TALKING POINTS

Forensics Assessment Mission to Bamiyan and Mazar
The forensics team that went to Bamiyan last Saturday, 27 April, went on Tuesday to Mazar. They have finished their work in Mazar, they will be in Kabul today where they are expected to stay for a couple of days. In Mazar they did visit two sites, Shiberghan and the airport site. The report of their visits will be finalised in Kabul.

Forensics Assessment Mission to Bamiyan and Mazar
The forensics team that went to Bamiyan last Saturday, 27 April, went on Tuesday to Mazar. They have finished their work in Mazar, they will be in Kabul today where they are expected to stay for a couple of days. In Mazar they did visit two sites, Shiberghan and the airport site. The report of their visits will be finalised in Kabul.

Press Briefings by the Afghan Interim Administration
The Afghan Interim Administration will begin regular briefings to the international media and the Afghan media, in English, Dari and Pashto. They will start on Wednesday 8 May at 10am, in English followed by Dari/Pashto, at the Afghan Assistance Coordination Authority (AACA) office, conducted by Dr. Ashraf Ghani.

International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Reconstruction Project
IOM is starting a project in Mazar called the Afghan Transition Initiative (ATI). It will start this month, and will launch a series of major educational rehabilitation schemes.

• The projects will benefit at least 2,500 students, and are in cooperation with ministries, local communities and UNICEF:
• The construction of 10 new classrooms at the Hashim Barat Girls' School - the first school in northern Afghanistan to be closed by the Taliban regime when they banned girls' education.
• The complete rehabilitation of the Agricultural Vocational Training School - one of Afghanistan's five agricultural training colleges, serving 300 students.
• The construction of six new classrooms and the rehabilitation of 6 others at the Intermediate Medical Institute, one of five medical institutes training health personnel in Afghanistan, serving 700 students.
• The reconstruction of the Sultan Razia School. Formerly one of the largest girls' schools in northern Afghanistan, the school was used by the Taliban and largely destroyed by the coalition bombing.
• The rebuilding of Dawlatabad School in the Hazrat-e-Sultan district of Samangan province. The school was abandoned during fighting in 1992 and is currently using UNICEF tents as classrooms.

UNHCR Update on Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) - Yusuf Hassan
The return of Afghan refugees topped the 460,000 mark today. More than 420,000 returned from Pakistan, over 30,000 from Iran and nearly 10,000 arrived from the Central Asia republics. The first 405 people entered Afghanistan yesterday through the Milak-Zaranj crossing point. Zaranj is the fourth official entry point for Afghan refugees; the other is Torkham and Asadabad in north-east, Spin Boldak in the south-east and Islam Qala in the west.

Yesterday, two vehicles carrying returnees from Pakistan were involved in two separate accidents on the Torkham-Jalalabad road. In the first, six people including a two-year-old child lost their lives and 15 sustained serious injuries, when a truck overturned five kilometres inside Afghanistan.

The second incident happened when a bus went off the road about 20 kilometres from the border, injuring an unknown number of passengers.

UNHCR is deeply saddened by these tragic incidents and sends its condolences to the bereaved families.

UNHCR is spearheading a programme aimed at assisting IDPs who are able to return to their areas of origin. In partnership with the Ministry of Repatriation, IOM and GTZ (German Technical Assistance Agency), UNHCR plans to assist as many as 400,000 IDPs to return to their homes this year. We are currently carrying out a countrywide exercise to register IDPs, collect information on their home areas, and organise a return programme.

Already some 150,000 displaced Afghans have gone home with the support of UNHCR and IOM. Another estimated 400,000 are known to have spontaneously returned to their villages since the fall of the Taliban last year.

Finding a durable solution for the 400,000 IDPs in southern Afghanistan is one of the biggest challenges facing the humanitarian community. This week, UNHCR and GTZ will start to repatriate some of the 40,000 IDPs living in five makeshift camps near the southern border post of Spin Boldak. But many of them may not be able to return home soon, among them many ethnic Pashtuns who were forced from their homes in northern Afghanistan earlier this year while others are nomads who lost everything in the devastating drought that has ravaged the region.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Report on Leishmaniasis - Lori Hieber Girardet
The World Health Organization is working with local health officials in Afghanistan to control the spread of a disfiguring and disabling skin disease that has already affected 100,000 people in Kabul this year. The disease is known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. This is caused by a parasite transmitted by the sandfly.

More than a quarter of a million Afghans will be infected with leishmaniasis this year. The disease is linked to poor social conditions, especially lack of hygiene and poor removal of waste material. Sand flies can also be found in the dried mud that is often used in houses in Afghanistan. Shoot-out latrines are another major breeding site of the sandfly which is just one third the size of a mosquito.

The spread of leishmaniasis at this time is of particular concern because of the movements of populations within Afghanistan. Populations returning to non-endemic areas or who have not contracted the disease are particularly at risk when they come to highly endemic areas, such as Kabul, Mazar-I-Sharif, and Kandahar.

Leishmaniasis causes social stigmatization, especially for girls. In Afghan society, a girl whose face is scarred by this disease may not be considered a prime choice for marriage, thus limiting her chances for a normal future.

WHO notes that a long-term solution to the spread of leishmaniasis will entail greater social awareness and appropriate sanitation measures put into place, especially in urban areas throughout Afghanistan. WHO is currently trying to work with local health officials to limit the spread of this disease, but the proper measures have not been put in place over the last decade so there is a risk of a pandemic which means the disease may spread to other countries as well.

World Food Programme (WFP) Update - Alejandro Chicheri
Rapid Food Assessment Missions
From Mazar and Herat sub offices, both helicopters and road missions continue their assessment of the food needs of the East and Northern parts of the country. In Bamiyan, helicopter assessments are starting to operate this week and our Public Information Officer Jennifer Abrahamson is there to assist journalist traveling to the area.

Food Distribution in the North
The fighting that has taken place in Paktia, Khost, and Sari Pul provinces has, so far, slightly affected WFP operations.

In Khost, bombing has prevented food aid monitors from carrying out their duties. WFP, however, is still trying to deploy a team in the area once the situation is stabilized. In addition we had to cancel an evaluation mission to certain affected districts in Balkh province.

In the affected and surrounding areas of Khost, and Paktia, WFP is providing food aid to drought-affected people under Food for Asset Creation activities (FOODAC) to rehabilitate community assets such as roads and water channels. 4,000 metric tons are allocated monthly till the end of June in these areas, covering approximately 21 districts. This food is enough to assist more than 50,000 families monthly. WFP implementing partners in the area include CARE and the Norwegian Project Office (NPO).

Civil Servants
WFP has completed a two-month food ration distribution to about 60,000 civil servants in Kabul. This ration covered the months of January and February. The next food distribution should take place this month and will cover about 90,000 civil servants for Kabul and approximately 55,000 civil servants in 21 provinces outside Kabul, for the months of March and April.

To date, the Afghan Ministry of Finance has provided WFP with the payroll for civil servants in 22 provinces and WFP is currently pre-positioning food in advance of the first provincial distribution. The rations are worth 50 percent of the cash salaries they receive from UNDP and consist of 12.5 kilos of pulses and 5 litres of vegetable oil per month.

Questions and Answers

Q: Are you aware of a letter from several Pashtun tribal leaders to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General asking to stall the Loya Jirga process because they are unhappy with the selection process?
Spokesman: No, it does not mean the letter does not exist, but I am not aware of this letter. I can tell you I have not heard of any particular suggestion for the Loya Jirga to be postponed. There is unhappiness in some quarters, or course, and we know about that. Some people think there are not enough seats allocated for this or that category, or not enough seats for this or that district. The Commission is looking at these complaints carefully. Those seats were assigned as a result of criteria established by the Commission. The Commissioners, just about all of them are throughout the country right now as part of the selection process. They are also listening to complaints.
Q: Regarding leishmaniasis, how much money is needed?
WHO: We need at least US$500,000 straight away just to control the spread of the disease here in Kabul. That is US$300,000 for medicine to treat the disease and another US$200,000 for bed nets. The strategy entails giving bed nets to people who are already infected because that way the sandfly cannot bite the lesion and then transmit to other people. The sandfly is a rather sophisticated animal because it has sensors which draw it to the lesion, and it is also attracted by carbon dioxide, so subsequently it is important to avoid that contact.

Q: How much of that money has been raised?
WHO: Very little. Leishmaniasis is not a life-threatening disease, not here in Afghanistan, so donor funds are being spent on those diseases which have a high mortality rate. The problem is that money has been requested over the last decade to control this disease and it was never forthcoming. As you know, there was not a lot of donor interest in Afghanistan at all, so now it has reached really important epidemic proportions because the proper control measures were never put into place.

Q: What is the best way to prevent this disease?
WHO: The best way, and this is also for international staff because you are just as much at risk as national people in Kabul, is to sleep under bed nets at night, especially impregnated bed nets. The transmission season is starting now, from June to October, so end of May so you have some time. Of course, most Afghan families cannot afford bed nets and we have a very limited supply.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on whether donors have been alerted to this disease.
WHO: Yes. All areas of the health sector are still extremely under-funded.

Q: Are there instances of the disease spreading to other countries?
WHO: Yes indeed. There has been an outbreak in Pakistan in Kurram Agency, 5,000 cases which we believe are linked to the Afghan refugee population which moved to Kurram Agency because there was no epidemiological study we cannot confirm, but in fact there was quite a lot of consternation in Pakistan because this is a disease which is fully under control in Pakistan, there are very few cases, and all of a sudden when this latest flow of refugees came into Pakistan, they had 5,000 cases. There was also an outbreak in Sindh province in the south of Pakistan which involved 9,000 people. Again it is the same problem of social stigmatisation, especially in Pakistan.

Q: It seems more and more agencies are talking about lack of funding. Is it because Afghanistan is not on the front page anymore?
Spokesman: In the last [few] briefings, agencies have been bringing to the attention of donors that the pledges are not being disbursed as fast as the programmes require, or the needs demand.

WHO: The health sector requires US$123 million over the next two years. The World Bank Joint Donors' Assessment Mission has recommended US$200 million over the next two years and not yet received a fraction of that money, so if there is a funding crisis, absolutely.

Q: When will the forensics team finalise their report?
Spokesman: It depends on how fast they will be able to complete their report. The report, I believe, in addition to their field examination, will also include their recommendations for capacity-building or assessment of the capacity that is currently in place [in] Afghan institutions and what might be required. That is one of the things they will be looking at once they get to Kabul. They are expected to be in Kabul only for a few days only, so I would hope by our next briefing on Tuesday we will be able to give you some more details.

Q: Is this the same area that Chairman Karzai visited in Bamiyan?
Spokesman: Most likely. I do not know exactly where he went but my understanding is that some of these sites are near the airport and very visible, so I believe these would be not exactly all the same sites, but at least some of the sites, and the same sort of situation.

Q: How many vehicles involved in the incidents?
UNHCR: They were two separate incidents. One was a truck that overturned, killing six people. The first one happened about five kilometres inside Afghanistan. The second one was a bus that went off the road.

Q: You said you did not know how many were injured or killed in the second incident.
UNHCR: No I do not have the exact figure. Our teams were on the spot immediately and they managed to take as many people as possible to the nearest hospital but if you call me later I will give you the figures.

* *** *

The Afghan Interim Administration will begin regular briefings to the international media and the Afghan media, in English, Dari and Pashto. They will start on Wednesday 8 May at 10am, in English followed by Dari/Pashto, at the Afghan Assistance Coordination Authority (AACA) office, conducted by Dr. Ashraf Ghani.

· International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Reconstruction Project
IOM is starting a project in Mazar called the Afghan Transition Initiative (ATI). It will start this month, and will launch a series of major educational rehabilitation schemes.
The projects will benefit at least 2,500 students, and are in cooperation with ministries, local communities and UNICEF:
· The construction of 10 new classrooms at the Hashim Barat Girls' School - the first school in northern Afghanistan to be closed by the Taliban regime when they banned girls' education.
· The complete rehabilitation of the Agricultural Vocational Training School - one of Afghanistan's five agricultural training colleges, serving 300 students.
· The construction of six new classrooms and the rehabilitation of 6 others at the Intermediate Medical Institute, one of five medical institutes training health personnel in Afghanistan, serving 700 students.
· The reconstruction of the Sultan Razia School. Formerly one of the largest girls' schools in northern Afghanistan, the school was used by the Taliban and largely destroyed by the coalition bombing.
· The rebuilding of Dawlatabad School in the Hazrat-e-Sultan district of Samangan province. The school was abandoned during fighting in 1992 and is currently using UNICEF tents as classrooms.

· UNHCR Update on Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
- Yusuf Hassan
The return of Afghan refugees topped the 460,000 mark today. More than 420,000 returned from Pakistan, over 30,000 from Iran and nearly 10,000 arrived from the Central Asia republics. The first 405 people entered Afghanistan yesterday through the Milak-Zaranj crossing point. Zaranj is the fourth official entry point for Afghan refugees; the other is Torkham and Asadabad in north-east, Spin Boldak in the south-east and Islam Qala in the west.

Yesterday, two vehicles carrying returnees from Pakistan were involved in two separate accidents on the Torkham-Jalalabad road. In the first, six people including a two-year-old child lost their lives and 15 sustained serious injuries, when a truck overturned five kilometres inside Afghanistan.

The second incident happened when a bus went off the road about 20 kilometres from the border, injuring an unknown number of passengers.

UNHCR is deeply saddened by these tragic incidents and sends its condolences to the bereaved families.

UNHCR is spearheading a programme aimed at assisting IDPs who are able to return to their areas of origin. In partnership with the Ministry of Repatriation, IOM and GTZ (German Technical Assistance Agency), UNHCR plans to assist as many as 400,000 IDPs to return to their homes this year. We are currently carrying out a countrywide exercise to register IDPs, collect information on their home areas, and organise a return programme.

Already some 150,000 displaced Afghans have gone home with the support of UNHCR and IOM. Another estimated 400,000 are known to have spontaneously returned to their villages since the fall of the Taliban last year.

Finding a durable solution for the 400,000 IDPs in southern Afghanistan is one of the biggest challenges facing the humanitarian community. This week, UNHCR and GTZ will start to repatriate some of the 40,000 IDPs living in five makeshift camps near the southern border post of Spin Boldak. But many of them may not be able to return home soon, among them many ethnic Pashtuns who were forced from their homes in northern Afghanistan earlier this year while others are nomads who lost everything in the devastating drought that has ravaged the region.

· World Health Organisation (WHO) Report on Leishmaniasis - Lori Hieber Girardet
The World Health Organization is working with local health officials in Afghanistan to control the spread of a disfiguring and disabling skin disease that has already affected 100,000 people in Kabul this year. The disease is known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. This is caused by a parasite transmitted by the sandfly.

More than a quarter of a million Afghans will be infected with leishmaniasis this year. The disease is linked to poor social conditions, especially lack of hygiene and poor removal of waste material. Sand flies can also be found in the dried mud that is often used in houses in Afghanistan. Shoot-out latrines are another major breeding site of the sandfly which is just one third the size of a mosquito.

The spread of leishmaniasis at this time is of particular concern because of the movements of populations within Afghanistan. Populations returning to non-endemic areas or who have not contracted the disease are particularly at risk when they come to highly endemic areas, such as Kabul, Mazar-I-Sharif, and Kandahar.

Leishmaniasis causes social stigmatization, especially for girls. In Afghan society, a girl whose face is scarred by this disease may not be considered a prime choice for marriage, thus limiting her chances for a normal future.

WHO notes that a long-term solution to the spread of leishmaniasis will entail greater social awareness and appropriate sanitation measures put into place, especially in urban areas throughout Afghanistan. WHO is currently trying to work with local health officials to limit the spread of this disease, but the proper measures have not been put in place over the last decade so there is a risk of a pandemic which means the disease may spread to other countries as well.

· World Food Programme (WFP) Update - Alejandro Chicheri
Rapid Food Assessment Missions
From Mazar and Herat sub offices, both helicopters and road missions continue their assessment of the food needs of the East and Northern parts of the country. In Bamiyan, helicopter assessments are starting to operate this week and our Public Information Officer Jennifer Abrahamson is there to assist journalist traveling to the area.

Food Distribution in the North
The fighting that has taken place in Paktia, Khost, and Sari Pul provinces has, so far, slightly affected WFP operations.

In Khost, bombing has prevented food aid monitors from carrying out their duties. WFP, however, is still trying to deploy a team in the area once the situation is stabilized. In addition we had to cancel an evaluation mission to certain affected districts in Balkh province.

In the affected and surrounding areas of Khost, and Paktia, WFP is providing food aid to drought-affected people under Food for Asset Creation activities (FOODAC) to rehabilitate community assets such as roads and water channels. 4,000 metric tons are allocated monthly till the end of June in these areas, covering approximately 21 districts. This food is enough to assist more than 50,000 families monthly. WFP implementing partners in the area include CARE and the Norwegian Project Office (NPO).

Civil Servants
WFP has completed a two-month food ration distribution to about 60,000 civil servants in Kabul. This ration covered the months of January and February. The next food distribution should take place this month and will cover about 90,000 civil servants for Kabul and approximately 55,000 civil servants in 21 provinces outside Kabul, for the months of March and April.

To date, the Afghan Ministry of Finance has provided WFP with the payroll for civil servants in 22 provinces and WFP is currently pre-positioning food in advance of the first provincial distribution. The rations are worth 50 percent of the cash salaries they receive from UNDP and consist of 12.5 kilos of pulses and 5 litres of vegetable oil per month.

Questions and Answers

Q: Are you aware of a letter from several Pashtun tribal leaders to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General asking to stall the Loya Jirga process because they are unhappy with the selection process?
Spokesman: No, it does not mean the letter does not exist, but I am not aware of this letter. I can tell you I have not heard of any particular suggestion for the Loya Jirga to be postponed. There is unhappiness in some quarters, or course, and we know about that. Some people think there are not enough seats allocated for this or that category, or not enough seats for this or that district. The Commission is looking at these complaints carefully. Those seats were assigned as a result of criteria established by the Commission. The Commissioners, just about all of them are throughout the country right now as part of the selection process. They are also listening to complaints.
Q: Regarding leishmaniasis, how much money is needed?
WHO: We need at least US$500,000 straight away just to control the spread of the disease here in Kabul. That is US$300,000 for medicine to treat the disease and another US$200,000 for bed nets. The strategy entails giving bed nets to people who are already infected because that way the sandfly cannot bite the lesion and then transmit to other people. The sandfly is a rather sophisticated animal because it has sensors which draw it to the lesion, and it is also attracted by carbon dioxide, so subsequently it is important to avoid that contact.

Q: How much of that money has been raised?
WHO: Very little. Leishmaniasis is not a life-threatening disease, not here in Afghanistan, so donor funds are being spent on those diseases which have a high mortality rate. The problem is that money has been requested over the last decade to control this disease and it was never forthcoming. As you know, there was not a lot of donor interest in Afghanistan at all, so now it has reached really important epidemic proportions because the proper control measures were never put into place.

Q: What is the best way to prevent this disease?
WHO: The best way, and this is also for international staff because you are just as much at risk as national people in Kabul, is to sleep under bed nets at night, especially impregnated bed nets. The transmission season is starting now, from June to October, so end of May so you have some time. Of course, most Afghan families cannot afford bed nets and we have a very limited supply.

Q: [Inaudible] Question on whether donors have been alerted to this disease.
WHO: Yes. All areas of the health sector are still extremely under-funded.

Q: Are there instances of the disease spreading to other countries?
WHO: Yes indeed. There has been an outbreak in Pakistan in Kurram Agency, 5,000 cases which we believe are linked to the Afghan refugee population which moved to Kurram Agency because there was no epidemiological study we cannot confirm, but in fact there was quite a lot of consternation in Pakistan because this is a disease which is fully under control in Pakistan, there are very few cases, and all of a sudden when this latest flow of refugees came into Pakistan, they had 5,000 cases. There was also an outbreak in Sindh province in the south of Pakistan which involved 9,000 people. Again it is the same problem of social stigmatisation, especially in Pakistan.

Q: It seems more and more agencies are talking about lack of funding. Is it because Afghanistan is not on the front page anymore?
Spokesman: In the last [few] briefings, agencies have been bringing to the attention of donors that the pledges are not being disbursed as fast as the programmes require, or the needs demand.

WHO: The health sector requires US$123 million over the next two years. The World Bank Joint Donors' Assessment Mission has recommended US$200 million over the next two years and not yet received a fraction of that money, so if there is a funding crisis, absolutely.

Q: When will the forensics team finalise their report?
Spokesman: It depends on how fast they will be able to complete their report. The report, I believe, in addition to their field examination, will also include their recommendations for capacity-building or assessment of the capacity that is currently in place [in] Afghan institutions and what might be required. That is one of the things they will be looking at once they get to Kabul. They are expected to be in Kabul only for a few days only, so I would hope by our next briefing on Tuesday we will be able to give you some more details.

Q: Is this the same area that Chairman Karzai visited in Bamiyan?
Spokesman: Most likely. I do not know exactly where he went but my understanding is that some of these sites are near the airport and very visible, so I believe these would be not exactly all the same sites, but at least some of the sites, and the same sort of situation.

Q: How many vehicles involved in the incidents?
UNHCR: They were two separate incidents. One was a truck that overturned, killing six people. The first one happened about five kilometres inside Afghanistan. The second one was a bus that went off the road.

Q: You said you did not know how many were injured or killed in the second incident.
UNHCR: No I do not have the exact figure. Our teams were on the spot immediately and they managed to take as many people as possible to the nearest hospital but if you call me later I will give you the figures.