Afghanistan News February 10, 2005

February 10, 2005

AIR CRASH-SEARCH AND RESCUE PHASE OVER
ISAF NEWS RELEASE 9 February, 2005
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- ISAF has been informed by the Government of Afghanistan that the search and rescue phase of the KAM AIR Boeing 737 crash operation is now over. ISAF would like to extend sincere condolences to the family and friends of all those who perished on board the airplane.

Throughout this difficult operation ISAF has provided all available support including helicopter airlift, mountain rescue teams and ground search forces to assist the government of Afghnaistan.

ISAF will continue to provide full support and all available resources to support the Government of Afghanistan as the recovery operation and investigation phases begin.

Owners of Afghan crash plane blame weather
By David Brunnstrom and Miral Fahmy
KABUL/DUBAI, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The owners of a Boeing 737 that crashed near Kabul last week with the loss of 104 lives believe bad weather caused the accident, not any fault with the airliner, an official of the firm said on Wednesday.

"The plane crashed in Kabul due to bad weather and not safety issues, it was unfortunate but not our fault," said a manager at Phoenix Aviation, a firm based at Sharjar in the United Arab Emirates that leased the doomed aircraft to Afghan firm Kam Air.

The comments came after a U.N. agency in Afghanistan said it had suspended a lease contract it had with Phoenix Aviation for another Boeing 737 as a safety precaution after last Thursday's crash southeast of the Afghan capital.

"It's more of a precaution than anything else as the Kam Air flight was a plane leased from Phoenix Aviation," said Charles Vincent, Kabul representative of the World Food Programme, which manages the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS).

He stressed the move was not prompted by a specific security concern.

"It's normal procedure after a plane crash to review the safety of the plane and the company that supplies it. It's for the clients peace of mind -- we want to be able to assure them they are flying on a safe aircraft with a safe company."

The Phoenix Aviation manager, who did not want to be identified, said the WFP had not listed the Kabul crash as a reason for suspending the contract. He said Phoenix had expected it to be scrapped because of several months of "management problems" with the United Nations.

MORE THAN 20 FOREIGNERS ABOARD
Vincent said UNHAS had leased a Boeing 737 from Phoenix for its regular flight between Kabul and Dubai. He said the Dubai route was now being flown by an aircraft from a different firm.

The Kam Air Boeing, which the airline said was 23 years old, crashed on a mountain after a flight from the western city of Herat. The government says all 104 people on board had died.

Among them were more than 20 foreigners, including nine Turks, six Americans, three Italians and an Iranian. At least four Russians and a Canadian were among the crew. The pilot was Russian and the first officer Canadian.

Troops from Afghanistan's NATO-led peacekeeping force found human remains at the site on Monday but bad weather has since prevented efforts to recover bodies and cockpit voice recorders that could help to explain the crash.

The plane disappeared from radar screens while approaching Kabul airport and Kam Air officials said at the time that it had been turned away from Kabul airport due to heavy snow.

However, the U.S. military, which has controlled the air space in Afghanistan since overthrowing the Taliban in late 2001, has expressed doubt that the plane was turned away and also says it made no request to land at the nearby U.S. base at Bagram.

Kabul Airport lacks sophisticated electronic equipment to guide pilots trying to land in bad weather and is on a high plain surrounded by mountains that forces pilots to turn sharply immediately before landing even in good conditions.

The cause of the crash, Afghanistan's worst-ever civil aviation disaster, is being investigated by the government and representatives of countries with nationals aboard the plane.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has sent a five-person team to Afghanistan to assist the investigation and the government said officials from Boeing may also take part.

NATO looks to build helipad near crashed Afghan airliner to help recover bodies
Wednesday February 9, 2:18 PM AP
NATO engineers prepared Wednesday to build a helipad on an Afghan mountain where an airliner crashed last week, hoping to speed the recovery of the 104 victims of the country's worst air disaster.

The engineers as well as Afghan teams were waiting at Kabul airport for an improvement in the bad weather which has hampered access to the crash site, 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of the capital, NATO said.

"The weather is deplorable," NATO spokeswoman Maj. Karan Tissot Van Patot said. "Nothing is flying at this point."

The Boeing 737 operated by Kam Air, Afghanistan's first post-Taliban private airline, vanished from radar screens last Thursday after it approached Kabul airport in a blizzard from the western city of Herat.

Search helicopters spotted the wreckage some 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) up Chaperi Mountain on Saturday. NATO troops examined some of the scattered debris on Monday, finding human remains but no signs of life.

Authorities confirmed on Tuesday that no one had survived among the 96 passengers and eight crew. Most were Afghans but there were also nine Turks, six Americans, four Russians and three Italians on board.

Afghan officials say the cause of the crash remains a mystery and have called in foreign experts to help investigate.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it had sent a five-strong team led by senior investigator Robert Benzon, who will officially represent the United States in the probe.

The United States was represented also because the plane was manufactured there, the board said in a statement on Tuesday.

The aircraft's flight recorder has yet to be located.

Recovery efforts have been hampered by freezing fog, low clouds and up to 2.5 meters (eight feet) of snow, which have so far prevented Afghan troops moving on foot from making more than a cursory visit to the scene.

Tissot said the NATO engineers would try to identify a location for a helipad and then get to work making it safe for aircraft to land so that the recovery operation and the investigation can gain speed.

Officials say it could take weeks to collect the bodies, fueling the frustration of relatives worried about scavenging wolves and looters.

The crash site, near an old military lookout, is also believed to be mined.

U.S. Pushes NATO for Iraq, Afghanistan Help
Thursday, February 10, 2005 6:49 a.m. ET By Mark John
NICE, France (Reuters) - The United States will call on its European NATO allies on Thursday to commit more forces to alliance missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as both sides try to mend ties across the Atlantic.

Defense ministers from the 26-nation bloc may be ready at talks in the French Riviera city of Nice to announce a long- awaited expansion of peacekeeping in western Afghanistan after recent offers of troops from Spain, Italy and Lithuania.

In a bid to show unity within an alliance split over the Iraq war, NATO called on all members to promise help in training and equipping Iraqi forces by the time of a Feb. 22 summit at its Brussels headquarters with President Bush.

"Operations ... are increasingly the alliance's principle concern and the acid test of its relevance in the world," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in opening remarks.

NATO agreed in June to form a mission in Iraq to train 1,000 Iraqi officers a year but has not yet raised the 150 or so staff needed for formal training to start. France, Germany and other opponents of the U.S. invasion have refused to set foot in Iraq.

"We feel a great sense of urgency to have the Iraqi forces trained and equipped and increasingly capable of assuming responsibility for the security responsibilities," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on the eve of the meeting.

"Obviously, you always want things to go faster," he added, conceding that the violence which has continued despite the Jan. 30 elections deterred some countries from sending trainers.

EU diplomats said Rumsfeld raised some hackles in Nice by repeating calls for France, Germany and a few other EU countries to lift a veto on their NATO-uniformed staff going to Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that several unnamed countries offered either to send personnel to Iraq, give training outside the country or help fund the mission, which also aims to supply equipment for the Iraqi army.

RARE NATO MEET IN FRANCE
Spain said on Wednesday it would invite Iraqi security forces to be trained at a center outside Madrid. Germany said it could expand its existing training in the United Arab Emirates.

France, which insists its decision to host a rare meeting of NATO ministers on its soil shows its commitment to the alliance, reaffirmed its readiness to train Iraqi gendarmes in Qatar.

It went out of its way to demonstrate its role by inviting the two French generals currently in overall charge of NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan to the meeting.

"NATO is at home here," said French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, opening the meeting. She said France was the second largest force contributor to NATO operations and the fifth most important in terms of financial contributions.

Critics accused Bush of neglecting the alliance in 2001 when he launched a war to oust the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

That sense of neglect, compounded by the row over Iraq, has hit efforts to raise troops and equipment for NATO peacekeeping in Afghanistan, comprising 8,500 troops in Kabul and the north.

But NATO officials are confident they now have enough commitments of extra troops to launch an overdue expansion to the west and say its formal announcement will come either in Nice or by the Feb. 22 summit in Brussels at the latest.

The United States offered to hand over to NATO command two existing units in the western towns of Herat and Farah on condition that European allies created two further units.

Union Cabinet okays talks on gas pipelines
Asian News International
New Delhi, Feb.9 (ANI): The Union Cabinet today gave a green signal to the Petroleum Ministry to hold talks with Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan to secure gas supplies for India through pipelines.

Soon after the Cabinet meeting, which was chaired by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Union Minister for Petroleum, Mani Shankar Aiyar, said, "It will significantly enhance oil security of the country".

The minister said that the three pipelines to India are from Iran to India through Pakistan, another from Turkmenistan to India through Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the third from Myanmar to India through Bangladesh.

Discussion on the enhancement of investment by ONGC Videsh Ltd was also scheduled to be taken up, but due to some reasons it was not done.

During the meeting, the appointment of Indian Foreign Service officer Talmiz Ahmed as Additional Secretary (overseas operation) in Petroleum Ministry was also approved. (ANI)

NATO Defense Chiefs To Discuss Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
9 February 2005 -- NATO defense ministers are due to open a two-day meeting today in the French Riviera resort city of Nice.

The defense chiefs reportedly are close to an agreement on sending NATO troops into western Afghanistan. Reports say U.S., Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian troops would be involved.

The western deployment will be a significant step in plans for NATO to extend its operation across the whole of Afghanistan by early 2006, replacing or integrating the U.S.-led combat force that invaded in the country in 2001 to topple the Taliban regime.

NATO spokesperson James Appathurai today said that the meeting in Nice will be “very much seen in the context of the summit meeting itself on the 22nd of February, which will be held here at NATO headquarters [in Brussels]. “President Bush and his 25 counterparts, as NATO heads of state and government, will have a very political discussion on what they foresee as the future of the trans-Atlantic community's engagement in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in the Balkans," Appathurai says.

NATO believes the diminished threat from Taliban insurgents means the emphasis of the international operations in Afghanistan should switch to peacekeeping and support for the stabilization efforts of the Afghan authorities.

Afghanistan - Pakistan: Interview with refugee activist on returns
ISLAMABAD, 10 February (IRIN) - 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.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been assisting the voluntary repatriation of Afghans since 2002 under a tripartite agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the refugee agency, which runs till March 2006. In the past three years, UNHCR has assisted nearly 2.3 million Afghans to return from Pakistan and anticipates a further 400,000 will repatriate during 2005.

This week, Islamabad announced it would launch a comprehensive census of all Afghans in the country later in February. Some refugees and activists view the census as the prelude to the start of the forced return of Afghans, as Pakistan tries to find a long-term solution for the more than a million Afghans on its soil.

In an interview with IRIN, Syed Liaquat Banori, chairman of SHARP, stressed the need to encourage "sustainable repatriation" of Afghans, instead of coercing them into returning early to a country that, he said, cannot sustain large numbers of returnees at present.

QUESTION: Three years after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Islamabad now feels it is time for the more than one million Afghans left in the country to start going home. Should the government of Pakistan go beyond the support of voluntary repatriation?

ANSWER: I don't think so. Afghanistan's administrative, physical, social and legal structure collapsed during the last two decades of conflict. No country damaged to this extent could recover overnight. If it took 25 years to destroy the country then it will require decades to rehabilitate it completely along with huge investment and funding. Given these circumstances, if Afghan refugees were repatriated forcefully, then the massive influx could create unrest and a big problem of law and order inside the country. The country is simply not at a stage of development where it can support a big return. It has enough to worry about trying to cope with the large number of IDPs [internally displaced people] that it is trying to help return to where they used to live.

Q: You work extensively with Afghan refugees. What are they telling you about repatriation?

A: I can say that most are very much willing to go back [to Afghanistan] provided they get respectable earning opportunities and shelter over there. Most are very poor and do not have much resources to build houses and start life again immediately after repatriating. The international community should address these concerns at the earliest. Secondly, Afghans are very concerned about the security situation inside Afghanistan. The Afghan government is still struggling to establish its authority beyond the capital. While this is happening, warlords, private militias, ordinary criminals, armed religious extremists and others opposed to [president Hamid] Karzai, make the country a very dangerous place.

Q: Islamabad says the forthcoming Afghan census will help it formulate a humane repatriation policy. Do you agree?

A: There is no formal data or statistics about the actual number of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, so the UNHCR [the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and the government of Pakistan have jointly decided to have a census later this month. But the census mechanism needs improvement. Accurate data is very much in the interest of Pakistan, the UNHCR and the international community. What is needed, is to ensure that whatever statistics we get at the end of the day, they should be reliable and helpful in formulating future policies.

Q: Is there a need for greater international support in assisting with returns?

A: The international community must help refugees living in Pakistan and also accelerate reconstruction efforts inside Afghanistan. Pakistan is a developing country. International donors and other agencies should help public service institutions in collaboration with the Pakistani government so once the Afghans repatriate back to their homeland, institutions can be utilised by our own poor communities. This two-pronged strategy would benefit refugees as well as local communities.

Q: What can be done to boost repatriation numbers in 2005?

A: Before making any effort to send refugees back, they should be prepared for future challenges. They should be properly trained in skills to help them to rebuild their country and reintegrate into Afghan society. This aspect has [so far] been missing in the strategies of UNHCR and the Pakistani government. We need to keep in mind that this repatriation is not happening for the first time. It happened in 1992 as well, but due to civil war inside Afghanistan, people came back.

But this time we have to ensure a sustainable repatriation even if it is at a low pace, for one simple reason. If it is not successful, then Pakistan will be the ultimate loser as no doubt they would all just come back into Pakistan. As a human rights activist, I believe the time is not right for forced or coerced returns and that Pakistan has extended hospitality to such a large refugee population for over two decades and we can sustain them for three more years - or until Afghanistan is more developed and stable.

Census of Afghans in Pakistan to begin on February 23
ISLAMABAD, Feb 9 (UNHCR) – Teams from the government of Pakistan will spread out across the country for 10 days starting on February 23 in a census financed by the UN refugee agency that will provide the most detailed information ever gathered on Afghans living in Pakistan.
Plans for a census were first announced during a visit to Pakistan by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers last month, but the exact dates were released at a joint news conference in Islamabad on Tuesday by the government of Pakistan and UNHCR.

"Some 2,000 government employees will start going house to house on February 23 to record all Afghans who have arrived in Pakistan over the past quarter century," said Guenet Guebre-Christos, Representative of UNHCR in Pakistan.

"This exercise is mainly to help us understand the Afghan population in Pakistan," she said. "This exercise is extremely important to know how many Afghans there are in this country, who are they, where are they living, what are their intentions."

She said the census was not linked directly with repatriation of Afghans, which is governed by a separate agreement providing for voluntary returns, but it could provide information on problems preventing Afghans from going home.

"So the objective is not to push the Afghans out," she said. "The objective is to know who and where they are, and how they can be managed."

The news conference was attended by Sajid Hussain Chattha, Secretary of the Ministry for States and Frontier Regions, which deals with Afghan refugees; Najam Hasan, Pakistan's Chief Census Commissioner; and Jahangir Khan, Chief Commissioner of Afghan Refugees.

"The census will provide the first firm figures on the number of Afghans in Pakistan as well as details on when they arrived, their place of origin, where they are now living, their current livelihoods and their intention to repatriate," said Chattha.

Participation is mandatory for all Afghans who arrived in Pakistan since December 1, 1979 – the month of the Soviet invasion that sent Afghanistan into a downward spiral of violence. Those who do not will be excluded from a proposed subsequent registration designed to provide some sort of individual document. A major information campaign, using radio, television and print, is underway to ensure Afghans know of the census.

At present the government estimates that 3 million Afghans live in all parts of Pakistan, while UNHCR estimates that about a million live just in refugee camps. The $750,000 census, which is being financed by UNHCR, will help provide a profile of the Afghans in Pakistan.

The teams of enumerators will be visiting areas that have already been surveyed over the past two months in a "mapping exercise" that identified the residences of Afghans in all four provinces. A major test of those procedures will be conducted next Monday, February 14, in selected areas around the country in case any last-minute alterations to the methods are needed.

UNHCR teams have been monitoring all stages of the process so far and will be in the field continually during the actual census-taking to ensure the agreed procedures are followed. The census will be conducted by the government's Population Census Organisation (PCO).

The data collected by the two-person census teams – one man and one woman in each – will be entered into a database and the first results should be available for detailed analysis during the second half of March.

The information is essential for the development of policies for those Afghans who will remain in Pakistan after the current tripartite agreement between UNHCR and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan expires in March 2006. Under that agreement, UNHCR has assisted nearly 2.3 million Afghans to repatriate from Pakistan since 2002.

Although UNHCR has been assisting Afghan refugees in Pakistan for a quarter century, there has never been a formal census or registration of all those who fled during the years of fighting in their homeland.

The census will ask Afghans if they intend to return to Afghanistan by the end of the UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme. UNHCR and the government of Pakistan agree that voluntary repatriation of Afghans is the preferred goal, but believe a substantial number will still be in Pakistan at the end of the tripartite agreement.

By Jack Redden UNHCR Pakistan