U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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Integrated Regional Information Network for Central Asia

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e-mail: irin@irin.org.pk


Asia
IRIN-AS Weekly Round-Up 06
5 - 11 February 2005


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the forgotten province of Nurestan
AFGHANISTAN: Up to 100 dead as cold weather grips the country
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on local efforts to reduce opium cultivation
AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Interview with refugee activist on returns
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
KAZAKHSTAN-KYRGYZSTAN: Syrdarya flooding risk high in south
KYRGYZSTAN: Media censorship ahead of parliamentary poll
KYRGYZSTAN-TAJIKISTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Reducing cross-border water conflict
NEPAL: Number of AIDS orphans on the rise
NEPAL: Peace rally ends abruptly
PAKISTAN: Large parts of flooded coastal area still inaccessible
PAKISTAN: More anti-government violence in Balochistan
PAKISTAN: Bad weather may bring flooding and landslides
PAKISTAN: Heavy rain and snow causing havoc
PAKISTAN: Focus on judicial delays
TAJIKISTAN: Access to snow-affected areas remains poor
TAJIKISTAN: UN warns of further avalanches


AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the forgotten province of Nurestan

Nurestan is one of Afghanistan's most isolated and poverty-stricken 
provinces. The presidential election, foreign aid and the optimism of 
Kabul seem a world away. Just getting there from the capital in winter 
requires stamina, commitment and a degree of luck. It's a two day drive 
from the eastern province of Nangarhar through snow capped mountains and 
several hours on foot battling through more than a metre of snow. When 
you finally reach the tiny provincial capital, close to the Pakistani 
frontier, the vista is bleak. Local authority offices are closed and 
there is no sign of any aid agencies.

Full report


AFGHANISTAN: Up to 100 dead as cold weather grips the country

Officials in Kabul have called for better emergency preparedness 
following the death of up to 100 people from cold weather in isolated 
rural areas. More than 60 people are believed to have died of acute 
respiratory infections, mainly pneumonia and whooping cough in southern, 
eastern and northern provinces of Afghanistan. On Thursday, the Ministry 
of Public Health (MOPH) would only confirm 25 deaths.

Full report


AFGHANISTAN: Focus on local efforts to reduce opium cultivation

The streets and bazaar in Khogyani, a town in the eastern province of 
Nangarhar, are empty these days. Scattered groups of young men idle away 
the hours playing cards while others stare into space outside their 
mud-brick houses. Khogyani, which was once one of the chief 
opium-producing districts in the entire eastern region, seems to have 
fallen on hard times. The reason is that most local farmers have heeded 
the president's call to desist from opium production and have turned 
away from the lucrative plant in order to grow other crops.

Full report


AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Interview with refugee activist on returns

The Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of Human Rights and 
Prisoners' Aid (SHARP) has been providing legal assistance to refugees 
and asylum seekers since 1999. With the start of Afghan repatriation in 
2002, SHARP has been running the Advice and Legal Aid Centres (ALACs) in 
the province of Punjab to help returnees with legal and protection 
issues.

Full report


CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

This week was marked by a further clamp down on independent media and 
opposition groups throughout the region. A district court in the Kazakh 
commercial capital of Almaty granted a libel suit, filed by the National 
Security Committee (NSC) against the opposition newspaper Soz (Speech), 
obliging the paper to pay almost US $40,000 in damages to the NSC, the 
Kazakh media reported on Sunday. The court ruled that reports alleging 
that the NSC was 'shadowing' leaders of the Ak Zhol opposition party, 
published in the paper on 23 September 2004, were untrue.

Full report


KAZAKHSTAN-KYRGYZSTAN: Syrdarya flooding risk high in south

Water levels in Kazakhstan's southern Chardara Reservoir on the Syrdarya 
River are running dangerously high. Officials estimate it will only be 
another week before it reaches full capacity. "The situation around 
Chardara is very difficult as the level in the reservoir has reached 
4.683 billion cu m," Amirkhan Kenchimov, deputy head of the water 
resources agency at the Kazakh Agriculture Ministry, told IRIN from the 
capital, Astana on Tuesday. The Soviet-built reservoir's capacity is 5.2 
billion cu m, suggesting that slightly more than 500 million cu m free 
capacity remains.

Full report


KYRGYZSTAN: Media censorship ahead of parliamentary poll

Government-supported and independent media have received strict 
instructions on how to cover parliamentary elections scheduled for 27 
February, journalists in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, told IRIN. Glowing 
coverage of pro-government candidates is mandatory, while the rest 
should receive minimum media attention, according to the directives. "We 
report the way the presidential administration has demanded. Anybody 
interested in losing their jobs just needs to provide impartial analysis 
of the situation [parliamentary elections]," the chief editor of a 
government-controlled mass media outlet, said on condition of anonymity.

Full report


KYRGYZSTAN-TAJIKISTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Reducing cross-border water conflict

Spring comes early in the Tuya-Moyun valley in southern Kyrgyzstan. 
Crops are already being sown by late February. With just a couple of 
weeks now until sowing starts, Ilyas Davlaev, a 38-year-old farmer from 
the Aravan district of the southern Osh province, is already concerned 
about this year's harvest. "What is going to happen to irrigation water 
[this year]?" he asks. The Karymberdi canal is a major water source in 
the valley and takes water across the border to Uzbek territory 
sometimes leaving the Kyrgyz residents of the valley without precious 
irrigation. The Tuya-Moyun valley sits right on the border.

Full report


NEPAL: Number of AIDS orphans on the rise

Babita Biswakarma has already been through enough trauma for anyone to 
suffer in a lifetime. She is just seven years old. First she lost both 
her parents to AIDS. Then she went through over a year of mental cruelty 
at the hands of villagers who rejected her, calling her the 'AIDS girl'. 
Her uncle then made her work as a servant in her own home after she was 
stripped off all her rights to her parent's property and estate. She was 
kicked out of school when her relatives stopped paying her fees, 
assuming she was HIV positive and had only months to live.

Full report


NEPAL: Peace rally ends abruptly

A much anticipated peace rally scheduled for Thursday in the Nepalese 
capital, Kathmandu, ended in silence when the main organisers of the 
demonstration were arrested soon after their arrival. This was the first 
time that a mass demonstration had been organised in the capital since 
King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah declared a state of emergency on 1 
February.

Full report


PAKISTAN: Large parts of flooded coastal area still inaccessible

Flash floods have badly affected some 17,000 people in nearly 40 
villages scattered throughout the southern coastal district of Gawadar 
in Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province after more than one week of 
heavy rains. "The accurate number of deaths or injured is not known yet, 
as hundreds of people in the inundated areas are missing and many 
villages are still inaccessible," Ghulam Ali, a district officer, told 
IRIN on Friday from the southern coastal city of Gawadar.

Full report


PAKISTAN: More anti-government violence in Balochistan

In a fresh upsurge of attacks on government installations in the 
troubled southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan, several 
electricity transmission lines, communication masts and railway tracks 
have been blown up in the last week. "Unrest in Balochistan is 
potentially at a very dangerous point. Government and the tribesmen both 
need to reduce confrontation before the situation becomes explosive," 
Irshad Hussain Haqqani, a political analyst, told IRIN from the eastern 
city of Lahore on Friday.

Full report


PAKISTAN: Bad weather may bring flooding and landslides

Pakistan's meteorological department has warned people to prepare for 
floods and landslides in the southwestern province of Balochistan as a 
result of heavy rain and snowfall forecast over the next few days. "A 
strong weather system is entering Pakistan from the west. As a result, 
heavy widespread rain and storms are expected in Balochistan and parts 
of Sindh province," Muhammad Saeed, a meteorologist at the National 
Meteorological Office, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Full report


PAKISTAN: Heavy rain and snow causing havoc

Continuing torrential rain and snowfall for more than a week, has left 
thousands of people stuck in remote northern areas of Pakistan. They are 
facing severe food shortages, a lack of fodder for livestock and of 
fuel. In the north and west of the country, over three dozen deaths have 
been reported with scores injured in avalanches, flash floods and under 
collapsing roofs in Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Full report


PAKISTAN: Focus on judicial delays

Afzal Haider was acquitted of all charges by a court in 2003. It still 
took him until the third week of January 2005 to get out of prison after 
spending more than 17 years of his life there. He had never been 
convicted. He was detained for two years after his acquittal because the 
police simply hadn't delivered his release order to the prison 
authorities. "Without getting much into the details of the case against 
him, this single incident reflects the operational flaws inherent in the 
country's judicial system," said Syed Liaquat Banori, head of a 
prisoners rights body, the Society for the Protection of Human Rights 
and Prisoners' Aid (SHARP).

Full report


TAJIKISTAN: Access to snow-affected areas remains poor

Bad weather continued to hamper relief efforts in snow-hit Tajikistan on 
Monday, where access to affected areas remained poor more than one week 
after heavy snows first began. "The situation is very serious because 
many villages, particularly in remote mountain areas, are cut off and we 
don't know what people there are facing," Abdurahkim Rajabov, deputy 
minister of emergencies, told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

Full report


TAJIKISTAN: UN warns of further avalanches

Warmer temperatures have increased the risk of further avalanches in 
Tajikistan, where hundreds of snow-slides have occurred over the past 10 
days, the UN warned on Wednesday. "The risk has definitely increased," 
Ole Ramsing, manager of the United Nations Disaster Risk Management 
Project (DRMP) in Tajikistan told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, 
noting some 2,800 people had already been evacuated by the authorities. 
While most roads were open, people throughout much of the former Soviet 
republic were being advised not to travel unnecessarily, Ramsing said, 
with those evacuated living in public buildings or staying with 
relatives.

Full report


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