TALKING POINTS
Mazar Security Commission Brokers
Ceasefire in Dara-i-Suf
A delegation of the Mazar Multi Party Security Commission, which went to Dara-i-Suf in Samangan province last Sunday to assess reports of fighting between Jamiat and Jumbesh returned to Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday having managed to broker a ceasefire between the two factions.
At the last briefing we said that the Commission was going visit the villages of Zirakai, Safid Qota and Sar-i-Chabchal where allegedly there were intermittent clashes last week due to long-standing tensions between two local commanders. The delegation that was accompanied by UNAMA confirmed that the fighting had indeed taken place but only in a village called Albi. While tensions are still high, the ceasefire, which was put in place last Sunday night, is holding. The delegation verified that troops had been removed from the vicinity of the village and civilians were returning to their homes. However, the two commanders who were recalled to Mazar to meet with the Security Commission yesterday to discuss longer-term solutions for security in Dar-i-Suf did not take place due to security concerns by one Commander about his travel to Mazar. The Commission will send a delegation to escort him so that that they can both attend an extraordinary security Commission meeting on 6 July.
A temporary suspension of UN road missions to Dara-i Suf, which was put in place while the Commission assessed the situation, has been lifted.
Outbreak of Fighting in Sholgara
Following a confirmed report of fighting last night between Jamiat and the Jumbesh in Arlat village, Sholgara district, Balkh Province, the Security Commission will send a delegation today, which will include UNAMA, to assess the situation. We will keep you updated on this situation.
Twenty Kabul-Based Police Arrive in Maimana, Faryab Province
A new contingent of 20-Kabul based police arrived in Maimana the provincial capital of Faryab Province on 27 June.
One of the outcomes of the Maimana peace agreement at the end of April was the deployment on 20 April of 80 policemen from Kabul to Maimana as a preliminary interim measure until the establishment of a neutral police force in the provincial capital. These policemen, however, were recalled to Kabul some 10 days later. On 18 May 50 more members of the Kabul Police arrived in the provincial capital where they were to be stationed for an interim period of about one month. On 18 June they were recalled and the replacements arrived last Friday. The situation in Maimana, however, continues to be calm with a notable reduction in tensions.
And just to remind you that 150 Kabul-based police have been stationed in Mazar since the end of May.
Explosion in Radio TV Nangahar Injures Two Employees
An explosion occurred in Radio TV Nangahar yesterday 12:15 pm allegedly caused by a cooking gas cylinder seriously injuring two employees.
As a result of the explosion, two employees sustained 70 per cent burns to their bodies. They are presently in the Ministry of Public Heath Hospital undergoing treatment and when their conditions improve to allow movement may require medical evacuation. The UN de-mining team has offered their ambulance in case the patients need to be medivaced and the Coalition has offered the same service to take them should the need arise to do so by air. UNAMA visited the site and confirmed the extent of the damage to the building, in particular in the area surrounding the kitchen.
Although this incident seems to be an accident the local authorities are still carrying out a thorough investigation.
Preliminary Phase of Afghan Census is Progressing Well
The household-listing phase of the Afghan Census is progressing well and is marginally ahead of schedule.
Information from the household listing phase from seven provinces so far completed in Afghanistan is being compiled and analyzed by the Central Statistics Office with the assistance of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
In the first phase of the census operation teams from the Central Statistics Office have collected data from Baghlan, Kapisa, Kunduz, Logar, Parwan, Samangan and Takhar. They were updating maps, locating and listing each house in the province and making preliminary population counts. This is only the preliminary phase and not the actual census, which will be conducted following the elections.
The national census will be the first to be done since an incomplete attempt in the late 1970s. It will provide information vital to the development and reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Teams from the Central Statistics Office are now in Badakshan, Bamyan and Ghor. The CSO is receiving technical and financial assistance from UNFPA.
Villagers Affected by Mudslides in Northern Badakshan Receive Emergency Assistance
Villagers in Yasif Village, Ragh District, northern Badakshan whose houses were recently washed away by floods and mudslides have received additional assistance following the initial provision of 30 tents as well as medical assistance by the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS), which we informed you about at the last briefing.
Non-food items (NFIs) such as household items and clothing have been provided by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC) and Concern Worldwide along with a one-month ration of food from the World Food Programme (WFP) and 50 tents from UNAMA. The local government through the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) is handling the distribution.
At the last Sunday 's briefing we informed you that landslides caused by torrential rains had killed three children, injured 10 adults, completely destroyed 15 houses, and partially destroyed 13 others in the village.
Consultation Process on the Constitution Continues
The Constitutional Commission has reported that the process of holding consultation meetings to gather public opinions on the constitution for Afghanistan is continuing throughout the country and also abroad.
In the last week the Constitutional Commission have organized about 126 meetings in provinces across Afghanistan. There have also been meetings in Iran and Pakistan to enable Afghan refugees to participate in the constitution-making process.
Vice President and Head of the Constitution Commission, Nimatullah Shahrani has been touring the country and attending meetings in different provinces including Bamyan, Nangahar and Paktika.
Thousands of questionnaires have been distributed for those unable to attend the meetings.
Sadako Ogata - Prime Minister Of Japan's Special Representative for Afghanistan to Make Eight Day Visit to Afghanistan
Sadako Ogata, the Prime Minister of Japan's Special Representative for Afghanistan will arrive in Afghanistan on Sunday 6 July for an eight-day visit.
During her visit to Afghanistan Mrs. Ogata will meet with the most senior Afghan officials as well as the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission.
In addition to meeting with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, UN agencies, members of the international community and organizations in Kabul, Mrs. Ogata will visit Bamyan and Mazar-e-Sharif where she will meet with influential political figures, governors, Loya Jirga delegates and other local personalities.
Mrs. Ogata will conclude her visit with a press Conference here in the UNAMA Press Briefing Conference room on Sunday 13 July at 10:45. This will follow the regular Sunday briefing, which begins at 10:00 a.m.
WHO Donates Motorbikes and Photocopiers to Ministry of Health
I would like to tell you about a media advisory which we just received from the World Health Organization (WHO) informing us about a donation of 27 motorbikes and 32 photocopying machines by them to the Ministry of Health. More details are available in the release at the side of the room.
WFP Public Affairs Officer, Maarteen Roest
WFP Steps up Efforts to Support Afghanistan's Education System
The World Food Programmes's (WFP) efforts to support Afghanistan's education system through food aid have been stepped up dramatically. Last Tuesday, the Minister of Education, Mr. Younis Qanooni and Country Director of WFP, Susana Rico signed a Letter of Understanding, which consolidates WFP's Food For Education (FFE) programme until March 2005.
For the next two years, over two million school children will be targeted, in an effort to provide food assistance to encourage enrollment, attendance and school performance, especially for girls. Besides school children, the programme also intends to reach out to women, adolescent girls and boys, offering them vocational training in areas such as carpet weaving or carpentry, and courses in literacy.
The project cost during the 2-year period is estimated at US$ 97 million.
As part of this effort, WFP and the Ministry of Education will jointly start oil distributions to teachers as a supplement to their salary. The aim is to make the teaching profession more attractive for teacher. Teachers are also offered access to training courses to improve their educational skills.
For the coming year, 100,000 teachers are targeted all over Afghanistan, who will receive 10 litres of oil ($7.61) per month as supplements to their salary.
The first distribution will start next Sunday, on 6 July, in the Kabul city, and Kabul, Parwan and Logar Provinces, and will reach around 12,000 teachers.
WFP to Assess Needs of People Affected by Hailstorms and Flooding in Kunar
WFP received a report from the ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of last Tuesday, stating that the areas of Korawang, Azrbagh and Gadak of the District of Watapur of Kunar Province have reportedly been seriously affected by hail storms and flooding which have destroyed crops and left 708 families or 4,864 individuals in a precarious situation". Yesterday, WFP organized a mission to assess the situation, to meet with the authorities, assess the needs and recommend food aid actions to be immediately taken.
We will keep you updated with any action taken in the coming days.
Questions and Answers
Question: Do you have any figures about casualties from the mission during the recent hostilities in the North?
Spokesman: No I don't.
Question: Is the US$97 million for the WFP programme to help children and teachers?
WFP: Yes it is for all the projects that are in the FFE programme - this includes children, teachers and also vocational training for women and adolescents and so on.
Question: Is there any report on the types of programmes that will take place?
WFP: Yes I can provide you with that.
Question: Providing food will encourage more kids to go to school. Yet one of our biggest problems is the lack of teachers. How will you address this imbalance?
WFP: I think this is why I wanted highlight the distribution of cooking oil to teachers. This is a clear effort to not only focus on school children but to provide an incentive to teachers to come back to school as their salaries will become more attractive. I will give you a full readout of the programme. There is also one part of it, which deals with reconstruction that is ongoing and will continue. Another thing we offer teachers is training to improve their professional skills. Yes, the big focus is on schoolchildren but at the other end we are concentrating on 100,000 primary school teachers. So you can see that there is also quite a serious effort to improve the education system itself.
Question: Do you think the number of schools to be constructed will be commensurate with the number of children going back to school?
Spokesman: The number of schools that need to be reconstructed or built from scratch is very large. Unfortunately I don't have the number but we can try and find that for you. Of course that construction will not be at the same speed as the pace of children going back to school. There are a number of movements that happen in parallel which are not always at the same speed. They are the number of students - and within that boys and girls; the training/capacity building of teachers; the number of schools that need to be repaired or rebuilt and; school materials and school furniture. So the efforts of the Ministry of Education (MOE) along with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other organizations are trying to do this all simultaneously and in sync with each other. The speeds, however, are not the same. I believe that the motto of the MOE this year is one roof for every school. I think that is the target by the Ministry this year. So you see it is ambitious in that it seems that a lot has to be done. If they succeed in doing all of this in a year it will be fabulous. But evidently that is not all that education needs in this country.
[Of the current total of some 5,000 schools, over half are in urgent need of repair. Estimates say that another 2,500 school buildings are needed to accommodate the current school population of three million.]
Question: Do you think that by the time the FFE programme finishes could create a dependency in children and they might not come if there is no food in the future?
WFP: To be quite honest I think the question is highly speculative. Firstly, WFP's big effort here is to make sure that Afghans have enough food to feed themselves. So as part of this effort I can say that maybe in the future when this programme ends if there is enough food security then food may cease to be an extra incentive for children to go to school. And this will be a big success. Of course every project that WFP organizes is monitored and at the end of two years it may not finish depending on the assessment. If the assessment is yes the children have enough to eat and they are now going to school because they have a sincere wish to educate themselves, then the WFP has done its job and the FFE will end. But on the other hand I would like to stress that part of this project is to build the capacity of the Ministry of Education. So another target is to handover what we are jointly doing now with the MOE to the Ministry itself. Hopefully in two year's time they will take this over. But then we also have to see what happens in two year's from now I guess.
Question: There are reports that the elections may be delayed? Also UNAMA and the Government have discussed setting up an electoral commission but nothing has been done on this as yet?
Spokesman: I think you are partly right. So let me see if I can shed some light. The electoral commission is to be established by the government. It is not a UNAMA commission. The UNAMA counterpart to the electoral commission is the electoral unit, which is staffed with personnel of great experience and capacity who have done a very thorough plan. You heard Reg Austin, the Head of the Electoral Unit when he briefed you here recently. He told you about all the plans that we are ready to implement for electoral registration. Some counterparts are required and one of them is the electoral commission on which the Government is working.
People are talking about a possible delay in the election precisely because some of the technical portions of this puzzle have not yet been put together. I think, however, that the commitment to meet the benchmarks and the objectives of the Bonn process is there and the election is a very important part of those benchmarks.
Technical delays may occur and may have an impact on the final activity. But I will remind you that delays are not extraordinary. So far the Bonn process is meeting its deadlines albeit with some delays. The Emergency Loya Jirga was delayed but it did happen - not a long delay, just a few days, but it did happen. You see disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) experiencing some delays now which we hope will be short and that it will happen and have a very positive impact on the population and the peace process including the elections. Nobody should feel prevented from pursuing every effort towards meeting the Bonn benchmarks and deadlines because of possible technical delays.
Question: Can you specify the date for the Constitutional Loya Jirga?
Spokesman: It is in October but I don't think a date has been set. The President is expected to issue a decree on this Loya Jirga in the near future with the dates, how it will happen and which will also formalize other details related to the event.
Question: Do you have any idea when DDR is supposed to start?
Spokesman: I don't but if you saw Salah's story yesterday where he heard an official in the President's press office say the end of July. What I can tell you is that for DDR to start, both the international community and the Afghan Government feel that it is necessary to have the reform of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for DDR to enjoy the sense of participation in and cooperation by all involved in it. There are discussions and more importantly work underway regarding the MOD reform. And as soon as President Karzai is satisfied that these discussion on reform of the ministry reach a conclusion with positive results we are confident that DRR will be able to follow and to start after that.
Question: The office of the Afghan New Beginnings Programme (ANBP) will be opened next week. Is this a kick off ceremony for the whole DDR process?
Spokesman: As yet I am not aware of a ceremony to kick start the whole DDR process.
Question: No - my point is that the ANBP office will open next week - is this the kick off of the process? (Rest inaudible)
Spokesman: I really don't know. Even if it is [the opening of the office] what does it mean? The meaningful event here is the reform of the MOD; the appropriate appointments at the top echelons of the Ministry; the Central Corps of Afghan National Army (ANA); and the mechanisms for recruitment of officers and soldiers for this army. You remember these are the three aspects that we have been discussing - the indicators of reform that will enable DDR to start. So that is what is really substantive and meaningful. This is what we should be focusing on. I think that it would be nice if there were a ceremony for the opening of the ANBP office but we should really focus on the MOD reform and the DDR process that will follow.
Question: Was it planned for reform of the MOD to take place in July and it is now delayed?
Spokesman: That was the expectation but these things are not a mathematical science. So time is required for the appropriate discussions as well as the identification of names and this is what they are doing.
Question: What are the constraints - are there technical problems?
Spokesman: I think you should talk to Government officials about that. Judging by what I read in the press the President's Office is talking about the end of July.
Question: So the UN is waiting for the MOD reform?
Spokesman: Yes this is what we have been saying all along.
Question: And a new date?
Spokesman: Let's focus on the substance. The dates are not really that relevant as long you don't change them dramatically. But if you slip by some short period of time that is not really relevant. Let's do things as well as they can be done and substantively. It will never be perfect because if things were perfect there would be no need for me to be here briefing you as things would be running by themselves very smoothly. What I think we should focus on is the content of the activities that have to take place; how well they can be done; and understand that it is most likely things will not be perfect but they will be done as well as they possibly can in order to allow the process to move forward within a reasonable time frame.
Question: Three months ago there was a change of the leadership in the MOD. Were you not satisfied with this?
Spokesman: We thought it was good initiative. There were about 15 names that were announced in the leadership of the MOD. But that was not enough. We have to pursue and go beyond that. And this is why I say that discussions and work towards that goal are ongoing. As soon as the President feels that this work and these discussions have achieved positive results towards the objective of MOD reform and the appointment of names for the Central Corps of the ANA we are confident that DDR will follow immediately after.
Thank you very much.