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CENTRAL ASIA: IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 146 covering the period 10 - 16 January 2004 - OCHA IRIN

Tuesday 8 February 2005


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IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 146 covering the period 10 - 16 January 2004

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: UN office and aid agency premises attacked
AFGHANISTAN: Defence ministry removes heavy weapons from capital
AFGHANISTAN: Thousands of soldiers forsake new army
AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Repatriation of Afghan Bam survivors continues
IRAN: Local welfare organisation assisting hundreds disabled by quake
IRAN: Communicable diseases under control but sanitation and hygiene shortages remain
IRAN: Better shelter needed before weather warms up
IRAN: Bam emergency food distribution proceeding well
KAZAKHSTAN: UNDP releases eighth National Human Development Report
PAKISTAN: Car bomb outside church was meant for police, says government
PAKISTAN: Focus on possible dividends from Pakistan-India talks
PAKISTAN: Human development report calls for changes in the economy
PAKISTAN: UNHCR operations to continue unimpeded, despite lay-offs
PAKISTAN: Foreign journalists freed
TAJIKISTAN: IOM resource centre for labour migrants opens
UZBEKISTAN: Senior UN official dies in plane crash
CENTRAL ASIA: Economic freedom remains poor
CENTRAL ASIA: Focus on security threat from radical Islamic groups
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap

AFGHANISTAN: UN office and aid agency premises attacked

The Afghan NGOs Security Office (ANSO), an organisation providing security advice to national and international NGOs in the country, confirmed that a bomb exploded in front of the office of an international aid organisation in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on Sunday. According to the group, one person was injured as a result of the explosion, which occurred outside premises belonging to French aid group Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED). "It is believed that an explosive device was either thrown or planted against the guard hut," Nick Downie, ANSO project coordinator, told IRIN on Tuesday in Kabul, adding that the injured person was a passer-by.

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AFGHANISTAN: Defence ministry removes heavy weapons from capital

Standing in front of his tiny bicycle repair shop in Kabul, Ghulam Jilani was watching a convoy of old Russian trucks and armoured vehicles loaded with heavy weapons, many drawing artillery pieces. The vehicles headed out of the capital on Thursday in a move by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to improve security by removing such weapons of war. “We never believed that these arms which caused all the destruction would one day be moved out of our Kabul,” the 38-year-old mechanic who had lived in the city through decades of conflict, told IRIN. Assisted by troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the ministry moved more than 100 heavy weapons, including multiple rocket launchers, anti-tank guns and artillery pieces to a deserted former military base some 15 kms south of the capital. “Today’s process is not disarmament; it is aimed at securing Kabul,” deputy defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, told IRIN at a handover ceremony.

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AFGHANISTAN: Thousands of soldiers forsake new army

More than a quarter of the newly-trained 10,000-strong Afghan National Army (ANA) have left the service since its formation in mid-2002, officials at the Afghan Ministry of Defence told IRIN on Sunday. "Around two to three thousand soldiers have fled the ANA so far," General Zahir Azimi a spokesperson for the ministry said. The widespread desertion of so many new troops is a serious challenge to the internationally-trained and supervised ANA, seen as critical to the country's future peace and stability.

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AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Repatriation of Afghan Bam survivors continues

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday that more than 400 hundred Afghans who had survived the devastating earthquake which occurred in the southwestern Iranian city of Bam in late December, were repatriated to the country on Tuesday. "A convoy of 11 buses, five trucks and four trailers, carrying 171 men, 79 women and 165 children left Bam the day before, crossing the Afghan border at Malik [the western Afghanistan border with Iran]," Peter Kessler a UNHCR spokesperson, told IRIN on Thursday. Most are reported heading to Kabul to an uncertain future.

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IRAN: Local welfare organisation assisting hundreds disabled by quake

A Large numbers of people disabled by the Bam disaster, mostly women and the elderly, have been seeking medical assistance from the government run Iranian Welfare Organisation (IWO) in Bam, three weeks after the devastating earthquake hit the city. The IWO has called for increased international assistance to deal with the huge new case load. Masouma Borji, 37, a resident of Bam injured in the disaster, had come to the IWO compound to ask to be refered to a rehabilitation camp in the provincial capital of Kerman, 175 km northwest of Bam. "My ears were badly injured in the earthquake, they were bleeding and after that I could hardly hear anything," she told IRIN. According to a recent UN report, some 20,000 people were injured when the earthquake hit the city on 26 December. Of the injured, 12,500 have been medically evacuated to other parts of Iran, and about 2,500 sent to Kerman.

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IRAN: Communicable diseases under control but sanitation and hygiene shortages remain

Almost three weeks after a devastating quake hit Bam in late December, killing an estimated 30,000 people, the prevelance of communicable diseases has remained under control while serious sanitation and hygiene concerns remain in the southeastern Iranian city. The main issue that was of our concern was the health of the people [who] survived and the people that came to help the others to support the activities on the ground. In that context we were very concerned about communicable diseases," Bijan Hamidi, a medical officer responsible for the World Health Organization (WHO), told IRIN in Bam.

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IRAN: Better shelter needed before weather warms up

Maryam, a resident of Bam in her 40s, lost her husband and four of her 11 children in the devastating earthquake that hit the southeastern Iranian city on 26 December. She has been provided with a tent by the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) subsequently established not far from the place where her house used to stand.

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IRAN: Bam emergency food distribution proceeding well

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a programme to provide food supplies to the people of Bam for an initial period of three months with the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) as their implementing partner. The southeastern Iranian city, devastated by an earthquake on 26 December, has been divided into 12 zones. An IRCS official in the central zone told IRIN that they had no problems with food distribution and they were busy sending supplies into sub-zones to be further distributed by community leaders. They were said to be going tent-to-tent to provide people with needed food items and other assistance.

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KAZAKHSTAN: UNDP releases eighth National Human Development Report

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday released its 2003 National Human Development Report entitled "Water as a Key Factor of Human Development in Kazakhstan." The report offers a comprehensive review of water resources in the Central Asian nation from the economic, environmental and social perspectives.

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PAKISTAN: Car bomb outside church was meant for police, says government

A car bomb that exploded on Thursday outside a bible society's office in the southern port city of Karachi, injuring at least 12 people and damaging the wall of a church close by, was actually an attack against law-enforcement agencies, according to a government official. "It was an attack against law agencies, not against the church or Christianity or the bible society. A police van was attacked and policemen were injured; rangers [elite paramilitary soldiers] were injured," Salahuddin Haider, the information advisor to the Sindh provincial government, told IRIN from Karachi.

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PAKISTAN: Focus on possible dividends from Pakistan-India talks

A ground-breaking agreement reached between Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee could have positive developmental dividends for both countries, analysts told IRIN on Monday. "This is a welcome sign for the entire region," Dr Rasul Baksh Rais, a professor of political science at the elite Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), told IRIN from Lahore. "Both Pakistan and India have faced development crises for well over half a century," he added.

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PAKISTAN: Human development report calls for changes in the economy

Years of high-deficit spending have taken their toll on the Pakistani economy and pushed it to a point where reversing the damage caused is going to be very difficult, according to the author of the latest human development report for South Asia.

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PAKISTAN: UNHCR operations to continue unimpeded, despite lay-offs

Despite the forced lay-off of about 160 staff due to budget constraints, operations of the office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan were likely to continue unimpeded, an aid official said on Thursday. "Our budget, which has been shrinking ever since the emergency in 2001-02, was reduced further last year by almost 25 percent. So this reduction in our staff was part of the reaction to that," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad.

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PAKISTAN: Foreign journalists freed

A high court judge allowed two French journalists to go free on Monday - two days after a lower court sentenced them to a six-month prison term for violating their visas - following a successful appeal, according to their lawyer. "It is all over. After hearing our appeal, the judge has ordered the two journalists released. The sentence is finished," Nafis Siddiqui, the counsel for the two Frenchmen, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi.

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TAJIKISTAN: IOM resource centre for labour migrants opens

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) opened an information resource centre for labour migrants in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on Monday, the first of its kind in Central Asia. "IOM and the Government of Tajikistan have assessed the principle preventive manner to address the problem of labour migration. It is to create a public information resource centre with qualified counselors and an assemblage of information that is tailored to respond to the needs of these migrants," Frederic Chenais, IOM deputy chief of mission told IRIN from Dushanbe.

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UZBEKISTAN: Senior UN official dies in plane crash

UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Uzbekistan, Richard Conroy, has died in a plane crash in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, the United Nations has confirmed. "This is a tragic event for UNDP and the UN in Uzbekistan. Not only have we lost a great professional who truly believed in and always strived to apply UN values, but also an excellent colleague and a very good friend," Lykke Andersen, UNDP's Deputy Resident Representative told IRIN on Wednesday.

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CENTRAL ASIA: Economic freedom remains poor

Economic freedom remains a serious challenge among the five landlocked Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, according to a new report. "A legacy of interventionist policies lingers in many countries in Central Asia," Anthony Kim, a research assistant at the Center for International Trade and Economics (CITE) at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation told IRIN. "Burdened with a high cost of government, many bureaucratic hurdles to investment, and an ineffective financial sector, countries in the region have not been able to swiftly catch the momentum of solid economic growth."

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CENTRAL ASIA: Focus on security threat from radical Islamic groups

Although recent reports suggest that the outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has been regrouping and could threaten stability in Central Asia, experts and regional observers remain unconvinced. The IMU is a coalition of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states opposed to Uzbek President Islam Karimov's secular regime. The armed IMU and non-violent Hizb-ut Tahrir movement are the most well-known radical Islamists in Central Asia. The IMU is on the US State Department's formalised list of 33 Foreign Terrorist Groups, while Hizb-ut Tahrir is operating freely from its London headquarters, but is legally banned in all Central Asian states. Hizb-ut Tahrir's ideology envisages a strict Islamic state and the re-establishment of the medieval Arab caliphate in the region.

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CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

Traffic along the Khorag-Dushanbe highway in Tajikistan resumed on Sunday. The 600-kilometre road had been paralysed by heavy snowfalls after a landslide days earlier tore down the mountains of the former Soviet republic, an official with the Central Asian state's emergencies ministry said. Up to six people were reportedly killed in the incident, local media reported. Moscow reportedly supports the idea of a gradual transfer of policing the Tajik border with Afghanistan to Tajik border guards. While Tajikistan is unable to guard the whole border with Afghanistan, Lt General Aleksandr Manilov reportedly said on Sunday: "Russian forces will gradually hand over their sectors to the Tajik border guards." The mountainous state shares some 1,200 km of common border with Afghanistan, which has proven a popular crossing point for heroin bound for Europe.

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[ENDS]

Other recent CENTRAL ASIA reports:

Heavy snow causes death and havoc, 4/Feb/05

Weekly news wrap, 4/Feb/05

Weekly news wrap, 28/Jan/05

UN counter-terrorism meeting , 27/Jan/05

Weekly news wrap, 21/Jan/05

Other recent reports:

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 4/Feb/05

ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 5 covering the period 29 January - 4 February 2005, 4/Feb/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 28/Jan/05

ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 4 covering the period 22 - 28 January 2005, 28/Jan/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 21/Jan/05

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