told IRIN from Toronto, adding that the existing law was also
very problematic. Article 19, a London-based group working worldwide to
combat censorship by promoting freedom of expression and access to
official information, voiced serious concerns over the draft law in
September.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38507&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KAZAKHSTAN


TURKMENISTAN: New NGO law leads to confusion and fear

NGOs in authoritarian Turkmenistan remain confused and apprehensive about
a new law designed to further restrict their activities. On 18 November,
those working in the NGO sector were summoned to the Ministry of Fairness
to discuss implementation of the new, draconian "Law on Public
Associations", which has since come into effect. Government control of
civic society - and some say paranoia - has grown since an alleged
assassination attempt on President Saparmurat Niyazov more than a year
ago. Most of the 35 people who reportedly attended the meeting at the
ministry were connected with NGOs that the Ministry has refused to
register for various reasons. "Basically, they [the Turkmen government]
don't accept documents [for registration]. They are reportedly working on
the package of documents necessary for registration, because there are
many strange points in the law that they cannot answer," the coordinator
of an unregistered NGO working with Afghan refugees, who requested
anonymity, told IRIN from the capital, Ashgabat. The new law criminalises
unregistered public associations and puts new legal responsibility on
individual members of such organisations.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38427&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN


CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Wednesday ordered a moratorium on
capital punishment, thereby aiming "to further humanise the state criminal
policy", according to Igor Rogov, the deputy chief of presidential staff.
Speaking on Thursday, he added that henceforth, courts in Kazakhstan be
empowered to sentence those convicted of grave crimes to life
imprisonment, but not death. The moratorium was to take effect on Friday,
he said. Rogov went on to note, however, that the moratorium on capital
punishment was "open-ended", assering that most Kazakhs still backed the
death penalty, which might therefore be reinstated if need be.
Neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan have long ago placed a moratorium
on capital punishment, while Uzbekistan and Tajikistan still practise
Soviet-style executions by firing squad.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38534&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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