Afghanistan News February 22, 2005

February 22, 2005

AFGHANISTAN: First ever national human development report launched
21 Feb 2005 16:01:06 GMT
KABUL, 21 February (IRIN) - After a decade of a lack of reliable information, Afghanistan launched its first-ever National Human Development Report (NHDR) on Monday.

The report - entitled "Security with a Human Face" and based on two years' work by the government and the United Nations - is expected to help policy makers and stakeholders in the post-conflict country where there has been very little relevant or reliable information.

The data in the report may help to avoid what some fear: that while many gains have been made in the past two years, the country could still fall into a cycle of conflict and instability unless people's genuine grievances regarding unemployment, health, education and poverty are dealt with adequately.

Amongst the key statistical findings, the report shows that Afghanistan's Human Development Index (HDI) falls close to the bottom of the 177 countries ranked by the global Human Development Report 2004, way behind all of its neighbours and only just above Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone.

"Security with a Human Face" also provides shocking findings, including the fact that every 30 minutes a woman in Afghanistan dies from pregnancy-related causes. It also notes that 20 percent of children die before the age of five and that more than 300,000 children may have perished during the conflict.

It also says that the poorest 30 percent of the population receive only 9 percent of the national income, while the upper 30 percent receive 55 per cent.

"It is very significant that the report has been produced by Afghans that are independent from the government and the UN system, and that this is the first time that Afghanistan has produced such a report," Hanif Atmar, Afghan minister of rural rehabilitation and development, told IRIN after the report's launch in the capital, Kabul.

"This is a report which tells you what the situation looks like, and what the government and the international community should do."

Other findings indicate that life expectancy, at 44.5 years, is 20 years lower than in all of the neighbouring countries and 6.1 years lower than the average of least developed countries. It also says that only 28.7 percent of Afghans over the age of 15 can read and write.

Atmar said the report also warned that over 61 percent of all children are not enrolled in school, with the figure for girls being over 80 percent.

According to the minister, the report provides guidance for the government in terms of policy targeting and is a tool for building accountability. "The government will be held accountable for the progress it makes or the failures it might make in terms of changing the situation that has been portrayed in this report."

The report is based on research papers, interviews with people and consultations with elders, scholars and anyone with an opinion on the issue.

The Afghanistan NHDR embodies the idea that human security is not a privilege but a public good to which every Afghan is equally entitled. "Human security should not be just the end of war or the ability to survive, but also the chance to live a life of dignity and have an adequate livelihood," the report stresses.

Human development reports are sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) globally and are produced as analytical and policy tools designed to promote the concept of human development. Since 1992, over 479 NHDRs have been produced by 130 countries, identifying many issues of importance.

The UNDP has also produced annual global human development reports which calculate the Human Development Index, ranking about 175 participating countries.

One of the real challenges for policy-making in Afghanistan is the limited amount of reliable data and analysis to inform policy makers and practitioners.

Researchers and policy makers in Kabul welcomed the launch of the Afghanistan NHDR. "The NHDR is a very significant report as it presents much of the data that exists on the state of human development in Afghanistan," Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), told IRIN.

According to the United Nations in Kabul, the Afghan NHDR was initiated in April 2003 by the government of Afghanistan and UNDP, with financial support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the World Bank.

Afghanistan rejects cold winter death toll as many as 1,000
KABUL, Feb. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Afghan Health Minister rejected the report that freezing weather and insufficient shelters have claimed more than 1,000 lives across the country, a local newspaper said Monday.

As many as 120 people, most of them children, died in the coldest winter for the last 15 years when heavy snowfalls and continued cold spell hit the country over the past three weeks.

"Some 120 children have died due to bitter weather and cold-related diseases over the past several weeks," Syed Mohammad Fatimi, the newly appointed Minister of Health told Erada Daily.

Earlier reports, cited a survey by a NGO, put the victims of the harsh winter in the war-battered nation as high as 1,000.

Denying the report as baseless, Fatimi added that the unprecedented chilliness and lack of facilities have caused the death of some 120 children in the far-flanged areas of the country. The continuous snowfalls have also blocked several main roads connecting Kabul with other provinces, hampering the aid resources reaching the areas.

UN says Afghanistan fifth from last in poverty league
KABUL-(AFP) 21 Feb. 2005 - Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest places three years after the ousting of the Taleban regime, ranking 173 out of 178 countries, the first development survey of the war-torn nation said Monday.

The country had made “remarkable” progress since US-led forces overthrew the fundamentalist regime in late 2001 but “could easily tumble back into chaos”, according to the United Nations Afghanistan Human Development Index.

Only Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone in Africa are more impoverished, the survey found. Afghanistan’s life expectancy is only 44.5 years, at least 20 years lower than neighbouring central Asian nations.

Officials have never before been able to carry out a proper assessment of Afghanistan’s economy, society and education because decades of warfare made it unsafe for them.

“The basic human needs and the genuine grievances of people -- the lack of jobs, health, education, income, dignity and opportunities for participation for the Afghan people -- must be met, and international aid must be tightly controlled,” the report said.

Although Afghanistan’s legal economy has grown by 25 to 30 percent since the fall of the Taleban, there has been little trickle-down to the poorest echelons of society, according to the UN. The report found that the poorest 30 percent of the population receive only nine percent of the national income, while the upper third receive 55 percent.

“Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,” said Daud Saba, one the authors of the report.

Half of the population are desperately poor and their poverty is compounded by a lack of social services, poor health, education and nutrition as well as a yawning gap in rights between men and women.

Although three million children have gone back to school since the Taleban collapsed, Afghanistan now “has the worst education system in the world” and one of the lowest adult literacy rates at only 28.7 percent, the report found.

Most of the country’s economic activity is fuelled by illicit drugs and Afghanistan is now the world’s leading producer of opium, which has underpinned a culture of violence and boosted the strength of private armies.

“Physical violence by armed militias continues, as does torture by security forces, deadly attacks by Taleban, hostage-taking, street gangs and domestic violence against women and children,” the report said.

Years of discrimination and poverty have also relegated Afghan women to a life hemmed in by poverty, malnutrition, exclusion from public life, rape, violence, poor health care, illiteracy, and forced marriage.

Of 300 children surveyed, 72 percent experienced the death of a relative and nearly all witnessed acts of violence, while two-thirds had seen dead bodies or body parts.

Only Niger and Burkina Faso ranked below Afghanistan in their treatment of women, the report found. One woman dies from pregnancy-related causes approximately every 30 minutes, and maternal mortality rates are 60 times higher than in developed countries.

Millions of dollars of foreign aid are flowing into the country but the report warned of the need for measures to limit corruption and ensure the fair flow of aid to prevent an increase in conflict and competition.

Despite the difficulties Afghan refugees are coming home in their millions with 1.8 million people returning from Pakistan and 600,000 coming back from Iran since the fall of the Taleban, the report said. However, many of them found no jobs or clean water to drink.

UN warns of new chaos in Afghanistan
By David Brunnstrom Monday February 21, 7:50 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - More than three years after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban, the United Nations has painted a gloomy picture of conditions in Afghanistan and warned it could fall back into chaos if popular grievances are not met.

The first ever Afghanistan Human Development Report, released on Monday, said remarkable progress had been made since 2001 and there was room for "cautious optimism".

But serious security problems remained and the country had some of the world's worst rates of life expectancy, conditions for women and children, and literacy, the United Nations said.

Unless grievances such as a lack of jobs, health care, education and political participation were addressed, "the fragile nation could easily tumble back into chaos", the United Nations said in a statement accompanying the report.

If that happened, "Afghanistan will collapse into an insecure state, a threat to its own people as well as the international community", it said.

The report, prepared by the U.N. Development Programme with government participation, said the international backers of President Hamid Karzai's government needed to take a broad and long-term view of Afghanistan's development.

"The international community is committed to fighting terrorism and drugs inside Afghanistan, but human security cannot take a back seat to national and international security interests of other nations," said editor-in-chief Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh.

Decades of conflict had taken a devastating toll, leaving Afghanistan near the bottom of the 177 countries covered in the UNDP's human development index, just above Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone, it said.

Only 28.7 percent of Afghans over 15 could read and write and life expectancy at birth was just 44.5 years -- at least 20 years lower than that in neighbouring states, and six years lower than the global average for least-developed countries.

CONDITIONS DIRE
Conditions for women and children were especially dire, with one in five children dying before the age of five and one woman dying of pregnancy-related illness every 30 minutes.

And while the economy had recovered significantly since the Taliban's overthrow, this had done little to address inequality.

One in two Afghans could be classified as poor and the poorest 30 percent received only nine percent of national income.

While millions more Afghans were back at school, the report said the education system remained the "worst in the word", with 80 percent of schools destroyed or damaged in the years of conflict.

Afghanistan needed multi-year commitments of international aid to fund long-term development, but that needed to be carefully directed to avoid dependency and disparities and Afghans needed to be better consulted over strategies.

"The overwhelming majority of people expressed their sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction had bypassed the ordinary Afghan," the United Nations said of those consulted in preparing the report.

The United States was spending $1 billion (530 million pounds) a month to fight the war on terrorism, far less than what was being spent to curb the poverty that can breed militancy, it said.

"Sustained peace in Afghanistan is not guaranteed despite the early successes in state-building."

The government needed to design a comprehensive development strategy and to create an environment dominated by the rule of law, not the gun, the report said. A big test would be parliamentary elections expected this year.

The report also had a message for Afghanistan's neighbours, saying there had been only partial progress in converting their harmful interference to constructive engagement.

"The involvement of Afghanistan's neighbours seems to be aimed as much at maintaining options in case of renewed conflict as it does at contributing to peace-building and reconstruction."

Karzai, who wrote a foreword to the report, conceded it painted a "gloomy" and "dismal" picture and said Afghans had high expectations of his government to deliver on curbing corruption, on security and reconstruction, and in ensuring the rule of law.

"The government recognises the challenges ahead," he said.

Women dying to give birth in Afghanistan
Reuters 02/21/2005
ISHKASHIM - Gulnama Shamsali sips tea and tries to calm her screaming six-month-old son as her husband and his four siblings quietly nibble their lunch -- a few pieces of stale wheat bread -- in their cold, dark mud house.

In two months, Gulnama, still only 22, will give birth to her second child.

And she could die from doing so.

The nearest hospital is 100 km (60 miles) away, four to five days by donkey, the most common transport in rural Afghanistan.

But Gulnama, whose youthful face is scarred by patches of frostbite from the bitter winter weather in her native Badakhshan province, says she is not worried. "I will give birth and their destiny belongs to God. He will save them," she said.

According to U.N. data, Afghanistan has among the world's highest rates of maternal mortality, and remote, impoverished, Badakhshan has the highest rates ever recorded anywhere in the world, with one mother dying in every 15 irths.

It is not difficult to see why.

The province is spectacularly beautiful, with high mountains and deep valleys blanketed by green in spring and summer, red in autumn, and white in winter.

But this beauty masks extreme poverty, an absence of physical infrastructure, a lack of skilled health workers, high illiteracy and social pressure on women to bear many children.

POOR FACILITIES
Gynaecologist Dr. Hajera Zia Baharestani runs Badakhshan's only maternity hospital, a 20-bed facility in the capital, Faizabad, inaccessible to most of the province's estimated 230,000 women of childbearing age.

"If Badakhshan had good roads, maybe a lot of doctors from other provinces would come here, but at the moment, no one's coming. We need help," Baharestani said.

Most women suffering from pregnancy complications who try to reach the hospital from remote areas die on the long trek through impossible mountain passes.

Those who make it get as much attention as Baharestani's staff of five doctors and a handful of nurses can give.

But there is very little to offer.

"We don't have oxygen here, we don't have specialists for anaesthesia," said Baharestani, who with her overworked team, must carry out complex surgical procedures such as hysterectomies using emergency lights powered by a faltering generator.

"We need antibiotics because patients come in a very bad state."

Despite three years of increased foreign aid after the overthrow of the Taliban, and U.N. efforts to highlight the problem of maternal mortality, the situation remains dire.

Experts say that it could be decades before Afghan mothers get proper protection.

"It's the kind of thing we can't change overnight," said Dr Jeffrey Smith, who works with Johns Hopkins University affiliate USAID/REACH, one of many foreign aid organisations involved in women's health in Badakhshan.

"The issue of maternal mortality is an issue of infrastructure, we have to develop the right personnel ... and deploy them to the rural areas."

Smith's organisation has recently opened a midwifery school in Faizabad to train women who will go back to their villages to help pregnant women with complicated deliveries.

FAMILY PLANNING
A key priority is to try to steer women towards education and family planning, but this too will be a long battle as despite efforts to improve women's rights since the Taliban's overthrow, provinces like Badakhshan still suffer from rates of female literacy of just five percent.

Twenty-two-year-old Hossima is typical.

Married off to a 30-year-old man when she was 11, she has since given birth to nine children -- all but one of whom died, mainly from poor nutrition.

As Hossima cuddles her surviving six-month-old son, who is himself recovering from a fever, she tells Dr. Baharestani she wants to have two more children.

"Well, she can have nine more if she wants," an exasperated Baharestani said, "she has a very healthy reproductive system."

Contrary to perceptions, Smith says, family planning is actually accepted in Afghanistan.

"People recognise that they need to space their births and limit their births," he said. "So I think family planning is part of the educational process for midwives and is something that we're working to strengthen throughout Afghanistan."

Despite the difficulties, Dr. Baharestani is optimistic for a better future and hopes President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government will make good its promise to build roads and clinics and provide better salaries to attract skilled staff.

"When Mr Karzai inaugurated this hospital, he promised us he would make Badakhshan one of the nicest cities in the world," she said. "I believe him."

This optimism is echoed by Gulnama's husband Rahman, who, despite the risks his wife faces, is already planning the future of their unborn children.

"I want them to be educated so they can have a better future," he said.

"Look at us now -- we are not educated, look at the kind of life we have: living in a cold hut, no job, no money. But I know my children will be educated and they will have a better future."

Spain to move Afghan-based forces to Herat
MADRID, Feb 21 (AFP) - Spain is to move its forces in Afghanistan, where they are serving on a NATO-led international stabilisation force, to the western region of Herat, Defence Minister Jose Bono said Monday.

Bono said the troops would move from their current base in Kabul by August to take command of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) at Qal-i-Naw, with the logistical base nearby at Herat.

Bono added that Spain did not intend to increase the size of its 540-soldier contingent, the number authorized by parliament as Spain's contribution to an 8,000-strong international security assistance force from 36 countries.

Any attack on Iran will impact on Afghanistan
By Younus Mehrin
KABUL, Feb. 20, Pajhwok Afghan News – There is increasing anxiousness in Afghanistan over the possible impact of an attack on Iran amidst growing fears of possible American action.

Analysts here feel an attack on the neighboring country would lead to an economic, political and security crisis in Afghanistan. The fears have risen in recent days following reports of an explosion near the nuclear installation near the Bushehr nuclear site. There have been conflicting reports about the cause of the explosion. The US has earlier threatened to take action against Iran for pursuing a nuclear program despite Iran’s protestations that its nuclear program is peaceful.

An economic affairs analyst, Abdul Razaq, believes that a US attack on Iran would be economically disastrous for Afghanistan. The economic agreements which have been signed between the two countries were very important for Afghanistan’s economic rehabilitation, he said.

Afghanistan was a consumer of Iranian consumer goods and to replace these with imports from other countries would come at a high cost. Razaq, however said that Russia’s favorable stance towards Iran made it improbable that an attack would take place anytime soon.

A military affairs analyst, Noorulhaq Ulumi said the US wanted to expand its power in the region and to keep countries with nuclear institutions under its control. He told Pajhwok Afghan News, "the presence of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is a serious threat to Iran.”

Ulumi is of the belief that Iran is a key target for US following Afghanistan and Iraq. He said the presence of unmanned surveillance drones in Iran was an indication of a possible attack.

Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ahmad Moez, said Afghanistan was neutral and hoped a solution would be found through diplomacy.

Kabul residents remember uprising against Soviet occupation
By Mustafa Basharat
KABUL, Feb. 21, (Pajhwok Afghan News) – Kabul has seen the passage of many rulers and oppressors in the last two decades. However time has not blurred the memories of the spontaneous armed uprising against Soviet occupation, 25 years ago this day.

On February 21, 1980, residents of Kabul rose up against the foreign troops occupying Afghanistan, coming out onto the streets in an attempt to oust the invading soldiers and the government it had installed. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on 24 December, 1979 and installed Babrak Karmal, the leader of the ‘parchami’ group of the communists as the President of Afghanistan’s communist government.

The citizen’s revolt began with the chanting of Allah-o-Akbar in the evening from houses in the area and spread throughout the city. A group of persons seized weapons from a battalion of soldiers and disarmed them. Other people joined them, arming themselves with axes, stones and shovels. Government and army installations were attacked through the night. It was only by morning that the Soviet troops and the Afghan army they backed managed to put down the rebellion with a bloody hand.

The brutality of the troops and the Afghan soldiers supporting them on that day was witnessed by many. Professor Abdul Fatah Rasikh of Kabul University's Islamic Law Faculty called that day one of unparalleled courage in the modern history of Afghanistan. “We, the inhabitants of Deh Dana of Kabul held funerals of 90 martyrs and buried them that day," Fatah said.

Habibullah Rafi of the Afghanistan Science Academy was detained for two weeks on the charge of involvement in the uprising. He told Pajhwok Afghan News how brutally the upraising was quelled.

Mohammad Nasim Faqiri, a spokesman for Jamiat-e-Islami party, said that the uprising in the capital city exposed the claim of the communist government that the urban people supporting them because more of them were literate.
Nuru-ul-Haq Ulomi, now a party leader and a supporter of the communist party however said that the casualties were not high as the government was trying to avoid firing at civilians.

ISAF AND CFC-A JOIN FORCES TO DELIVER MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO SNOWBOUND VILLAGERS
ISAF NEWS RELEASE - 20 February, 2005
Kabul, Afghanistan - When the call came for assistance to people in northern Afghanistan suffering from the harsh winter, Combined Forces Command (CFC-A) - Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) joined together to fly medical personnel and supplies to Badakshan Province.

The airlift started on Thursday, February 16th, when ISAF provided the first leg of airlift support aboard an ISAF-Portuguese C130 Hercules from Kabul Afghanistan International Airport up to Fayzabad.

The large cargo aircraft carried two medical teams from the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health including doctors and more than 3000 kilograms or three tons of medical supplies. "Included in the medical supplies were vaccines, antibiotics and antipyretics which are used to treat pertussis or whooping cough in children.” Explained Turkish-ISAF Dr. Major Ahmet Atalik. Bad weather interrupted the airlift and the doctors and supplies remained in Feyzebad for several days.

On Sunday, February 20th two Coalition Sea Stallion helicopters continued the airlift and flew up to the Badakhshan Province, near the Tajikistan border. The medical teams and supplies were dropped at two remote villages; Qala-i-Kuf and Qala-I-Shekai in the Darwaz area. The helicopters remained on the ground for about 15 minutes at each location.

According to U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot Capt. David Feliciano, the villages were inaccessible by road, and the Afghans were extremely happy for the medical assistance. The helicopters then took off and received an in-flight refueling from a U.S. Air Force HC-130 aircraft on the way back to Bagram, Airfield.

In an Afghan children's hospital, power cuts decide life or death
by Michaela Cancela-Kieffer
KABUL, Feb 21 (AFP) - A newborn with septicemia, the rims of his eyes blackened, breathes with difficulty in an incubator. He will only survive if the Indira Gandhi hospital doesn't have one of its regular power cuts, which have already killed more than one child.

"The life of these children depends on electricity. If it stops, their lives stop," said 35-year-old doctor Jalil Wardak, who has practised pediatrics for 12 years at the hospital for 40 dollars a month, and 150 dollars for private consultations.

The Indira Gandhi children's hospital was opened using Indian donations in Afghanistan in 1972, and has 300 beds and modern incubators.

But although the hospital also has two generators to compensate for the frequent power outages in the capital, it sometimes doesn't have enough fuel to make them work, according to the doctors.

In the marble halls, it's so cold that your breath is visible and the temperature is below 10 deg C (50 deg F) in the operating room.

The only heating in the room, where a child is about to go into kidney surgery, is a boukhari -- a traditional Afghan woodstove.

"One of the main reasons for post-operative complications is the temperature in the operating room," said Wardak.

His fellow surgeon points to the holes in his colleague's shirt and says ironically, "This is the state of health in Afghanistan."

In another wing of the hospital, 20 children are packed three to a bed in the intensive care unit where medicine is also lacking.

Three of the mothers interviewed had to buy some of the medicine for their children in the local bazaar.

"We have big problems with money," said 30-year-old Farida, before explaining her husband had to borrow to pay for medicine for the four-month-old baby she cradles in her arms, sick with pneumonia.

Another father says with pride that he was given medicine by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, where he works.

"After a quarter-century of war, our socio-economic infrastructure has been destroyed and the health system is no exception," Health Minister Amin Fatimie told AFP.

"This is why we have such tremendous problems and the health system is under pressure on all fronts," he added.

Afghanistan's infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world: 256 children in every 1,000 die before the age of five compared with five in France and around eight in the United States.

The country also suffers from a cruel lack of specialists, and only has one doctor for each 50,000 inhabitants.

According to the Ministry of Health, at least 128 children have died from disease during the freezing weather conditions of the past month. Humanitarian organisations estimate that up to 1,000 children could have died in areas cut off from aid and medical assistance by snowdrifts.

The misery of the health system, isolation and malnutrition do not explain everything, according to the minister and doctors at the hospital, who say poor education standards -- illiteracy runs at 70 percent -- are having devastating consequences.

Marza, a teenager who doesn't know her age, is an example.

She has brought her newborn to the hospital. The child's skin is yellow with jaundice and he breathes with difficulty. He probably has septicemia.

Had she had the most basic knowledge of the rules of hygiene it could have been avoided, doctor Rajarshi Sengputa told AFP as he did the examination.

Marza has already lost two children, one at birth and one who was a year-and-a-half old. She doesn't know why.

Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan hold meeting on refugees
TEHRAN, Feb. 20 (MNA) -- On February 16th, the governments of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan met with donor governments in Brussels for talks on how they could best manage refugee and population movements to and from Afghanistan, the UNHCR office in Tehran said in a report on Wednesday.

The meeting was convened jointly by the European Commission and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), which has helped more than 3 million Afghan refugees return home in the past three years.

Following is the statement of UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers during the meeting held in Brussels to study refugee & population movements to and from Afghanistan:

In the four years since I took office as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I have been to Afghanistan six times. My first visit was in May 2001, when the Taliban were still in power. Afghanistan was a country in ruins and had ceased to function as a state,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers said.

“I was in Kabul again in January when I met President Hamid Karzai, the first-ever democratically elected Afghan head of state. In four short years, Afghanistan has transformed itself almost beyond recognition. New buildings are going up everywhere one looks, while mobile phones, internet cafes and traffic jams are now everyday features of city life. Many women are working or studying. A functioning democracy is slowly emerging.

“Many challenges still lie ahead: security is a concern, the economy is weak, jobs and housing are in short supply. But for the first time in decades the future of the country lies in the hands of the Afghan people. As an international organization, UNHCR’s role now is to support the democratically-appointed Afghan government carry out its job. The question is how we can best do that.

“With more than five decades of experience in finding solutions for the world's refugees, UNHCR knows that repatriation is but the first step in a complex process of return, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction. In Afghanistan, we are well past the half-way point in our repatriation operation and can now see the day coming when everyone who wants to go home will have done so. We need to plan now for this new reality.

“Much has already been accomplished. Since 2002, more than three and a half million Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland. This is by far the largest voluntary repatriation program the United Nations refugee agency has ever undertaken. The change has been felt well beyond the region: the number of asylum claims by Afghans in industrialized countries plummeted from over 54,000 in 2001 to under 9,000 in 2004."

To date, the sustained commitment of the international community to Afghanistan’s reconstruction has been very encouraging. We must keep this momentum going. UNHCR will continue for now to assist the voluntary repatriation of many of the estimated two to three million Afghans remaining in Iran and Pakistan. A large number of these refugees will choose to repatriate, others will decide to stay outside their country or origin. Voluntary repatriation is the preferred solution but it is not the only choice available.

Pakistan and Iran have hosted Afghan refugees most generously for many years. But Afghans have also made a very positive contribution to the national economies of these two countries. As neighbors, Iran and Pakistan have a crucial role to play in helping Afghanistan: building a strong regional framework, with economic links and good relations between people, will do much to promote stability. After a quarter-century of crisis, today’s population movements to and from Afghanistan are actually a healthy sign, reflecting an increasingly dynamic regional economy.

There could hardly be a better symbol of Afghanistan’s progress than an end to one of the world’s longest-lasting refugee crises. Today’s meeting in Brussels will address the question of how population movements in the region can be managed within a broad migratory framework, within which refugee and other humanitarian concerns are only one facet of a complex phenomenon. As a first step, we need to identify what arrangements can be made for Afghans who will remain in neighboring countries once the repatriation operation ends.

UNHCR’s aim, everywhere in the world, is to find solutions for each refugee. All too often, this remains an elusive goal. In Afghanistan we have almost reached it. Before long and with a bit more work, Afghans abroad no longer need be treated as victims but as productive expatriates from a stable nation fully integrated in an increasingly globalized economy.

Pakistan: Integrated Afghan refugees want to stay on
LAHORE, 21 February (IRIN) - Gul Hakeem, 52, is a respected shopkeeper in the Shadman Market area of the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore. He is frequently called upon, as a respected elder known for his cool head, to settle minor arguments. His cloth shop in the market's basement area is a favourite gathering spot, not least because of the tales and the jokes Hakeem can tell. He tells them in Punjabi - the dominant language of the city.

Only a slight accent to his Punjabi vowels and his love for freshly brewed green tea gives Hakeem away as an Afghan. While those gathering around him enjoy cups of the sweetened, milky tea, Hakeem pours his green tea from a small kettle into his lacquered cup and allows the aroma of his homeland to drift across the crowded shop as he talks of his days as a young man.

Hakeem came to Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), among the first wave of refugees from Afghanistan in 1980, only months after the Soviet invasion of his homeland. He stayed at a refugee camp in the city for a few weeks and then, searching for both adventure and a livelihood, reached Lahore the same year.

"I fell in love with the city," he told IRIN. "In some ways, it reminded me of my home near Herat, even though everything was different. Yet, even though I spoke little Urdu at the time, people were friendly and the resentment against Afghans that came later had not yet set in."

Hakeem did odd jobs for about a year, but by the end of 1981 was able to rent a shop, selling cloth he brought in from Peshawar. He has expanded his business since then, buying the shop he rented in 1990. He married an Afghan woman from another refugee family in 1985 and the couple, with four children all studying at local institutions, plan on staying in Lahore.

"It is my home," Hakeem said. "What happened in the past is now only a part of the stories I tell."

According to Tajammul John Muneer, coordinator of the Afghan Refugees Programme at Caritas in Lahore, the implementing partner for refugee programmes with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently around 7,000 Afghan refugees in the city. He also believes that "at least some among these will go home". A large number of refugees returned home in 2003 and 2004 under UNHCR-assisted programmes.

However, it is also clear that a large number won't. Many of the refugees who came from Afghanistan are now well established in the city and have strong links to local families. They naturally have little wish to close flourishing businesses or abandon jobs to return to a country where economic insecurity and the aftermath of war are still plainly visible.

"Look, the fact is that the Kabul I knew as a young girl is no longer there," said Raheema Bibi, 32, who left Afghanistan with her parents when she was 15. "It is a different place. The families we knew have moved away. So many have been killed that I know no one there."

Her parents have since died in Peshawar. Bibi added: "For me and my three children, this city is where we now want to live. I have parents-in-law and my children's grandparents - as my husband Wali's family is here. They too came from Afghanistan, but are now happy to stay here."

Bibi and Wali still talk to each other in Dari, the first language of both families. However, they speak to their children, Shamsa, 10, Waleed, 8, and Hashim, 5, mainly in Urdu, indicating a break from the past and the start of a new life.

"The older children understand Dari, but they don't speak it," Wali said. "I would like them to learn, but Urdu is more important for them right now."

As Tariq Khan, coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in Peshawar and in charge of programmes linked to refugee affairs, told IRIN: "Many of those who came as refugees are now in fact a part of their communities in cities such as Lahore. As with every Diaspora, there are people who move away from their roots and into a new setting, never to return home. It is hardly surprising that should happen in the case of the Afghans as well."

The close linguistic and cultural links between Afghans and Pashtuns made amalgamation easier. However, even in Lahore, Afghans have managed to blend in and in some cases, even married into Punjabi families.

"My parents were not happy when I married Kulsoom," Habib Khan, 33, said. "But then they came to know her and like her. Now that things are calmer, I hope to take her and our son to visit my parents, who are still in Afghanistan, but then we will return to our lives here."

While some Afghans, such as Habib, have moved away from their own communities and into mainstream society in the city, most of those still staying on are based in settlements around the Garden Town area, or Bedian Road, where quarters in "katchi abadis" (slum areas) are made up of Afghans.

The bright, pink and green skirts of the older women, or the blonde hair and green eyes of small children, as they play a game of street cricket with Lahori youngsters, give them away as Afghans, even though many have in fact been born in the city and have never known their ancestral homeland.

Some among these communities say that, even with the UNHCR's help, they are too poor to return. Others seem unwilling to risk the uncertainty and possible economic suffering the shift would bring, happier to continue with the small business or jobs as guards, carpenters or vendors that they have found locally. The reputation of Afghans as good businessmen has also held true, with a large number now dominating markets, such as the cloth bazaar at the Auriga Centre in Gulberg.

These Afghans seem certain to remain a part of the city scene, and are known by the generic name of "Khan", a popular clan-name among Pashtuns and Afghans. Certainly, many among them show little interest in returning. They maintain that the homeland many left as children is now nothing but a distant memory - and that it is in the historic city of Lahore that they now hope to build their futures and bring up their families, with ties to Afghanistan having grown weaker over the years since they left it far behind.

The Hazara people of Bamiyan demonstrate in favor of their governor
By Ahmad Sanayee
BAMIYAN, Feb. 21, (Pajhwok Afghan News) – As many as a thousand people joined in a peaceful demonstration in support of the governor of the central province of Bamiyan and the provincial security chief on Monday morning, following an earlier announcement by President Karzai’s spokesman to replace the current governor with a female nominee, officials said.

Although both the governor, Mohammed Rahim Aliyar and the security chief, Abdul Rahman Shaidani are continuing with their duties, the demonstration was fuelled by the announcement that the first ever woman, the former women’s affairs minister, Habiba Sarabi may assume responsibilities for Bamiyan province.

President Karzai's spokesman, Jawed Ludin, said on February 15th that the former women's affairs minister, Mrs Sarabi, will be appointed as the first ever female governor of Afghanistan, but he added that the decision hasn’t been finalized as yet.

In an interview with Pajhwok Afghan News last week, Mrs. Sarabi said she is ready to accept the post even with the many problems that come with the position.

The demonstrators rallied in front of a main mosque in Bamyan city and marched along the streets by-passing the provincial United Nations office, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Organization and the provincial governor’s headquarters, chanting slogans in favor of the governor.

Ghulam Nabi Mohammadi, the organizer of the march, told Pajhwok Afghan News: "This was a public demonstration of support for Governor Aliyar, and we want the governor and the security chief to remain in their positions".

One of the demonstrators, Haji Talib Hussain, praised the security in Bamiyan.

"There are murders and terrorism in other provinces, but in Bamiyan that does not exist; if the governor and the security chief are not responsible for the provincial affairs, the security situation in the region will deteriorate," Hussain said.

The demonstrators have signed a petition against the possible termination of their posts and have called for the quick reconstruction of Bamyan-Kabul road.
In the meantime, another group of women welcomed the nomination of the first female governor.

"We'd love to see a woman as our governor, and it will be good for the women of Bamiyan to get their rights," said Zakia Hussaini of the Surkh Pul in the city.
The central province of Bamiyan is the home to the ethnic Hazara group, who follow the Shiite branch of Islam.

People protest Khost University dropping medical course
By Abdul Majid Arif
KHOST, Feb 21. (Pajhwok News Agency)—A decision to drop the discipline of medical studies from the courses offered by Khost university in this Southern province has led to angry demonstrations in the town. A gathering of local communities which was demonstrating there on Monday told Pajhwok Afghan News that the people would sever all connection with Kabul if their demand for restoration of the course was not met.

A leader of the group, Ghazi Nawaz Tani, said "if Khost University is not given the medical faculty along with other faculties, we will cut the road between Kabul and Khost. All the shops in Khost will be closed and no official will go to his office.” Almost 400 students had registered themselves for the entrance exam to this University, which was held on Monday.

Ahmad Zia Rafat, spokesman of the department of higher education in the Ministry of Education, said to Pajhwok that the decision not to include the discipline in this year’s entrance exam in Khost University was due to the shortage of professors of medicine. However he added, "the medical faculty in Khost is still working. People of Khost have misunderstood when they say that the entire faculty has been is terminated". On the other hand, a professor in Khost University who did not want to be identified said that there were almost 18 professors in the faculty.

Noor Mohammad, a student from Paktika, told Pajhwok that he had reached Khost with difficulty for the entrance examination but did not want to sit for it after seeing the tension.

U.S.: Aboard Air CIA
The agency ran a secret charter service, shuttling detainees to interrogation facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next? A NEWSWEEK investigation.
By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry Newsweek International
Feb. 28 issue - Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.' "

No one's laughing these days, least of all the CIA. NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror. And the Boeing's flight information, detailed to the day, seems to confirm Masri's tale of abduction. Gnjidic, Masri's lawyer, called the information "very, very important" to his case, which is being investigated as a kidnapping by a Munich prosecutor. In what could prove embarrassing to President Bush, Gnjidic added that a German TV station was planning to feature Masri's tale ahead of Bush's much-touted trip to Germany this week. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently visited CIA Director Porter Goss to discuss the case, and German sources tell NEWSWEEK that Schily was seeking an apology. CIA officials declined to comment on that meeting or any aspect of Masri's story.

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being "snatched" by American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are further evidence that a global "ghost" prison system, where terror suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA. Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other "renditions," the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process. "The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability," says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

CIA officials are increasingly fretful about being saddled with this secret prison network at a time of intense pressure from lawyers and human-rights activists. The CIA's anxiety only deepened last week when President Bush named John Negroponte, his ambassador to Iraq, as the country's first director of national intelligence. Negroponte, a demanding career diplomat, will take over the coveted president's daily brief, or PDB, from Goss. Bush sought to reassure the CIA that it would still be welcome in the Oval Office. But Bush also signaled that Negroponte would preside over a major shift in power in intelligence gathering. "John and I will work to determine how much exposure the CIA will have to the Oval Office," the president told reporters.

While it battles for influence in Washington, the agency is also fighting a rear-guard action against critics at home and abroad. Some CIA officials fear the White House is now exposing them to legal peril. New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under pressure while he awaited his confirmation hearings late last year, repudiated a controversial August 2002 memo that CIA officials carefully solicited from the Justice Department for legal authorization on renditions and the agency's treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Today the CIA has dozens of detainees it doesn't know how to dispose of without legal procedures. "Where's the off button?" says one retired CIA official. "They asked the White House for direction on how to dispose of these detainees back when they asked for [interrogation] guidance. The answer was, 'We'll worry about that later.' Now we don't know what to do with these guys. People keep saying, 'We're not going to shoot them'."

The new evidence supporting Masri's case will only inflame the debate. According to data filed with European aviation authorities, the Boeing 737 landed in Skopje on Jan. 23, 2004, after a flight from the island of Majorca off Spain (a U.S.-friendly government), and left that night. Masri's passport has a Macedonian exit stamp for Jan. 23. The flight plan shows that the plane landed the next day in Baghdad and then went onto Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 25, which also conforms to Masri's account. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the jet was owned at the time by Premier Executive Transport Services, a now-defunct Massachusetts-based company that U.S. intelligence sources acknowledge to NEWSWEEK fits the profile of a suspected CIA front.

The Boeing flights are part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the 737 obtained by NEWSWEEK. The jet's record dates to December 2002 and shows flights up until Feb. 7 of this year. The Boeing 737 may have served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as well. Among the stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government has been dismantling

Muammar Kaddafi's clandestine nuclear program; and Jordan, where the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were being held. (A Jordanian spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.) The Boeing also landed at Guantanamo.

Ironically, many U.S. officials say, the CIA secret facilities have proven very effective for quietly interrogating a handful of known Qaeda suspects. But when such rough practices "migrated" to Iraqi war detainees and bigger facilities like Abu Ghraib prison—under the direction of the Defense Department—the public backlash compromised the CIA's intel-gathering efforts. Today the agency's cover has been blown and critics are questioning why no full-time CIA employees have been prosecuted despite several cases of serious abuse linked to the agency.

Among these cases is that of Manadel al-Jamadi, the Iraqi whose corpse was notoriously photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib last year. An Associated Press report last week said that documents show Jamadi died under CIA interrogation while suspended by his wrists at the prison. But only the Navy SEALs who delivered him to Abu Ghraib are currently being investigated, officials say.

U.S. officials insist the CIA has stopped rendering suspects to countries where they believe torture occurs. NEWSWEEK has learned that shortly after a Canadian jihadi suspect of Syrian origin, Maher Arar, was shipped back to Syria in September 2002, officials began having grave second thoughts about rendering suspects to that nation. As a result, the administration made a secret decision to stop sending suspects to Syria. But officials acknowledge that such scruples are being ignored when it comes to rendering suspects to allies like Egypt and Jordan, even though some officials do not believe "assurances" from these nations that they were not mistreating prisoners. Now the CIA may have to supply many more assurances—and Khaled el-Masri, among others, is waiting for them.

With Stephen Grey in London and Stefan Theil in Berlin

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6999908/site/newsweek/

Lubbers resigns as UN refugee chief; Annan says move is in best interest of UN agency
AFP 02/21/2005
Ruud Lubbers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has stepped down from his post amid the persistent controversy over allegations of sexual impropriety -- a move that Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed as serving the wider interest of the UN refugee agency.

In a statement issued on Sunday by his spokesman, the Secretary-General thanked Mr. Lubbers for his "commitment" to refugees, but said "it is in the best interest of UNHCR, its staff and the refugees it serves that the page be turned and a new chapter be started."

When allegations against Mr. Lubbers surfaced last year, he vigorously denied them – a position he has maintained throughout. Speaking to reporters in New York on Friday following a meeting with the Secretary-General, Mr. Lubbers dismissed the accusations as a campaign of slander.

The charges came from a UNHCR staffer who said the 65-year old former Dutch Prime Minister sexually harassed her during a meeting in December 2003. Referring to that encounter in a statement released after the charges were formally brought the following May, Mr. Lubbers asserted "there was no improper behaviour on my part."

By July, the Secretary-General had received the results of an investigation against Mr. Lubbers and, after a review, decided that the complaint could not be sustained by the evidence.

"The Secretary-General now considers this matter closed," a UN spokesman said at the time.

Mr. Annan made his decision based on the report of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), as well as Mr. Lubbers' response to it.

Today's statement underscored that while the Secretary-General had accepted legal advice that the original allegations made against Mr. Lubbers could not be substantiated, "the continuing controversy has made the High Commissioner's position impossible."

Mr. Annan "is therefore pleased that Mr. Lubbers has made this decision in the wider interest of UNHCR," the statement said.

The ninth head of the UN refugee agency since its establishment in 1951, Mr. Lubbers had served as the High Commissioner since 1 January 2001, when he succeeded Sadako Ogata of Japan.

Rahman Baba: Poet of the Pashtuns
By Haroon Rashid - BBC News, Peshawar
Pashtun culture has suffered over the past few years with its link to the Taleban and Osama bin Laden. But that image may soon be revised with the efforts of two English teachers, Robert Sampson and Momin Khan Jaja, based in Pakistan's North-Western Frontier Province.

Working tirelessly over four years, they have translated the collected works of celebrated Pashtun poet, Rahman Baba, into English. And one theme that is entirely absent from Rahman Baba's work is jihad, or holy war.

Pashtun pride - The weighty volume, entitled The Poetry of Rahman Baba - Poet of the Pashtuns, is more than 900 pages long and attempts to show the Pashtuns' devotion to peace, love and selflessness. These are the predominant thoughts that run through Rahman Baba's poetry, which most Pashtuns find relevant even in today's age of violence and terrorism.

There is hardly a Pashtun who does not know some of Rahman Baba's work by heart. Pashtun intellectuals say it is far more than poetry for those who understand it. Many feel that for the Pashtuns, it is a book next only to the Koran.

Widespread awareness - Saidu Baba, a revered saint from the Pakistani hill district of Swat, is known to have said that if the Pashtuns were ever asked to pray on a book other than the Koran, they would undoubtedly go for Rahman Baba's work.

Having remained restricted to the Pashtuns for more than 300 years, the poetry is now available to the entire world. And the translators are hoping they have done justice to it.

"To keep up with the idea and thoughts of a poet is very challenging," Momin Khan Jaja told the BBC News website. "But we tried our best to be genuine and sincere."

Co-translator Robert Sampson hopes the translation will lead to a more widespread awareness and appreciation of a poetry that has had a deep influence on Pashtun life.

The book includes four chapters on the poet's life as well as a commentary on his themes, which may help those who know little about sufi thought from three centuries ago. "There is no doubt in the sanctity of Mecca, but a donkey won't become a Hajj pilgrim by just going through the motions," reads one of his famous couplets.