17 Nov 2011
Afghan doctor Abdul Javid sadly recalled the deaths of two one-year-old babies as he stood nearly 9,000 feet up in the mountains of his country's most isolated regions.
"Poor hygiene killed them. It was so unnecessary," he said. "They were dehydrated through illness, but they didn't need to be. That is what we are trying to stop." Dr Javid explained that preventable deaths are common in the remote districts of Bamiyan province, where he works for international charity Medair. Disease and dehydration caused by poor hygiene are bigger killers than guns and bombs.
The charity's life-saving work involves providing free washing lines, plastic buckets and nail clippers, plus latrines, washrooms, piped spring water and wells.
The pipes and wells bring clean water for villagers previously forced to use potentially disease-bearing ponds and streams, while the latrines mean that human faeces are no longer deposited outside homes.
Dr Javid said that Medair's efforts to change cultural attitudes towards cleanliness would also save lives. "People are used to drying their clothes on the ground, even though it is covered in manure from the village animals, so we tell them the dangers and give them washing lines so that they can hang them up safely," he said. "There is also a tradition that it is bad to cut your nails. But that means that dirt gets in their mouth and causes illnesses so we give them nail clippers."
The free buckets come with lids to keep clean water untainted. Other gifts include toothbrushes and toothpaste to improve dental hygiene.
Medical research in the area shows that diarrhoea among children could be cut by nearly half simply through regular hand-washing.
As Dr Javid speaks, the good hygiene message is being drummed home in the village of Sar-e-Qalat in a class organised by Medair as part of a six-month health project in isolated Bamiyan communities.
The teacher, 18-year-old local girl Najibah, uses an illustrated flip chart to teach her largely illiterate audience of women and children, with images showing how to combat diseases by keeping food free of dirt and flies, washing fruit and vegetables, and using latrines.
Mother-of-four Parigul, 40, said: "We are learning a lot and our children are much healthier. There used to be a lot of diarrhoea and illness, but now they look handsome and well and we are very happy."
With funds limited, Medair has been unable to help all of those scattered among the mountains. In Shuiek, one of the villages to miss out, father-of-eight Ibrahim, 56, said he hoped that latrines, a well and hygiene training might one day be provided.
"In the winter we have to go half an hour by donkey in the snow to fetch water," he said. "So it would make a big difference to us if the spring nearer to us could be piped here. We also have no latrines so people go near the houses and you can imagine what that is like."
Back in Sar-e-Qalat, Ali Jumah, a 70-year-old village elder, thanked the departing Medair staff for their help. "Before this, up here in the mountains we were the forgotten people of Afghanistan," he said.
London Evening Standard
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
32 cameras installed in Quetta
Muharram security plan
QUETTA: Thirty-two closed circuit cameras have been installed in the city to keep close check on anti-peace elements during Muharram-ul-Haraam gatherings, sources said on Wednesday. According to sources, a high-level meeting was held here to review the security arrangements with regard to the Muharram religious processions. It was decided to install as many as 32 cameras at various points of the provincial capital. Steps were afoot to chalk out foolproof security plan ahead of Muharram. Check posts of the Balochistan Constabulary, Frontier Corps and police would be set up in the sensitive areas, including Mariabad, Hazara Town and Aalmdar Road to avert any untoward incident.
THE NEWS
QUETTA: Thirty-two closed circuit cameras have been installed in the city to keep close check on anti-peace elements during Muharram-ul-Haraam gatherings, sources said on Wednesday. According to sources, a high-level meeting was held here to review the security arrangements with regard to the Muharram religious processions. It was decided to install as many as 32 cameras at various points of the provincial capital. Steps were afoot to chalk out foolproof security plan ahead of Muharram. Check posts of the Balochistan Constabulary, Frontier Corps and police would be set up in the sensitive areas, including Mariabad, Hazara Town and Aalmdar Road to avert any untoward incident.
THE NEWS
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
China, India Scramble for Afghan Mines
Article
By Esther Tanquintic-Misa | November 14, 2011 11:39 AM EST
War-torn Afghanistan may have yet to create a concrete and definitive framework to be able to attract more foreign investments, but regional investors interested in its mining treasure remain undeterred even as the country still remotely sees the end of its inner problems.
Embattled as it continues to be, but competition heat led by China and India is on for its more than $1 trillion worth of minerals.
Even if corruption is prevalent, China and India chose to move on.
Concessions by foreign investors have been strictly monitored and carried out under the supervision of American experts and a host of institutions.
"Corruption is impossible. We are committed to transparency. We are committed to best practice," Nasir Durrani, deputy minister of mines, told AFP.
On one hand, in 2007, China won the extraction rights into the Aynak mine south of Kabul. According to Soviet-era data and a newer study by the United States Geological Survey, the mine could yield over 11 million tonnes of copper.
India, on the other hand, has its sights on the two-billion-tonne Hajigak iron ore mine in central Bamiyan province, where Durrani estimates could give up to $6 billion to the government.
Even Australia, itself a minerals and metals producing nation, has been wooed to invest in Afghanistan when Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited Kabul last week.
The predicted combined payout from the Aynak and Hajigak mines could earn the Afghan coffers at least half a billion dollars a year, according to a U.S. mining expert whom AFP did not identify. The figures will be a significant input to its largely foreign aid-dependent economy, but not until 2016.
Feasibility studies for rail projects have been lined up.
To be financed by the Metallurgical Corporation of China, the first will run a line from the Pakistani border to the Aynak mine, which it owns, and onwards to Kabul. It will link the Hajigak project to the capital and up to the Uzbek frontier.
The second rail route, which is being studied by the Asian Development Bank, will head south to Iran, where mineral supplies could be shipped to India.
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com
ibtimes
By Esther Tanquintic-Misa | November 14, 2011 11:39 AM EST
War-torn Afghanistan may have yet to create a concrete and definitive framework to be able to attract more foreign investments, but regional investors interested in its mining treasure remain undeterred even as the country still remotely sees the end of its inner problems.
Embattled as it continues to be, but competition heat led by China and India is on for its more than $1 trillion worth of minerals.
Even if corruption is prevalent, China and India chose to move on.
Concessions by foreign investors have been strictly monitored and carried out under the supervision of American experts and a host of institutions.
"Corruption is impossible. We are committed to transparency. We are committed to best practice," Nasir Durrani, deputy minister of mines, told AFP.
On one hand, in 2007, China won the extraction rights into the Aynak mine south of Kabul. According to Soviet-era data and a newer study by the United States Geological Survey, the mine could yield over 11 million tonnes of copper.
India, on the other hand, has its sights on the two-billion-tonne Hajigak iron ore mine in central Bamiyan province, where Durrani estimates could give up to $6 billion to the government.
Even Australia, itself a minerals and metals producing nation, has been wooed to invest in Afghanistan when Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited Kabul last week.
The predicted combined payout from the Aynak and Hajigak mines could earn the Afghan coffers at least half a billion dollars a year, according to a U.S. mining expert whom AFP did not identify. The figures will be a significant input to its largely foreign aid-dependent economy, but not until 2016.
Feasibility studies for rail projects have been lined up.
To be financed by the Metallurgical Corporation of China, the first will run a line from the Pakistani border to the Aynak mine, which it owns, and onwards to Kabul. It will link the Hajigak project to the capital and up to the Uzbek frontier.
The second rail route, which is being studied by the Asian Development Bank, will head south to Iran, where mineral supplies could be shipped to India.
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com
ibtimes
Quirky film of Afghan boy’s coming of age in a time of war
15 Nov 2011 15:08
Source: Alertnet // Emma Batha
Afghan boys play soccer in front of the gaping niche where a giant Buddha statue used to stand in the town of Bamiyan some 240 km northwest of Kabul, April 13, 2007. The Taliban destroyed two of the statues in 2001. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
By Emma Batha
LONDON (AlertNet) - When documentary maker Phil Grabsky was filming in Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban, a small boy with a cheeky grin and brightly coloured hat leant into the shot. His name was Mir.
Grabsky was captivated. Over the next decade he returned numerous times to film Mir, his family and community, watching as the boy turned into a man – all against the backdrop of a country at war.
The result is The Boy Mir, a surprisingly humorous film which gives a very different view of Afghanistan to the one conveyed in television news footage.
At the start Mir is eight years old and living among 200 refugee families in caves alongside the ruins of the colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan which were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.
“Who would have thought we would end up living in a cave eating grass?” comments his mother Fatima.
Despite their extreme poverty, Mir has big ambitions: “I want to be a headteacher … or president,” he says.
When his family fails to get one of the houses aid workers are building for the cave-dwellers, they return to their home village in the north where they rebuild their war-damaged house.
Mir starts school and gets good grades. But his father Abdul is ailing and Mir sometimes has to miss class to plough fields with two donkeys he calls “my jet plane and my motorbike”.
By his early teens he is working in a coal mine. His grades slip. It’s a dangerous job, not least because the lamps are known to explode and kill people. But the ever cheery Mir retains his irrepressible spirit – even breaking into song and dance as he works.
Despite the unrelenting grimness there is much humour. In one scene Mir and his friends are seen jumping into a tank of brown water. They blow into their wet shorts to inflate them so that they can float.
In another scene his much older step-brother Khoshdel stands on a desolate mountain top waving a mobile phone around. He has climbed for two hours simply to get a signal, but he can’t pick one up. “I’ll just have to go to another mountain,” he comments.
SCHOOL
At 15 Mir is still shovelling coal for a pittance and has pretty much dropped out of school.
Abdul and Khoshdel urge him to continue studying if he doesn’t want to end up poor and exploited. But Mir is not sure. His work at the mine helps him fulfil his dream of buying a motorbike – or at least a share in one that promptly breaks down.
But by the end of the film he seems to be heading back to education.
Speaking after a recent screening at London’s Frontline Club, Grabsky said he had read that the spread of the mobile phone in Afghanistan is encouraging a new interest in school because if you are illiterate you can’t text.
Although Mir’s home region now appears free of fighting, the conflict continues to affect people’s outlook and their prospects for bettering themselves.
By his late teens Mir’s ambition is no longer to be a teacher - he simply wants to survive the war.
Towards the end of the film there is much bemusement when foreign troops turn up with a few notebooks as goodwill gifts. The locals are taken aback by the physical size of the soldiers, but also notice that they seem quite fearful.
They are unimpressed by the gift. “We can’t solve our problems with four notebooks,” comments one villager.
“The Boy Mir” is an update on Grabsky’s first film about Mir, “The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan”, which followed the family for a year in 2002.
Grabsky describes Mir as an “ordinary boy living at an extraordinary time”.
“There are elements of Mir’s character to be optimistic about,” he adds. “But Afghanistan is extremely bleak and it gets bleaker all the time. I think it is worse now than at any time since…2002.”
Half the population is under 18. They do not want to fight, they just want food, an education and work, but there is no job market, Grabsky says.
He suspects Mir will still be living in the village in five years’ time, but adds that the Chinese may well eventually buy the mine and move Chinese workers in.
However, Mir is more fortunate than his peers in one respect.
The production company has teamed up with Save the Children and Afghan Aid to set up a fund. Donations will go towards Mir’s education, Afghan Aid’s community work in northern Afghanistan and Save the Children’s rural education programmes.
The Trust
Source: Alertnet // Emma Batha
By Emma Batha
LONDON (AlertNet) - When documentary maker Phil Grabsky was filming in Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban, a small boy with a cheeky grin and brightly coloured hat leant into the shot. His name was Mir.
Grabsky was captivated. Over the next decade he returned numerous times to film Mir, his family and community, watching as the boy turned into a man – all against the backdrop of a country at war.
The result is The Boy Mir, a surprisingly humorous film which gives a very different view of Afghanistan to the one conveyed in television news footage.
At the start Mir is eight years old and living among 200 refugee families in caves alongside the ruins of the colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan which were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.
“Who would have thought we would end up living in a cave eating grass?” comments his mother Fatima.
Despite their extreme poverty, Mir has big ambitions: “I want to be a headteacher … or president,” he says.
When his family fails to get one of the houses aid workers are building for the cave-dwellers, they return to their home village in the north where they rebuild their war-damaged house.
Mir starts school and gets good grades. But his father Abdul is ailing and Mir sometimes has to miss class to plough fields with two donkeys he calls “my jet plane and my motorbike”.
By his early teens he is working in a coal mine. His grades slip. It’s a dangerous job, not least because the lamps are known to explode and kill people. But the ever cheery Mir retains his irrepressible spirit – even breaking into song and dance as he works.
Despite the unrelenting grimness there is much humour. In one scene Mir and his friends are seen jumping into a tank of brown water. They blow into their wet shorts to inflate them so that they can float.
In another scene his much older step-brother Khoshdel stands on a desolate mountain top waving a mobile phone around. He has climbed for two hours simply to get a signal, but he can’t pick one up. “I’ll just have to go to another mountain,” he comments.
SCHOOL
At 15 Mir is still shovelling coal for a pittance and has pretty much dropped out of school.
Abdul and Khoshdel urge him to continue studying if he doesn’t want to end up poor and exploited. But Mir is not sure. His work at the mine helps him fulfil his dream of buying a motorbike – or at least a share in one that promptly breaks down.
But by the end of the film he seems to be heading back to education.
Speaking after a recent screening at London’s Frontline Club, Grabsky said he had read that the spread of the mobile phone in Afghanistan is encouraging a new interest in school because if you are illiterate you can’t text.
Although Mir’s home region now appears free of fighting, the conflict continues to affect people’s outlook and their prospects for bettering themselves.
By his late teens Mir’s ambition is no longer to be a teacher - he simply wants to survive the war.
Towards the end of the film there is much bemusement when foreign troops turn up with a few notebooks as goodwill gifts. The locals are taken aback by the physical size of the soldiers, but also notice that they seem quite fearful.
They are unimpressed by the gift. “We can’t solve our problems with four notebooks,” comments one villager.
“The Boy Mir” is an update on Grabsky’s first film about Mir, “The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan”, which followed the family for a year in 2002.
Grabsky describes Mir as an “ordinary boy living at an extraordinary time”.
“There are elements of Mir’s character to be optimistic about,” he adds. “But Afghanistan is extremely bleak and it gets bleaker all the time. I think it is worse now than at any time since…2002.”
Half the population is under 18. They do not want to fight, they just want food, an education and work, but there is no job market, Grabsky says.
He suspects Mir will still be living in the village in five years’ time, but adds that the Chinese may well eventually buy the mine and move Chinese workers in.
However, Mir is more fortunate than his peers in one respect.
The production company has teamed up with Save the Children and Afghan Aid to set up a fund. Donations will go towards Mir’s education, Afghan Aid’s community work in northern Afghanistan and Save the Children’s rural education programmes.
The Trust
Afghan to be forcibly deported from Australia
AFP
Updated November 15, 2011, 12:41 pm
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Afghan asylum seeker who fears for his life if returned home is to be forcibly deported from Australia, the first such case under a new deal with Kabul, the government said Tuesday.
Ismail Mirza Jan, 26 and of the Hazara ethnic minority, fled Afghanistan 10 years ago and made his way to Australia via Pakistan, Iran, Greece and Britain, where he was refused refugee status in 2004.
He failed to disclose his British rejection when he arrived in Australia in February 2010 on false documents, claiming he had come directly from Afghanistan, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
A fingerprint trace revealed his earlier application, leading to the ultimate failure of his Australian asylum bid.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said Jan would be the first forced return under a deal struck in January with Kabul.
"Never before today has there been an involuntary return from Australia to Afghanistan so this underlines the importance of today," Bowen told reporters.
"Without today's agreement it would be impossible to contemplate involuntary repatriation to Afghanistan."
The deal allows Australia to forcibly deport Afghans whose claims for asylum have failed, and it was signed off as part of efforts to curb the thousands of refugees arriving here from the strife-torn central Asian nation.
Jan's father was killed by the Taliban and his family have fled to neighbouring Pakistan. He told ABC television he fears for his life.
"If I go there, I will be dead in my country. I have no-one there to protect me. I have no friends, no family there. So how can I live, relocate in Kabul?" said Jan, who claims he was coached not to reveal his failed British asylum claim by people smugglers.
"I told immigration it's okay, if they send me, you can send my dead body to my country because either way I'm dead."
A spokesman for Bowen declined to comment specifically on the case for privacy reasons but said only "Afghans not considered to be genuine refugees" were returned under the policy.
"People are only removed where their refugee claim has failed at multiple levels of assessment," the spokesman told AFP.
"This government is committed to a proper and robust assessment of asylum claims as a signatory to the Refugee Convention," he added.
According to the Herald, Jan will be charged Aus$32,782 (US$33,460) for his escorted deportation, which will take place on Saturday.
Australia temporarily froze all Afghan asylum claims in April 2010 after a surge in rickety asylum-seeker boats from Asia -- a move condemned by groups including UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency.
The freeze was lifted in September last year, but growing numbers of Afghans have been refused asylum after the government updated its safety assessments of the war-ravaged nation.
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN
Updated November 15, 2011, 12:41 pm
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Afghan asylum seeker who fears for his life if returned home is to be forcibly deported from Australia, the first such case under a new deal with Kabul, the government said Tuesday.
Ismail Mirza Jan, 26 and of the Hazara ethnic minority, fled Afghanistan 10 years ago and made his way to Australia via Pakistan, Iran, Greece and Britain, where he was refused refugee status in 2004.
He failed to disclose his British rejection when he arrived in Australia in February 2010 on false documents, claiming he had come directly from Afghanistan, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
A fingerprint trace revealed his earlier application, leading to the ultimate failure of his Australian asylum bid.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said Jan would be the first forced return under a deal struck in January with Kabul.
"Never before today has there been an involuntary return from Australia to Afghanistan so this underlines the importance of today," Bowen told reporters.
"Without today's agreement it would be impossible to contemplate involuntary repatriation to Afghanistan."
The deal allows Australia to forcibly deport Afghans whose claims for asylum have failed, and it was signed off as part of efforts to curb the thousands of refugees arriving here from the strife-torn central Asian nation.
Jan's father was killed by the Taliban and his family have fled to neighbouring Pakistan. He told ABC television he fears for his life.
"If I go there, I will be dead in my country. I have no-one there to protect me. I have no friends, no family there. So how can I live, relocate in Kabul?" said Jan, who claims he was coached not to reveal his failed British asylum claim by people smugglers.
"I told immigration it's okay, if they send me, you can send my dead body to my country because either way I'm dead."
A spokesman for Bowen declined to comment specifically on the case for privacy reasons but said only "Afghans not considered to be genuine refugees" were returned under the policy.
"People are only removed where their refugee claim has failed at multiple levels of assessment," the spokesman told AFP.
"This government is committed to a proper and robust assessment of asylum claims as a signatory to the Refugee Convention," he added.
According to the Herald, Jan will be charged Aus$32,782 (US$33,460) for his escorted deportation, which will take place on Saturday.
Australia temporarily froze all Afghan asylum claims in April 2010 after a surge in rickety asylum-seeker boats from Asia -- a move condemned by groups including UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency.
The freeze was lifted in September last year, but growing numbers of Afghans have been refused asylum after the government updated its safety assessments of the war-ravaged nation.
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN
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