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 122
26 July - 01 August 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: New HRW report stresses danger of warlord threat
AFGHANISTAN: Bumper wheat harvest predicted
AFGHANISTAN: Over 20 die in flooding
KAZAKHSTAN: UN optimistic over country's future
KAZAKHSTAN: Golden eagle offers hope
KAZAKHSTAN: Three cases of bubonic plague confirmed
KYRGYZSTAN: Nuclear dumps pose growing health threat
PAKISTAN: Special report on maternal mortality
PAKISTAN: UNHCR resumes work in NWFP following vehicle attack
PAKISTAN: Sindh death toll reaches 81 after heavy rains
PAKISTAN: More deaths as rains batter Karachi
PAKISTAN: Interview with British High Commissioner
PAKISTAN: Epidemics feared following heavy rains
TAJIKISTAN: Mine action centre launched
TAJIKISTAN: Slight drop in infant mortality
TURKMENISTAN: Afghan refugees want third-country resettlement
UZBEKISTAN: Low-level anti-government protests increase
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

AFGHANISTAN: New HRW report stresses danger of warlord threat

The Afghan government has called for continued support from the
international community towards ensuring respect for human rights in the
country, following a report released on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch
(HRW) asserting that a climate of fear, particularly in the south, is
threatening efforts to adopt a new constitution, and capable of derailing
national elections scheduled for mid-2004. The 101-page report, entitled
"Killing You is a Very Easy Thing for Us", warns that violence, political
intimidation and attacks on women and girls are discouraging political
participation and endangering gains made in women's rights in Afghanistan
over the last year.



AFGHANISTAN: Bumper wheat harvest predicted

Afghanistan is expected to harvest its richest wheat crop in two decades,
the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced this week, but
malnutrition remains widespread and the long-term outlook is not
guaranteed. "The country has suffered from four years of severe drought,
and this is great news for farmers," Etienne Careme, an FAO information
officer, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday. The FAO
predicted that farmers would produce four million mt of wheat this summer,
reducing the need for foreign imports to one million mt.



AFGHANISTAN: Over 20 die in flooding

The Afghan government announced on Thursday that at least 20 people had
been reported dead following serious flooding and landslides in the
Panjshir valley in the eastern province of Parvan this week. "Over 20
people are reported to have died, while many houses are destroyed," Sultan
Ebadi, the director of the Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODP), told
IRIN. According to the ODP, the flood was the result of a massive
landslide, which destroyed a large dam in the valley. "Our teams are in
the area, but unfortunately no assistance has been provided to the
victims' families," Ebadi said, noting that the Ministry of Rural
Rehabilitation and Development had sent some tents, but these had yet to
arrive.



KAZAKHSTAN: UN optimistic over country's future

The United Nations sees a bright future for Kazakhstan. While many
challenges remain - particularly in the area of economics and
democratisation - Central Asia's largest nation continues to make progress
in a region beset by problems following the collapse of the Soviet Union
more than a decade ago. "Kazakhstan stands so much above the other four
Central Asian countries," the resident representative for the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Fikret Akcura, told IRIN in the
nation's commercial capital, Almaty, adding that whichever indicator you
looked at, Kazakhstan appeared to be in a more favourable situation than
the other four Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.



KAZAKHSTAN: Golden eagle offers hope

A grass-roots effort to protect the golden eagle, one of Kazakhstan's 15
endangered species of birds of prey, is now reaping positive results
following a monetary grant from the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP). Found throughout Central Asia, the powerful bird is particularly
prominent in Kazakhstan. "There are now 60 birds in the area, up from 30
two years earlier, before the project started," Stanislav Kim, the
national coordinator for the UNDP's Global Environment Facility
(GEF)/Small Grants Programme, told IRIN in the village of Nuran, 150 km
east of the Kazakh city of Almaty.



KAZAKHSTAN: Three cases of bubonic plague confirmed

Three people have contracted bubonic plague in the western Kazakh province
of Mangistauskaya, while 135 others are under observation in Aktau, a port
city on the Caspian, according to Kazakh health officials. "The situation
is that there are three patients with confirmed diagnosis of the bubonic
plague," Albert Askarov, the head of the epidemiological inspection
department at the health ministry, told IRIN from the capital, Astana, on
Friday.



KYRGYZSTAN: Nuclear dumps pose growing health threat

The mountainous and isolated republic of Kyrgyzstan has suffered greatly
from natural disasters this year. But now a new environmental and health
threat is emerging in the south: uranium waste dumps located in areas
prone to flooding and landslides. The dumps are posing huge problems in
the densely populated Ferghana Valley, home to 10 million people. Sharipa
Habibullaeva lives in the southern town of Mailuu-Suu. She has worked in
the epidemiological department of the local authority for a long time and
is familiar with the health problems associated with radioactivity.



PAKISTAN: Special report on maternal mortality

At the age of 27, Bak Sitara, a resident of Paluderi village in the
district of Mardan in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is already
a mother of three, and has endured the tragedy of two stillbirths. She is
now seven months pregnant, but has been bleeding every fortnight for the
past four years. "I went to the chemist and he gave me some tablets, but
they haven't made a difference," she told IRIN. Asked why she had not
consulted a doctor, she replied: "I don't need to go to a doctor, because
my illness is not that serious."



PAKISTAN: UNHCR resumes work in NWFP following vehicle attack

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
has resumed operations in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
following an attack on a UN vehicle during a polio vaccination campaign
last week. "The decision to restart our movement in the NWFP was taken
following a number of discussions with the UN security, local authorities
and police," Ahmed Warsame, a UNHCR senior programme officer, told IRIN
from the NWFP capital, Peshawar, on Thursday. The incident, on 23 July, in
which two World Health Organisation (WHO) workers narrowly escaped when
their vehicle was shot at on the outskirts of Peshawar, prompted the WHO,
UNHCR and World Food Programme (WFP) to suspend field trips in the area.



PAKISTAN: Sindh death toll reaches 81 after heavy rains

At least 59 people died and hundreds of thousands were left stranded in
the southern province of Sindh after heavy rains flooded an entire
district over the weekend, bringing the total number of rain-related
deaths to 81 in a week, and forcing the provincial government to declare
an emergency, officials said on Monday. "It is a calamity. A very large
chunk of land has been devastated, crops have been destroyed, and people
are suffering," Salahuddin, the information adviser to the Sindh
government, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi.



PAKISTAN: More deaths as rains batter Karachi

Heavy monsoon rains continued their relentless downpour in the southern
province of Sindh on Monday, claiming at least another five lives, causing
even more havoc and hampering relief efforts, officials said on Tuesday.
The southern port city of Karachi has received the most rainfall in a
single day since the rain began in earnest almost two weeks ago, and more
rain is expected. "We received almost 108 mm of rain yesterday [Monday],
and expect moderate to heavy showers within the next 36 to 48 hours,"
Hasrat Mir, an official of the meteorological office in Karachi, told
IRIN.



PAKISTAN: Interview with British High Commissioner

The new British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Mark Lyall Grant, is no
stranger to the country having worked in it more than two decades ago.
However, today he returns under more difficult circumstances following the
events of 11 September 2001 when Pakistan's role in the fight against
terrorism became crucial in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in
neighbouring Afghanistan. In an exclusive interview with IRIN, the High
Commissioner said that although these had been turbulent times for the
Islamic country, issues such as security seemed to be improving.



PAKISTAN: Epidemics feared following heavy rains

The southern province of Sindh is already reeling from the crippling
effects of the heaviest rains in a decade, with thousands of people still
reported stranded in flood-hit areas, and a death toll of over 100. Now
the region is facing outbreaks of disease, already reported to be on the
rise amid fears that they could eventually reach epidemic proportions,
officials said on Thursday.



TAJIKISTAN: Mine action centre launched

A centre for mine action opened in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, last week
with the ultimate goal of clearing the estimated 16,000 mines thought to
remain scattered throughout the republic. "Some parts of the republic
still need to be cleared from mines left as a legacy of the civil war,"
Jonmahmad Rajabov, the head of the new Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC),
told IRIN in Dushanbe. Tajik authorities simply did not have the resources
for such a comprehensive mine-clearance operation, so the government had
applied to the international community for assistance, he added.



TAJIKISTAN: Slight drop in infant mortality

Infant mortality has declined in Tajikistan, according to data from the
health ministry, with only 273 deaths reported in the first six months of
the year, down from 293 in the same period last year, an official said on
Friday."It's a good sign that the trend seems to be dropping, but I don't
think that it is statistically very significant," a United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) project officer, Dr Tarek Hussain, told IRIN from
the capital, Dushanbe.



TURKMENISTAN: Afghan refugees want third-country resettlement

Rana is an Afghan refugee from the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. She
has been living in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, since 1990 when her
husband, a prominent Communist Party member, fled the advancing mujahidin.
She runs a small shop which generates a meagre income, and has become
fairly integrated into Turkmen life. Most Afghans seeking refuge in
Turkmenistan fled there in the early 1990s while the Taliban, were
fighting a series of battles for control of the north of the country,
thereby displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Others, like Rana,
with links to the Najibullah regime, arrived earlier.



UZBEKISTAN: Low-level anti-government protests increase

Rights activists have reported an increase in the number of low-level
protests being held in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The country has a poor
human rights record, and public demonstrations against the government of
President Islam Karimov are generally not tolerated. "People are finally
showing their dissatisfaction in a public way," Matilda Bogner, the office
director for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Uzbekistan, told IRIN from
Tashkent.



CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

An earthquake with a magnitude of five on the Richter scale hit Tajikistan
on 26 July, but no casualties or major damage were reported. Its epicentre
was 220 km northeast of the capital Dushanbe, and the emergency situations
ministry said that no casualties had been reported from the area.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=35751&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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