Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (R) and former king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah (2nd R) applaud during the inauguration of the foundation stone of the new Parliament building in Kabul August 29, 2005. Afghanistan's parliamentary elections will be held on September 18. REUTERS/Tomas Munita/Pool

U.N.: Opium Yield Falls in Afghanistan

Kabul (Reuters) - Opium yield in Afghanistan dropped by just 2 percent this year despite a major clampdown on poppy farmers that sharply reduced the amount of land used to grow the narcotic, the United Nations anti-drug chief said Monday.

The amount of land being cultivated was reduced by 21 percent by the crackdown but the fields in production produced a bumper crop of 4,100 tons thanks to heavy rains after years of drought, said Antonio Maria Costa, the director for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Last year's yield was 4,200 tons.

Afghanistan is still estimated to produce 87 percent of the world's supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin, Costa said.

He predicted it would take 20 years to eradicate cultivation of drugs — a mainstay of many of Afghanistan's impoverished farmers, despite government warnings against growing poppies and the destruction of some crops by authorities.

"We see a significant improvement in the amount of land cultivated in Afghanistan, a major reduction. One field out of five that was cultivated in 2004 was not cultivated this year," Costa, who is visiting Afghanistan, told The Associated Press in an interview. But he said that "heavy rainfall, snowfall and no infestation of crops resulted in a very significant increase in productivity."

A report by the U.N. agency said the total amount of land being used to grow poppies dropped from 323,570 acres in 2004 to 256,880 acres this year. But the jump in crop yield — the opium harvested from each acre of poppies — was 22 percent, it added.

The report said drug production in some parts of the country had dropped sharply, but in other areas it had boomed, including in southern Nimroz province where there had been a 1,370 percent increase.

The United States, Britain and other countries have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into an anti-drug campaign in Afghanistan after opium and heroin production ballooned in recent years, sparking warnings the country was fast becoming a "narco-state" less than four years after the U.S.-led invasion ended its role as a haven for al-Qaida.

The cash was used to train police units to destroy laboratories, arrest smugglers and destroy opium crops, as well as to fund projects to help farmers grow legal crops.

Costa praised President Hamid Karzai and his ministers in trying to eradicate drug production, but said some provincial governors and other officials were involved in the drug trade and should be removed.

"Together with the removal of corrupt governors, we are championing the indictment of officials who are corrupt or warlords who have benefited from the poppies," he said.

Costa predicted that it may take up to 20 years to totally eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan, comparing the challenge to long campaigns to get rid of drug cultivation in Pakistan, Thailand and elsewhere.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) discloses marked decrease in 2005 opium cultivation in Afghanistan - Press Release

Kabul, Monday 29 th August 2005: There has been a decrease of over one fifth in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan this year compared to last, according to the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa.

Mr. Costa was speaking at a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, following a meeting today (Monday) with the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. Mr. Costa has come to Kabul to present the preliminary findings of the UNODC’s 2005 Opium Survey for Afghanistan to the Afghan Government, which is due to be published in about one month’s time. President Karzai has repeatedly stressed to the people of Afghanistan about the shame the narcotics industry brings to the country.

According to Mr. Costa, the survey has found that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 21%, down from 131,000 hectares in 2004 to 103,000 hectares in 2005. Mr. Costa attributed this to the Government’s success at persuading Afghan farmers to refrain voluntarily from poppy cultivation; to farmers’ apprehension that the official ban on opium cultivation could be enforced through eradication; and to current market conditions in Afghanistan. Farm-gate prices for raw opium remain relatively low, offering farmers less incentive.

The Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics, Habibullah Qaderi, says he is very encouraged indeed by the results of the UNODC Report for 2005. “The report shows that Afghanistan has definitely turned the corner in its efforts to eliminate the scourge of narcotics. I am very grateful to all those who have made this possible, especially the farmers who voluntarily changed to growing licit crops.”

While there has been a marked decrease in cultivation, Mr. Costa says that the production of opium has not fallen so much, because of favourable weather conditions in Afghanistan, which also helped the growth of licit crops. He said the UNODC survey has found that production of Afghan opium in 2005 stands at 4,100 tonnes, only slightly less than the 4,200 tonnes produced in 2004. In 2005, productivity of opium per hectare grew from 32 kilogrammes in 2004 to 39 kilogrammes in 2005.

Provincial Governors eradicated about 4,000 hectares of opium crops in the spring of 2005. The Central Government destroyed another 1,000 hectares under two separate eradication campaigns. In total this accounted for about 5% of this year’s opium cultivation.

Mr. Costa speaks encouragingly about the success of the Afghan Government in its Counter Narcotics Campaign. “The fact that in certain provinces of Afghanistan, Nangarhar for example, cultivation has all but disappeared, tells us that the opium economy can be contained,” he says. “Temporary gains can be transformed into permanent change by ensuring that food security and income generation programmes coincide with the destruction of opium crops.”

Afghan president expects peaceful elections despite fierce fighting - By DANIEL COONEY 

KABUL, Afghanistan - (AP)  Afghanistan's president said Sunday he is optimistic that next month's legislative elections will be peaceful, but the unrelenting violence that has marred the lead-up to the polls raged on, leaving a candidate dead and three American troops wounded.

Hamid Karzai's comments followed a major offensive by U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops against militants intent on subverting the Sept. 18 polls. The operation has left hundreds of suspected rebels dead.

"We are very sure the election will take place peacefully," Karzai told reporters in Kabul. "There will be threats ... but that would not deter the Afghan people from participating. We will soon have a parliament."

But other Afghan officials, as well as U.S. authorities, have warned that the violence may worsen ahead of the elections, the next key step toward democracy after a quarter century of fighting.

American military commanders have prepared elaborate security plans to safeguard the voting, saying Taliban rebels are throwing all their resources into disrupting the polls.

In the latest anti-American violence, militants attacked a U.S. military convoy on Friday 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Kabul, wounding three American soldiers, a U.S. military statement said. An attack helicopter rushed to the site, but the rebels had fled.

The wounded were in stable condition after being evacuated to Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, about an hour's drive north of Kabul, it said. Attacks on the U.S. military so close to Kabul are rare and Friday's assault occurred less than a week after a roadside bomb in the capital exploded near a convoy of U.S. Embassy vehicles, wounding two American staff members.

In southern Uruzgan province on Sunday, gunmen ambushed a parliamentary candidate, Adiq Ullah, as he was driving, killing him and wounding two others in his vehicle, said provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan.

He blamed the Taliban for the murder. Security forces pursued the insurgents, but they escaped, the governor said. Ullah's killing brings to four the number of candidates killed so far in the lead-up to the polls. Four election workers have also been murdered and several election offices have been rocketed.

Meanwhile, Karzai and visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for a regional effort to fight terrorism, saying only with the help of Pakistan can the threat of further militancy be defeated.

"India, Pakistan, Afghanistan ... need to join hands and work very strongly for the safety and security of all people in the three countries," Karzai said. Singh, the first Indian leader to visit Kabul in 29 years, said, "We have an obligation to work together to deal with this madness."

Security forces in both India and Afghanistan are battling Islamic militants who are allegedly backed by Pakistan, which lies between them. Indian officials claim Islamabad channels aid to militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while Afghan officials allege Pakistan is helping Taliban insurgents here. Pakistan's government vehemently denies both charges.

Karzai said there "has been cooperation from Pakistan in the anti-terrorism drive," but he called for ties between Islamabad and Kabul to be strengthened in the hope that Pakistani leaders can be persuaded to do more.

Afghan Parliament to be heart of democracy: PM – PTI 8/29/05

“It will be the heart of democracy in Afghanistan," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked on Monday as the foundation stone of the Afghan Parliament was laid by former King Zahir Shah.

To resemble the Indian Parliament, the building will be built by India at a cost of $25 million over a four-year period. It will have Upper and Lower Houses on the lines of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.

Singh, who witnessed the foundation laying ceremony along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other top leaders, stressed that "democratic institutions in Afghanistan need to be nurtured and nursed."

He described the occasion, which comes two weeks before the Afghan Parliamentary elections, as marking a new phase in the history of the "blessed country".

"This inauguration of work on Afghan Parliament marks the beginning and strengthening of relations between the two countries. It reflects India's commitment towards a democratic, stable and prosperous Afghanistan," Singh said.

"Democracies thrive on open societies, but democracies, old or young, are threatened today by rise of global terrorism. The open culture of our societies make us more vulnerable," Singh said, adding democracies need to work together to deal with these threats.

He noted that Afghanistan had a unique position in this regard and said, "we are ready to work with the government and people of Afghanistan to ensure that the nation never again becomes hostage to terrorism."

NATO rolls out 2,000 more troops for Afghan polls

KABUL, Aug 29 (AFP) - NATO-led peacekeepers have deployed 2,000 extra troops across northern and western Afghanistan to secure the war-battered country's parliamentary elections on September 18, a spokesman said Monday.

The roll-out brings to nearly 11,000 the number of soldiers under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has operated under a United Nations mandate since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

"It's 2,000 extra forces from ten different NATO nations, bringing infantry, support elements and aircraft into the country to support the build-up to and the conduct of the elections," said ISAF spokesman Major Andy Elmes.

The American military also added a 700-strong battalion to help the ballot, said US spokesman Colonel James Yonts.

During polls, the US-led coalition will have more than 20,000 troops in the country lending support to an estimated 35,000 Afghan army troops and some 80,000 poorly trained policemen.

Attacks by militants linked to the fundamentalist Taliban movement have risen in the run up to the polls, with more than 1,000 people including some election candidates dying so far this year.

Yonts said in addition to the Afghan, US-led and NATO-led forces, Pakistan had also increased its military presence along its troubled frontier with Afghanistan.

Most Taliban attacks occur in provinces that border Pakistan. Afghan and US military officials privately say that the militants are using bases in Pakistan to launch attacks over the border, an accusation Islamabad strongly denies.

Pakistan has more than 70,000 troops along the border, mostly to track down Taliban and Al-Qaeda guerrillas who fled Afghanistan in late 2001. In July it said it had moved in another 4,000 to seal the frontier for the polls.

Taliban Leader Said Killed in Afghanistan

Kabul (AP) - The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces have killed a suspected Taliban commander and three of his fighters in the country's south, while six other rebels died in a clash with Afghan police, officials said Monday.

Payenda Mohammed, who was thought to have led about 150 rebels, was killed in a fierce battle in Kandahar province on Wednesday, said U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts. He was believed responsible for numerous rocket attacks, ambushes and other guerrilla-style assaults.

At least three other militants were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting, in which A-10 warplanes and attack helicopters bombed caves along a ridge where the militants had sought shelter and had stashed weapons, Yonts said Monday. No Afghan or coalition troops were wounded.

Afghan and coalition forces have stepped up attacks in recent months in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from subverting landmark legislative elections on Sept. 18. Hundreds of suspected rebels have been killed.

Elsewhere, Afghan police fought a two-hour gunbattle with about 30 Taliban rebels, believed responsible for an ambush on a civilian vehicle earlier in the day in Shahjoy district of southern province of Zabul.

Ali Khail, spokesman for the provincial governor, said on Monday that six of the rebels were killed, while the others, including their leader, Mullah Lutfullah, fled. He said the police suffered no casualties in the fighting Sunday.

Yonts said American forces are doing all they can in Afghanistan to locate Osama bin Laden but he cannot say when the al-Qaida leader will be captured. "When will he be captured? ... I can't give you a date, but I can tell you this: Everyone remembers 9/11," Col. James Yonts told reporters in Kabul.

Bin Laden has long been suspected to be hiding in remote mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but no hard evidence has emerged on his exact whereabouts. Some 20,000 U.S. forces are deployed in Afghanistan, hunting fugitive al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.

Despite the recent rash of attacks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday he was confident the Sept. 18 elections will be peaceful. "There will be threats ... but that would not deter the Afghan people from participating. We will soon have a parliament," Karzai told reporters.

But other Afghan officials, as well as U.S. authorities, have warned that the violence may worsen ahead of the elections, the next key step toward democracy after a quarter-century of fighting.

American military commanders have prepared elaborate security plans to safeguard the voting, saying Taliban rebels are throwing all their resources into disrupting the polls. Last week, militants attacked a U.S. military convoy 25 miles east of Kabul, wounding three American soldiers, a U.S. military statement said Sunday.

Attacks on the U.S. military so close to Kabul are rare and Friday's assault occurred less than a week after a roadside bomb in the capital exploded near a convoy of U.S. Embassy vehicles, wounding two American staff members.

In southern Uruzgan province on Sunday, gunmen ambushed a parliamentary candidate, Adiq Ullah, as he was driving, killing him and wounding two others in his vehicle, said provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan. He blamed the Taliban for the murder.

Ullah's killing brings to four the number of candidates killed so far. Four election workers have also been murdered and several election offices have been rocketed.

Reports Bin Laden wounded untrue, say US and NATO

KABUL, Aug 29 (AFP) - The US military and NATO peacekeeping forces on Monday dismissed reports carried on Islamic websites that Osama bin Laden had been injured in western Afghanistan.

US spokesman Colonel James Yonts said that his military had checked claims that the Al-Qaeda leader had been wounded by Spanish troops based in the western province of Herat.

"When we looked into that report -- you know any allegation such as this, we take it very seriously -- we found no proof," US spokesman Colonel James Yonts told reporters in Kabul.

The claim first surfaced on August 24 in a story on Italian news website Adnkronos International.

It quoted two messages carried by "various Islamic websites," the first of which said Bin Laden had been wounded in a clash with the Spaniards while the second gave details including that the injury was to his left leg.

In May, Islamic websites were used to give the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's pointman in Iraq, had been wounded. An audio message confirming the injury was later attributed to Zarqawi himself.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, which has hundreds of Spanish troops based in Herat, also ruled out that any of its troops had injured bin Laden, who has a 50 million dollar US bounty on his head.

"I'm afraid that was just a rumour. No truth in it," NATO spokesman in Kabul Major Andy Elmes said. A Spanish helicopter crashed near Herat on August 16, killing all 17 Spanish peacekeepers aboard. Madrid has said there were no signs of an attack.

Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States, has evaded capture for almost four years since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan to hunt him down and topple his backers, the Taliban regime.

However, Yonts said that the 19,000-strong US-led coalition will continue to hunt for the Saudi, who is widely believed to be hiding along the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

"We want nothing more than to bring that man to justice, there is no doubt about that, and we're doing everything inside Afghanistan, and through the help of the border central Asian states as well, looking for that individual," Yonts said.  

Disarming the Child Soldiers

A UN programme seeks to bring young boys pressed into the service of local commanders back into society. by Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 183, 25-Aug-05) Institute for War & Peace Reporting    

Some of the older children fought against the Taleban, but many others are little more than slaves, forcibly recruited to work for local commanders and warlords.

Nearly 8,000 child soldiers – defined by international law as combatants aged under 18 - are scattered throughout Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, which is now working to disarm and demobilise them.

They are part of the many militia units left over from the years of factional warfare, which are themselves being gradually disarmed and disbanded to make way for the new Afghan National Army.

The children do have guns, but only for when they are on guard duty. But for much of the time they bear little resemblance to soldiers, simply working in their commanders' houses or on their land in return for three meals a day.

In some cases, especially where the paramilitary commanders use young male recruits for sex, UNICEF's campaign seems more like a project to free children from bondage.

“I had a lot of problems. The commander used to gamble with his friends until midnight, so I had to do guard duty as well as make tea. But some nights, the commander himself would force me to have sex and would rape me,” one such recruit told IWPR.

Now aged 14, this boy has just been swept up by the demobilisation programme which has reached his village in Faryab province of northwestern Afghanistan.

But he was still fearful, as the village is still the personal fiefdom of the local militia leader. “We are poor people and we cannot complain to anyone because the commander would kill my father,” he said.

It is a fear expressed by other children whom UNICEF is trying to help through its Child Soldiers Disarmament and Demobilisation Programme, launched last month and aimed at boys aged between 11 and 17.

According to the UN, no child soldier will remain in a military force once the programme is completed.

To see the plan through, officials are working through village elders who know which local commanders have child soldiers. The officials get the elders to talk to the commanders and persuade them to hand the children to UNICEF.

At the same time, UNICEF has asked some non-governmental organisations, NGOs to do the same job on its behalf. More than 500 child soldiers have been disarmed since the latest programme began in western Afghanistan. It is now concentrating on the north and northwest of the country.

“There are still some armed groups in Afghanistan who have recruited child soldiers,” UNICEF spokesman Edward Carwardine told IWPR.

Implicitly acknowledging the risk of sexual abuse faced by child soldiers, he said, “All demobilised children will be tested medically for the HIV threat and then they will be provided with durable alternative opportunities to military life, including education and vocational skills trainings.”

Last year, during a general disarmament programme for adult men, some 3,000 children recruited by local commanders who worked with the defence ministry, were disarmed and demobilised. Most of them were in Afghanistan's central and northeast provinces.

Among these children, said the spokesman, a small number were found to be infected with HIV. Nine out of ten child soldiers are uneducated, said the spokesman, promising that UNICEF would provide literacy courses for them.

Carwardine said local NGOs registered with his organisation would be responsible for integrating the children back into normal life. According to him, local militia commanders had shown interest in the children's reintegration and had not expressed any opposition to the programme.

One such commander, who still had child soldiers working for him, praised the programme, saying, "There isn't the need to keep the children any more."

From his stronghold in Sar-e-Pul province, this paramilitary leader, who did not want his name disclosed, said he had only taken children on in order to help them.

“The war has now ended in Afghanistan. We don’t need any armed men, but we kept the children on because if we let them go, they would have become unemployed. Now we are very happy that the UN will reintegrate them,” he said.

In the same province, one 15-year-old boy soldier - a thin and sick looking child dressed in over-large military gear, although he had never actually fought - still expressed fears for the future. He would not give his name, nor say whether he had been sexually abused, but acknowledged he had been harshly beaten by the local commander.

“I have been working at the commander’s home for three years. I cook and clean in the day and during the nights I have to do guard duty for more than six hours. I get no pay, just three meals a day," he told IWPR.

"Sometimes I get so tired I can't do the commander’s housework, or I fall asleep on duty at night. Then he beats me a lot, saying I'm being insolent to him."

He said he had heard about the UN demobilisation campaign from elders in his village and was very pleased about it. "Even though my life has been destroyed during the past three years I really want to become educated and able to work so that I won’t be a burden on others,” he said.

But he added, “This commander is very powerful and I am very afraid that if the UN goes away, he’s likely to recruit me as a soldier again.” Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Squatter land rush taxes Kabul hillsides - The Asahi Shimbun 08/27/2005 By Eishiro Takeishi

KABUL - In the chaos that followed the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001 by the United States and its British allies, people began flocking to the capital to grab public land to build houses.

One rocky hillside in the Khair Khana district in northern Kabul is filled with such illegal housing. The mud-and-brick houses were mostly built by migrants from rural areas seeking work in the capital, where the economy has picked up thanks to assistance from the international community.

The hillside used to be barren land visited only by nomads in the spring. It is now home to several hundred thousand squatters. Although the government warns people not to build there, and has even removed some houses, there seems to be no stopping the tide of construction.

"Soon after the Taliban fled, I saw someone drawing a square on the hillside. Soon, they had built a house and a mud wall around it. After that, other people rushed to do the same thing," said Mohammad Sadeq, 75, who sells tombstones at a cemetery near the hillside.

One of the squatters, Gul Mohammad, 37, from Parvan province north of Kabul, explained why he had built on the hillside. "There are no jobs in the countryside. Anyway, my house in my hometown was destroyed in the war," he said.

"Recently, someone wanted to buy my house for $4,000 (about 440,000 yen)," he added. That's a high price-the average monthly salary for a public servant in Kabul is $40. The roads on the hillside in some areas are too steep for automobiles. In other spots, houses protrude onto the roadways.

There is no water supply on the hill, so the squatters must descend to the bottom to draw water from wells. There is also no electricity, but some residents have pooled their money to buy electric generators to share.

The Kabul government's urban planners are demanding the removal of all illegal housing from public land. Police sometimes enforce this edict, but the houses are going up faster than they can be pulled down.

Police have set up checkpoints on the hillside to prevent trucks loaded with construction materials from entering the squatters' enclave. But a little bribery can ensure the police look the other way.

Shah Agha, 44, who is part of a group that represents the squatters, said the graft is just business as usual. "The local police station asked us to pay money to help out police officers as their salaries are low. So we pay 150 afghani (about 300 yen) to the officers for each truck that goes through," he said.

Even Defense Ministry officers are reportedly taking advantage of the chaos. One military commander bought some empty plots cheaply and divided them among his soldiers without government permission.

Another Defense Ministry bureaucrat sold land that was formerly a military site in central Kabul to Cabinet members, former royal family members and people close to Afghan President Hamid Karzai at low prices.

Mohammad Nasim, 29, a squatter who built a house near a grave of a royal family member, was told to leave. "High-ranking government officials are dividing high-class residential areas among themselves," Nasim pointed out. "They are not thinking about poor people at all. Even poor people have the right to build houses to live in."

He said he has no intention of moving out of his house. Before the Taliban's ouster, Kabul had less than a million people. It now has about 4 million.

To deal with the rising population, the government has worked out a "new Kabul plan" that will create a 300-square-kilometer residential area on the Shomali Plain in the northern suburbs of the capital. That's almost as large as the size of Kabul right now.

It will eventually be home to about a million people. However, progress isn't going smoothly. There is resistance among people who reside there now, especially with the confusion over who has land rights. And land prices are rising, making it harder for many people to buy plots.

The rapid increase in the population has led to other problems. Some schools are extremely overcrowded, as is the case at Anwar Bismel High School in the Khair Khana district. The school teaches classes for elementary, junior and high school grades.

Since the Taliban fled, the number of students has grown more than fourfold to 8,000. While part of the increase has to do with female students being allowed back, there has also been a jump in the number of settlers' children.

The school holds classes in three shifts-morning, afternoon and evening. More than 20 classrooms made of cargo containers or tents have been added.

"The government policy is that schools must accept every child. But our situation is obviously way beyond the limit," said principal Mohammad Hakim.

Another problem caused by the rising population of Kabul is a water shortage. There are no big rivers near the capital, so all water comes from wells.

The increasing demand in recent years has caused the underground water table to drop by more than a meter every year, according to an official in Kabul's urban planning department. The water table is now as low as 100 meters below the surface in some areas.

The Afghan government is now weighing plans to build a canal from the Panjsher River, more than 50 kilometers away from Kabul. But because of the city's higher elevation, it won't be an easy feat.

Kuchis Struggling to Survive - Nomad women try to hold families together under tough conditions. By Salima Ghafari in Kabul (ARR No. 183, 25-Aug-05)
Institute for War & Peace Reporting

In western Kabul’s Khushal Khan, a cheerless district with little but dust and thorns, Suraya lives in her tattered tent, empty except for a plastic sheet covering the floor.

“The tent in which we live is very old. When the wind blows, a lot of dust comes inside. My children’s eyes are always irritated. I don’t know what to do,” she said, as her husband lay sleeping inside.

There is nothing in the way of comfort for 25-year-old Suraya, her husband and six children who are among numerous Kuchis - nomadic Pashtuns who eke out a precarious living as livestock herders - who’ve settled in Khushal Khan.

Tough and feisty, these Kuchi women have little of the demure demeanour of other Afghan women. They surround this IWPR reporter, clamouring to tell their stories and voice their complaints.

“There was a woman in our area, she had a bad pregnancy,” said one who refused to give her name. “Her husband was unemployed, with no money to take her to the hospital, so she died.”

Waresa is 20 and already has three children. “We have so many problems, I don’t even know where to begin,” she said. “We have no water, no medicine, no work, and my sons play outside in the burning sun rather than going to school.”

“Why can’t the government pay attention to us?” she wailed. “Why can’t they save us from this terrible life?” Muslema, 22, is wearing black and pink dress and a long veil. She has been married just six months.

“My husband is jobless. I have been sick for a long time, but we don’t have money for treatment. I don’t know what to do,” she said, sitting in a corner of her tent, angry and desperate “Our president - I don’t even know his name – hasn’t done anything to help us. Aren’t we Afghans too? The government is just helping those who live in the city and have homes.”

Afghanistan’s Kuchis have been hardest hit by the catastrophic events of recent years. They’ve been displaced by conflict, their grazing grounds sown with landmines and their crops shrivelled by the crippling drought of the past seven years.

In the latest official census, conducted in the late Seventies, people classified as Kuchis – which means “nomads” rather than a separate ethnic designation - numbered approximately 3.7 million. But no one can say with any accuracy how many still exist Afghanistan, as large numbers have been forced into refugee camps across the border in Pakistan or been assimilated into urban culture as their way of life slowly disappears.

A preliminary count puts their number now at no more than 1.5 million, and the true figure may be as low as 600,000.

In the new parliament, which will be elected in September, Kuchis have been allotted ten seats of their own, three of which will be reserved for women. They say this is not enough, and that it will give them very little power in the 249-seat body. For the hard-pressed nomads, this is just another sign that they are being ignored or marginalised by the central government.

Promises of mobile clinics, schools, and other facilities for Kuchis have gone unfulfilled, they say, leaving them poor, sick, and uneducated.

Kuchi women bear the brunt of the burden. With little access to medical care, they have an extremely high rate of maternal and infant mortality, and illnesses related to reproductive health are common.

“Neither the government nor the women’s ministry have done anything to help us,” said 25-year-old Zakhela, gazing at her mentally ill husband lying in the dust nearby with chickens pecking around his head. “We have no clinics, no place to call home, no drinking water. No one is thinking about the lives of Kuchi women.”

Massouda Jalal, the minister for women’s affairs, confirmed the dire conditions facing Kuchi women, but insisted that her ministry was doing its best to help. The ministry, she said, had conducted a survey documenting the problems and had passed the results on to the government.

“We handed over the reports to the Council of Ministers,” she said. “After the reports were ratified, the council tasked respective ministries to solve their problems.”

Mohammad Omar Babrakzai, deputy minister at the ministry of borders and tribal affairs, agreed that Kuchis constitute the poorest class of society. He said a commission consisting of eight ministries was formed two years ago in order to improve education for Kuchi children. The body decided to establish primary schools for Kuchis in all central provinces, but progress has been slow.

“We received permission last month to establish primary schools in central provinces and now we are in contact with the finance ministry to provide us with the budget to establish the schools,” he said.

Babrakzai’s commission is also attempting to address health problems. “We are in touch with the health ministry to establish some mobile clinics along Kuchi migration routes,” he said.

According to Babrakzai, non-governmental organisations are also attempting to help. But Kuchi women are adamant that NGOs have done nothing for them.

“Why have these foreigners come to our country when they are not doing anything to help us?” said Suraya. “We were very happy that peace has been ensured in our country, [but] now we see that the no one is doing anything for us.”

Huma Sultani, head of the women’s development section at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, was reluctant to comment on the plight of the Kuchis.

“We do not support just one nation or tribe,” she said. “We support all Afghans.” Sultani said that no Kuchi woman has yet come to the commission to complain about infringement of their rights.

“If they come, we may be able to help them,” she said. “All Afghans have the same rights under the constitution.” Salima Ghafari is an IWPR trainee based in Kabul. This report was produced as part of IWPR’s Women’s Reporting & Dialogue

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]