Fw: Afghan Recovery Report No. 3

----- Original Message -----
From: "Institute for War & Peace Reporting" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 9:56 AM
Subject: Afghan Recovery Report No. 3


> WELCOME TO IWPR'S AFGHAN RECOVERY REPORT No. 3, May 02 2002
>
> IN THIS ISSUE...
>
> AFGHAN OPIUM FUELS REGIONAL DRUG CRISIS
> The Afghan government's pledge to wean farmers off their lucrative poppy
> crops rings hollow as the UN predicts a huge leap in production. By Fazal
> Malik in Peshawar.
>
> 'TITANIC' SINKS BENEATH WAVES OF HUMANITY
> One of the biggest attractions in Kabul is named after a disaster movie,
> and officials warn it is becoming a catastrophe in its own right. By Mir
> Enyatullah Sadat in Kabul.
>
> RUINED LIBRARIES RISE FROM THE ASHES
> Kabul's libraries were no more than targets for missiles in wartime but
> now a huge effort is underway to restore some of their old glory. By
> Mohammad Hakeem Basharat in Kabul.
>
> VALUABLE CARPET TRADE DESERTS PESHAWAR
> A thriving industry vanishes almost overnight as refugees stream back to
> their homeland, taking their skills with them. By Waliullah Shaheen and
> Samiddin Noor in Peshawar.
>
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> ******************** THIS WEEK'S STORIES ************************
>
>
> AFGHAN OPIUM FUELS REGIONAL DRUG CRISIS
>
> The Afghan government's pledge to wean farmers off their lucrative poppy
> crops rings hollow as the UN predicts a huge leap in production.
>
> By Fazal Malik in Peshawar.
>
> Day and night, drug addicts in Peshawar gather beside a railway bridge -
> painted with the slogan "Keep your city clear" - feeding their Afghan
> heroin habit. The price is low. Heroin here sells for only 100 rupees
> (1.66 US dollars) a gram.
>
> While the West sees the drugs flowing from Afghanistan as a threat to
> society in the US, France or Britain, the problems that this trade creates
> are felt much closer to the source of production.
>
> The poppy harvest in Afghanistan dropped in the last year of Taleban rule
> but has risen since the movement was driven from power. This year UN drug
> experts believe the harvest will yield 1,900 to 2,700 tonnes of opium, the
> raw material for heroin, marking a return to the levels of the late 1990s.
>
> The Pakistan government and groups working with addicts estimate there are
> now almost 2 million heroin addicts in Pakistan, including Afghan refugees
> in the teeming camps.
>
> Most addicts in the frontier city of Peshawar live on the roadside and
> wear torn, dirty clothes. Their hair is long and filthy and their bodies
> often yellow from the hepatitis that runs rampant among the addicts. Many
> beg on the streets and turn to lives of crime.
>
> Although Pakistan imposes strong penalties against drug trafficking,
> police pay little attention to the addicts and their dealers.
>
> "Once my son was suffering from a fever and I was given money to treat
> him," said Shah Zaman, a 30-year-old addict. "Instead of taking him to the
> doctor, I bought some heroin and went back home." Zaman's family said he
> lived mostly from stealing, or by forcibly taking money from his wife.
>
> Addicts use silver foil from cigarette packets for their habit. They burn
> off the white paper backing, spread the heroin on top of the foil and hold
> a
> match to it. As the drug turns into a dark goo, they inhale the smoke
> through
> a small straw.
>
> While heroin sells in Peshawar for 100 rupees a gram, the price drops by
> half in the designated Tribal Areas of Pakistan, along the border with
> Afghanistan. The authorities exercise little control over the region. Many
> addicts go there by bus to save the 50 rupees.
>
> Dr Parveen Azam Khan, director of the DOST welfare foundation in the
> Hayatabad district of Peshawar, says it is impossible to estimate the
> exact number of addicts in the city, which has sprawled uncontrollably
> over the countryside since Afghan refugees began arriving after the 1979
> Soviet invasion.
>
> Khan blames the increase in numbers of addicts on the political and
> economic turmoil in the region over the past 20 years, as war tore apart
> Afghanistan and Pakistan sank into economic chaos. While poverty has
> worsened, the illegal production, processing and marketing of drugs has
> soared.
>
> Rahmat Bibi, a 36-year-old Pakistani, fell into the habit while living in
> a small village where there was no medical clinic. "I was eating opium to
> cure my headaches," she said. "Gradually I began to take heroin and became
> addicted."
>
> Shahid Khan traced his addiction back to a failed romance. "At 25 I fell
> in love with a girl in the neighborhood," he said. "I asked my family to
> arrange a marriage but they refused and arranged my marriage to another
> girl. I dropped out and became a drug addict."
>
> Pakistan virtually wiped out poppy cultivation on its own territory in the
> 1990s. Recently, Afghanistan has pledged to follow suit. The head of the
> interim government, Hamid Karzai, has ordered farmers to destroy their
> crops. "From any perspective - from the perspective of religion, national
> interest, or agriculture, Afghanistan must end poppy production," he said.
>
> But as the head of a poor country that is struggling to reunite itself
> after two decades of war, he is in no position to impose his will on
> farmers far from Kabul.
>
> The interim government wants international help to provide a realistic
> alternative to poppy growing. The United Nations would like to help wean
> farmers off their lucrative poppy crops. It hopes to prevent the renewal
> of cultivation, processing and smuggling of opium and heroin.
>
> In spite of that, the UN Drug Control Programme predicts large-scale
> production of opium and heroin will resume this year. For the addicts on
> the streets of Peshawar, it seems there will be no shortage of drugs.
>
> Fazal Malik is an Afghan journalist based in Peshawar.
>
>
> 'TITANIC' SINKS BENEATH WAVES OF HUMANITY
>
> One of the biggest attractions in Kabul is named after a disaster movie,
> and officials warn it is becoming a catastrophe in its own right.
>
> By Mir Enyatullah Sadat in Kabul.
>
> On the banks of the River Kabul, which bisects the city that takes its
> name, sits a huge street market with a borrowed name of its own. The
> locals call it Titanic, in homage to the blockbuster disaster movie that
> invaded the world's collective consciousness two years ago - even in
> then-Taleban ruled Afghanistan.
>
> Kabul's own Titanic, appropriately enough, is also a disaster. It is a
> magnet for homeless, destitute people, a centre of disease and,
> increasingly, of petty crime and exploitation of child labour.
>
> It runs beside the crumbling sandbagged banks of the River Kabul, whose
> foul waters daily receive kilos of human waste, decomposing meat and other
> trash from Titanic's denizens.
>
> Titanic proper refers to a drapers' street market, which grew up along the
> riverbank several years ago. The term has since expanded to encompass
> several smaller street trading areas, from the Pul-e-Hartal bridge down
> river, where women have set up laundries to wash clothes in the Kabul's
> waters, to beyond the Taimorshahi suspension bridge, where carpet shops
> and plant nurseries edge the river. On the right bank sit the drapers,
> selling bolts of cloth from wheelbarrows. On the left is a section of
> stalls catering to women.
>
> For months the country's drought kept the banks dry until a sudden flash
> flood in the early hours of April 16. It swept away many traders who had
> been moved off the main promenade by the traffic police but who then
> simply set up stalls on the dried riverbed itself.
>
> The rain took the traders by surprise. "There hasn't been a flood here for
> more than three years," said carpet seller Mohammad Qasseem, who was moved
> by police off his old patch beside the Zarnigar Park. "We didn't expect
> rain even though it is spring. So we took a chance and sold carpets here
> (on the riverbank)."
>
> The traffic police also moved cloth seller Gulab Shah off his former patch
> outside the nearby Ayesha-e-Durrani high school just two weeks before the
> flood. He also lost much of his stock as well as his new spot to the
> river's tide.
>
> The police wrangle with the traders daily, but Kabul's police chief,
> Mohammed Shafiq, says a tough approach is essential, especially with
> traders using wheelbarrows.
>
> "There isn't enough space on the roads for wheelbarrows," he said. "We
> have the authority to get them off the streets and out of the crowded
> quarters of the city. But we need to send them somewhere, so we have asked
> the city council to identify areas where they can set up stalls."
>
> Kabul's deputy mayor, Gulam Mohayudin Bahai, says they have selected three
> new sites for markets by the old Bemazang oil refinery and in the
> Houza-e-Amniyati Doum and Bagh-e-Alimardan quarters. But all lie outside
> the city centre and are unpopular with the itinerant traders. Many simply
> head back to Titanic, the river and its fetid banks.
>
> However, efforts are underway to clean up the worst of the pollution and
> repair the damage to the sandbagged riverside that the city council cannot
> afford to put right. The UN Development Programme, UNDP, and the Japanese
> Recovery & Employment Afghanistan Programme, REAP, are supporting and
> coordinating the municipality teams.
>
> A local involved in the operation, Pahlawan Nasir, says the work is foul
> and difficult, even dangerous. Among the detritus the teams found two
> bodies. "On April 1 we were cleaning the river banks around the
> Pul-e-Hartal bridge when we found a dead body of a man, just the bones,"
> he said.
>
> "Three days later we found the corpse of a child on the riverbanks just
> opposite the Ibu Sina hospital. We buried its bones in a fine place." The
> man was a murder victim. His body had been weighted down with chains and
> thrown into the river.
>
> Naseer Ahmed, an engineer from the city council's river infrastructure
> office, is leading the river clearance work. "We have been working on the
> project for three months with the help of the international agencies and
> have cleared much of the waste from the Pul-e-Hartal bridge down to the
> Taimorshahi suspension bridge," he said.
>
> His teams have pulled more than 2,000 cubic metres of waste from the river
> and disposed of it in dumps outside the city. The next stage will take in
> the stretch along the market itself.
>
> In the mean time the people who work in or by the river remain prone to
> disease. Dr Ghulam Sarwar Abasi, director of environmental health and
> control of contagious diseases at the ministry of public health,
> particularly deplores the locals' habit of washing vegetables in the
> river.
>
> "Washing food in the river is a big problem, but we don't have an
> alternative source of water to offer them," he said. "People are catching
> various waterborne diseases after eating vegetables and fruit from the
> market. We want the city council and the international agencies to help
> set up a place where food can be washed safely."
>
> Mir Enyatullah Sadat is a journalist with Kabul Weekly.
>
>
> RUINED LIBRARIES RISE FROM THE ASHES
>
> Kabul's libraries were no more than targets for missiles in wartime but
> now a huge effort is underway to restore some of their old glory.
>
> By Mohammad Hakeem Basharat in Kabul.
>
> Attempts are underway to repair Kabul's war-ravaged libraries, which were
> mercilessly targeted by rival mujahedin factions during the bitter civil
> war of the early Nineties.
> The mujahedin were of the opinion that they were stocked with books
> introduced by the despised pro-Soviet regime of Najibullah. Thousands of
> volumes were either looted or burnt, and rare titles smuggled and sold off
> for high prices in the antiquarian book markets of the United States,
> Europe and Japan, says researcher Khawaja Ghulam Jelani Shebal.
> Jelani Shebal is one of three Afghan experts who have completed an
> exhaustive study of the state of the country's libraries. "Now there is no
> building in Afghanistan that truly deserves the title 'library'," he said.
>
> But now a number of countries and international organisations are helping
> to restore these destroyed cultural treasures to the former glory, with
> the effort focussed on restocking and refitting them.
>
> The National Library, on Malik Asghar Square, in the centre of Kabul, held
> about 200,000 books before 1992, including many antique European and Asian
> works. After the fall of the Taleban regime, only a few thousand remained
> on its battered shelves, salvaged from other libraries or donated by
> Afghan research and cultural groups.
>
> Jelani Shebal estimates the library's stock - together with two branch
> libararies in the suburbs of Khairkhana and Qala-e-Fathullah - totals
> 70,000 volumes.
> Second-hand bookstalls, many overlooking the park surrounding the library,
> are full of editions that still carry the library's stamps and Dewey
> decimal registration numbers. They were looted from its shelves over the
> years.
>
> One small sign of Kabul's return to normality is that the library has
> begun to issue readers with membership cards, funded by the UN cultural
> organisation UNESCO. Cultural events and poetry readings are held there
> once again.
>
> The Afghan culture minister, Said Makhdoom Raheem, says the city's entire
> library network will be restored and a new library set up for rare Islamic
> books, which were left to rot in abandoned buildings even under the
> radical Islamist rule of the Taleban.
>
> The fate of the National Library was echoed elsewhere. Before 1992, the
> Library of the Academy of Sciences was the largest research centre in
> Kabul. Little research takes place now. "The building was a scene of a
> battle," said the library's head researcher, Sayed Amin Mujahed. "Hundreds
> of new books were destroyed in seconds."
>
> The University Library, opened in 1964, was another victim. It used to
> contain about a million books, including a huge archive of scientific
> journals, some 7,000 academic monographs, more than 500 original
> manuscripts and hundreds of bound archived copies of magazines and
> newspapers.
>
> The building suffered badly in the fighting in 1992. "Only 20,000 books
> survived the conflict," said the chief librarian, Mohammad Sadiq Waheed.
> "All the rest were destroyed."
> Some university staff bought back their own books from the second-hand
> stalls that had picked them up, years after they were looted by the
> warring factions. "After the fighting stopped we found ourselves scouring
> bookstalls looking for books with the faculty's stamp," said Professor
> Mohammad Sabir Khweshai, dean of the faculty of language and literature.
> The various faculties all suffered the same fate, says Professor Ahmadudin
> Marij, of the medical faculty. "In 1992 we had some 50,000 medical
> textbooks, mostly in English, on pathology, biochemistry, microbiology,
> anatomy and many other subjects. Today just 6,000 remain."
>
> Medical student Mohammed Esmatullah says study is a frustrating business
> in such surroundings. "We can't find the books we need," he said. "We're
> using a few new books written and published by our professors and hope
> that more and more will be written and published soon."
>
> A potential academic treasure trove of books lies in the city's National
> Archive, which was kept under lock and key throughout the Taleban years,
> and is still sealed. The contents of the archive, said to include a
> 1,000-year-old copy of the Koran, remain a closely-guarded secret, partly
> to ward off thieves working to supply the Western antiquarian book market.
> A worldwide effort to restore the city's libraries is under way. Donations
> have come from Iran, France, the United States and various NGOs. UNESCO
> has refitted the University Library, installed computers and
> satellite-linked internet connections. The body has paid the shipping cost
> for a tonne of books donated by the British charity Book Aid International
> to go to the National Library.
>
> A UNESCO appeal to journalism faculties worldwide resulted in more than
> 3,000 donated new editions being delivered to the university this month to
> replace the 50 or so surviving texts from the 1970s in the journalism
> faculty library.
>
> In spite of its limited resources, the government's ministry of higher
> education has authorised new spending. Staff numbers at the University
> Library's main building have been increased from eight to 25, the building
> repaired and its lighting and central heating systems reconnected.
>
> Ahmed Shah, a long time visitor to the National Library, was initially
> shocked by what had happened to his favourite spot after years of war and
> neglect. "I am the oldest user of this library and I'm very familiar with
> its works, but as far as I can see most of the books that were here in
> 1992 have just disappeared," he said.
>
> But he was hopeful. "There are a lot more books here now than in the years
> after the wars, and there are still spaces to read and study. We are happy
> with the staff's efforts and happy once more to have the chance to study
> here in peace."
>
> Mohammad Hakeem Basharat is a journalist with Irfan magazine, an Afghan
> education ministry publication.
>
>
> VALUABLE CARPET TRADE DESERTS PESHAWAR
>
> A thriving industry vanishes almost overnight as refugees stream back to
> their homeland, taking their skills with them.
>
> By Waliullah Shaheen and Samiddin Noor in Peshawar.
>
> Only a few months ago, Pakistani officials saw the Chamkani carpet town
> under construction on the edge of Peshawar as a way to boost the city's
> lucrative Afghan carpet industry.
>
> Today the project lies all but abandoned. Expansion has halted, the 24
> companies who located there have ceased operations and the only people
> about are two guards watching over the deserted 200-hectare field.
>
> Peshawar's once thriving carpet industry is disappearing along with
> hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees heading home after up to 22 years
> in Pakistan. UN officials have noted looms among the possessions piled
> atop trucks as thousands of carpet weavers join the exodus.
>
> "A lot money was spent on this town and the skilled were given
> facilities,"
> said Shams Khan, 21, a guard at Chamkani carpet town. "But the Afghans
> preferred to go. Pakistan promised all sorts of help, but no one intends
> to
> stay here."
>
> Although Pakistan complained about the burden of hosting 3 million
> Afghan refugees, blaming them for high unemployment among and rising crime
> rates, the impact of their sudden disappearance may be
> severe. The United Nations has registered the departure of about 300,000
> Afghans since its repatriation programme began on March 1.
>
> Statistics published last year showed hand-made carpets were the leading
> export of the North West Frontier Province, with a production value in the
> 2000-2001 fiscal year of 130 million US dollars. The carpet weavers, who
> are largely children earning a few cents a day for their nimble finger
> work, are drawn largely from Afghanistan's Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik
> minorities.
>
> Peshawar, the provincial capital, mushroomed in size following the Soviet
> invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as refugees poured over the mountains into
> Pakistan. Now a largely Afghan city, real estate values have plunged in
> the areas where refugees settled most densely as demand disappears.
>
> The dramatic population increase in the Eighties was accompanied by a
> steep rise in pollution from buses and motor rickshaws. Police wear face
> masks in Peshawar.
>
> But it also brought money. New shopping plazas, houses and businesses
> appeared. Much of the wealth, especially the sort that paid for palatial -
> and heavily guarded - mansions, came from drugs and money siphoned from
> the US-financed war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. But it
> also came from the new industry in hand-knotted carpets.
>
> "These businessmen have a lot of money and accounts in our banks," said
> Arbab Hamayon, an official in MCB bank in the center of the city. "If they
> go, the banks won't be able to extend loans."
>
> Kabul was the center of the Afghan carpet trade before the country
> descended into chaos. Even during the war against the Soviet occupation,
> the wholesale carpet industry in Kabul was healthy. But anarchy followed t
> he mujahedin capture of Kabul in 1992, as rival militias devastated much
> of the city.
>
> What was left of the carpet industry relocated to Peshawar, which acted as
> a
> funnel for any Afghan production that continued. At the same time,
> factories opened there, staffed by the manpower sitting idle in refugee
> camps. A family might get 1,500 to 2,000 Pakistani rupees (25-33 dollars)
> for a square
> meter of carpet, made of heavy wool.
>
> But now the carpet industry migration of the early 1990s has gone into
> reverse. Not only are the weavers moving back, but the center of the trade
> is reverting to Kabul.
>
> "Lately all our buyers have been Afghan traders taking carpets to
> Afghanistan," said Abdul Ahad, a businessman in Peshawar's Khyber Bazaar,
> the heart of the wholesale carpet business in the city.
>
> Traders report that they get better prices in Afghanistan, from the aid
> workers and other foreigners who have descended on Kabul this year in the
> wake of the defeat of the Taleban, than in Pakistan, where visitors are
> increasingly rare.
>
> "The skills and business in carpets will develop fast when security
> improves
> in Afghanistan," said Ahad. "The traders in Pakistan are Afghans. This is
> an
> Afghan skill and they brought it to Pakistan. Pakistanis were not familiar
> with carpets."
>
> The traders will have to follow the production back home. While some
> weaving is done in factories, such as the planned Chamkani carpet town,
> most is the work of individuals at home. These families are now flooding
> back up the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan.
>
> Hamza Khan, who has a loom at home, is one of the few Afghan carpet
> weavers who says he will not return. He has enemies in Afghanistan and
> knows he cannot go back. He foresees a lonely existence in Peshawar.
>
> "There are some people who have problems and face dangers if they return."
>  he said. "But the carpet trade in Pakistan is finished."
>
> Waliullah Shaheen and Samiddin are attending the IWPR journalism training
> course in Peshawar.
>
>
> **************** ABOUT AFGHAN RECOVERY REPORT *******************
>
> Afghan Recovery Report from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting is a
> unique free service providing local media outlets and the international
> community with objective and reliable news from local sources.
>
> Afghan Recovery Report is produced as part of IWPR's training work to
> develop the professional capabilities and sustainability of the Afghan
> print media, facilitating their role as a critical monitor and guardian of
> the stabilization and recovery process.
>
> IWPR Afghanistan provides workshops and practical on-the-job training for
> local journalists, with weekly publicaton and syndication in local
> languague media. Further activities include maintaining an Afghan-run news

> Website, <http://www.afghanweb.org>, training Afghan trainers, working
> with Kabul University journalism students and faculty and reporting on
> human rights and humanitarian issues. The project operates in parternship
> with the Geneva-based Media Action International and, in Peshawar, with
> the Afghan Media Resource Centre.
>
> Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Project
> Coordinator and Editor: Jamila Aman; Programme Manager: Duncan Furey;
> Training Coordinator: Andrew Stroehlein; Local trainers: Rohan Jayasekera
> (Kabul) & Jack Redden (Peshawar).
>
> The opinions expressed in IWPR's Afghan Recovery Report are those of the
> authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of
> IWPR.
>
> **************** ABOUT AFGHAN RECOVERY REPORT *******************
>
> Afghan Recovery Report from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting is a
> unique free service providing local media outlets and the international
> community with objective and reliable news from local sources.
>
> Afghan Recovery Report is produced as part of IWPR's training work to
> develop the professional capabilities and sustainability of the Afghan
> print media, facilitating their role as a critical monitor and guardian of
> the stabilization and recovery process.
>
> IWPR Afghanistan provides workshops and practical on-the-job training for
> local journalists, with weekly publicaton and syndication in local
> languague media. Further activities include maintaining an Afghan-run news
> Website, <http://www.afghanweb.org>, training Afghan trainers, working
> with Kabul University journalism students and faculty and reporting on
> human rights and humanitarian issues. The project operates in parternship
> with the Geneva-based Media Action International and, in Peshawar, with
> the Afghan Media Resource Centre.
>
> Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Project
> Coordinator and Editor: Jamila Aman; Programme Manager: Duncan Furey;
> Training Coordinator: Andrew Stroehlein; Local trainers: Rohan Jayasekera
> (Kabul) & Jack Redden (Peshawar).
>
> The opinions expressed in IWPR's Afghan Recovery Report are those of the
> authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of
> IWPR.
>
> ************************ ABOUT IWPR *****************************
>
> The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is an independent
> London-based non-profit organisation supporting regional media and
> democratic change.
>
> Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom.
> Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 7130; Fax: +44 (0)20 7713 7140. email: [email protected]
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>
> For further details on this project and other information services and
> media programmes, visit IWPR's website: <http://www.iwpr.net>
>
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> Copyright (c) 2002 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting
>
> Afghan Recovery Report No. 3
>
>