IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 106 covering the period 5 April – 11 April 2003
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: Floods in the west kill at least two
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy fighting in the northwest
AFGHANISTAN: Health profile one of the worst in the world
AFGHANISTAN: UN lifts suspension of movements in the south
AFGHANISTAN: First-ever human development report
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy toll on civilians in years of war
AFGHANISTAN: Women want new constitution to reflect their needs
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with irrigation and environment minister
PAKISTAN: Interview with foreign minister
PAKISTAN: Special report on drugs and refugees
PAKISTAN: Need to close gender gaps in education
PAKISTAN: Focus on Afghan refugee education
PAKISTAN: Peasant farmers protest for ownership rights
PAKISTAN: Gas supplies restored following possible sabotage
PAKISTAN: Measures in place to contain possible SARS outbreak
TAJIKISTAN: WFP increases aid for recovery
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
AFGHANISTAN: Floods in the west kill at least two
People are continuing to suffer as a result of heavy floods which struck last week in Gulran and Koshk districts of the western province of Herat, while no aid agency or government body has so far responded. "The situation is very bad. Seventy-two families have lost their houses and are living in shops or in tents," Sayed Zabiullah, of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) told IRIN from Herat city on Wednesday. "The floods killed one person and injured two," Zabuillah said, adding that many head of livestock had also died. The floods lasted four days.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy fighting in the northwest leaves 13 dead, curtails aid
United Nations and international aid agencies were forced to close their offices when severe fighting between two rival groups in Meymaneh, the capital of the northwestern province of Faryab, erupted on Tuesday afternoon. "The fighting began between Jamiat [Jamiat-i Islami or Islamic Society led by Burhanuddin Rabbani] and Jonbesh [Jonbesh-e Melli-ye Eslami or National Islamic Movement led by Abdul Rashid Dostam] following the killing of a high-ranking Jamiat commander in the city," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN in the capital, Kabul, noting that at least 13 people, including two civilians, had been killed and 17 injured in the skirmishes.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: Health profile one of the worst in the world
On Monday - World Health Day - Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed deep concern for millions of women and children being threatened by increasing rates of maternal and infant mortality in his war-ravaged country. "Afghanistan’s need for health services is deeper than any other country’s," the president said while addressing a ceremony at the health ministry in the capital, Kabul. He said the average life expectancy in Afghanistan was 45 years, which was indicative of how severe poverty remained for the majority.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: UN lifts suspension of movements in the south
Following a six-day suspension due to deteriorating security, the United Nations announced on Sunday a resumption of movement in the southern provinces of Afghanistan. An earlier suspension of movement followed the murder of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate in the southern province of Oruzgan on 27 March. "We will resume movements in the region [all southern provinces] on Monday," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a UN spokesman in Afghanistan, told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. According to the spokesman, several hundred troops, mostly from the new Afghan national army, along with US-led coalition forces, have been deployed in and around the areas of high risk to curb elements threatening security in those areas.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: First-ever human development report
After a decade of lack of reliable information, Afghanistan is taking the first steps to prepare its first-ever National Human Development Report (NHDR). Currently, very little relevant and reliable information exists for policy makers and stakeholders. "Consultation will be meaningless unless stakeholders are equipped with information," Hanif Atmar, the Afghan minister of rural rehabilitation and development, told IRIN in the capital, Kabul, on Tuesday. The Afghan government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Saturday signed a US $200,000 project agreement to produce an NHDR through the Afghan rural rehabilitation and development ministry.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: Heavy toll on civilians in years of war
Almost a quarter of a century of war in Afghanistan has taken a heavy toll of the population, estimated at 25 million. Still locked in abject poverty, millions of Afghans have been killed, maimed, displaced or forced to leave their country in a series of some of the most gruesome conflicts of modern times. There are widely divergent estimates of the dead, but, since 1978, up to two million Afghans have been killed, another two million internally displaced, and some seven million turned into refugees.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: Women want new constitution to reflect their needs
As tentative steps are taken towards nation building in Afghanistan, women are calling for full participation in the formulation of the nation's new constitution. "If we have a good constitution but we cannot implement it in a good way, this means the country will not go in the right direction," Afghan Women’s Affairs Minister Habiba Surabi told IRIN on Tuesday at a meeting on women and constitutional reform in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "The newly drafted constitution is taking women into consideration, but my concern is on its implementation," she said.
Full copy of this report
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with irrigation and environment minister
In Afghanistan, more then 85 percent of the population of 25 million depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. With hundreds of thousands of people returning to the country seeking work, the revival of such a key sector in this drought-plagued nation depends on the rehabilitation of irrigation systems - both traditional and modern - which were destroyed by years of fighting and neglect. That is by itself a formidable task, but the new Afghan minister for irrigation and environment, Yusuf Nuristani, also faces ecological challenges such as diminishing wetlands, forests and wildlife. Here is what Nuristani had to say on these issues during a recent interview with IRIN.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Interview with foreign minister
At a time when regional security in Central and South Asia is once again under the spotlight due to the conflict in Iraq, Pakistan has raised concerns over instability in the region. In an exclusive interview with IRIN, Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khurshid Kasuri called for improved security in Afghanistan, as well as a leading role for the UN in a post-Saddam Iraq as the best way of diplomatic bridge-building given the level of international opposition to the war.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Special report on drugs and refugees
Seventy-year-old, Maryam was sitting on a broken wooden bench in her mud hut at the Kababian Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, the provincial capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), looking dazed. "My son introduced me to opium. He used to take it, and offered it to me when I had a cold and cough. It helps me sleep," she told IRIN at the camp. Maryam has been addicted to opium for the past six years. She said her stock had just run out and she was waiting for relatives to bring more from the fields near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. "We don't have to pay for it. It grows wild, and if I don't eat some every week I get chest pains and constant headaches."
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Need to close gender gaps in education
As part of the Education For All (EFA) week by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) that began on Monday, aid workers have urged Islamabad to close gender gaps in its educational system by encouraging girls' and women's education. Only about half of the country’s 140 million people are literate. “We have to help them catch up,” UNESCO’s director, Ingeborg Breines, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. The theme for the education week this year is: “All for Girls’ Education", in line with the major goals of the Dakar framework of action that aims to eliminate gender disparities in education by 2005.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Focus on Afghan refugee education
As hundreds of thousands of Afghans return to rebuild their homes and communities from the ashes of 23 years of conflict, most come poorly equipped with little or no education to assist them. According to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 87 percent of the 1.6 million Afghans returning from Pakistan to their country last year had no education. Shakila Jan, a bright-eyed seven-year-old Afghan refugee schoolgirl at the mud-built school of Maskeenabad Afghan refugee informal settlement near Pakistan’s sprawling capital, Islamabad, knows a little about the country she has never seen, but that's about all.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Peasant farmers protest for ownership rights
Hundreds of thousands of poor tenant farmers on land owned by the military in the eastern province of Punjab continue to press for ownership rights over land they have been tilling for generations, IRIN learnt on Wednesday. Their forebears began working the land during the British colonial administration early in the 20th century and were allegedly promised ownership, but under Pakistani law they remain landless. However, legal experts believe that efforts to evict them or change their status might go against the law.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Gas supplies restored following possible sabotage
Up to 80 percent of gas supplies had been restored to the Punjab and North West Frontier provinces of Pakistan on Thursday, following explosions on gas pipelines in central Pakistan. "The pipes have been fixed and it is all under control and the rest of the supply will restored by the end of today," the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited [SNGPL] chief public relations officer, Naeem Khan, told IRIN from the eastern Punjabi city of Lahore on Thursday. "We don't know who is responsible, but we fear this could be sabotage, and our investigation teams are looking into it," he added. The gas supply to the provinces was interrupted after two out of the three pipelines were blown up on Tuesday at Ahmadpur Lamsa, some 15 km from the district of Rahimyar Khan in the Punjab province, some 500 km from the capital, Islamabad.
Full copy of this report
PAKISTAN: Measures in place to contain possible SARS outbreak
Although there have as yet been no known cases of the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the country, health officials in Pakistan have established measures to contain its possible spread. "We have issued detailed instructions and information about the disease to all the port health authorities [airports and seaports], and are watching the situation closely," Athar Saeed Dil, the executive director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday.
Full copy of this report
TAJIKISTAN: WFP increases aid for recovery
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has increased its assistance to Tajikistan by 40 percent under its Protected Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO), marking a transition from humanitarian relief to recovery and development in the country, IRIN was told on Wednesday. "Tajikistan is a low-income and food-deficit country needing food assistance," the WFP country director, Ardag Meghdessian, told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "The shift of emphasis from relief to recovery indeed indicates increased stability in the country, as well as an improvement of the overall humanitarian situation," he said, adding that the devastating two-year drought in 2000 and 2001 was over.
Full copy of this report
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
In Central Asia this week, authorities in Uzbekistan forcibly detained a rights activist on Tuesday, two days after he staged a protest demanding the resignation of the president, AP reported, quoting his wife. Oleg Nikolayev, 42, drove his car around the capital, Tashkent, on Sunday with the placards attached to the windows reading "President Karimov Resign!" and "Uzbekistan's Government Resign!" Public protests are rare and harshly suppressed in this former Soviet republic, which is still run by a former communist boss, and incidents of anyone openly demanding that the president and the government go are particularly unusual. Nikolayev was driving his car on Tuesday when another car cut him off, and about 15 men, some wearing police uniforms, attacked him, as well as his wife, a son and a friend, who were also in the car, his wife Tatyana Nikolayeva said.
Full copy of this report
[ENDS]
|
|