Focus on the forgotten province of Nurestan

Nurestan is one of Afghanistan's most isolated and poverty-stricken provinces. The presidential election, foreign aid and the optimism of Kabul seem a world away. Just getting there from the capital in winter requires stamina, commitment and a degree of luck. It's a two day drive from the eastern province of Nangarhar through snow capped mountains and several hours on foot battling through more than a metre of snow. When you finally reach the tiny provincial capital, close to the Pakistani frontier, the vista is bleak. Local authority offices are closed and there is no sign of any aid agencies. There are gutted houses and bombed bridges everywhere. An empty health clinic is serving as winter quarters for someone's private militia. The people look exhausted with thin, colourless faces. In Barg-e-Matal and Kamdish, the two most troubled eastern districts of Nurestan, there is no sign of any government activity anywhere. In central Barg-e-Matal, Karim, a 40-year-old aid worker, stood behind the closed door of the Afghan Aid NGO's office that was recently burned down by insurgents. "Everyone here is at risk, [both] aid workers and government officials, from insurgents and people from local disputes," he said. Nurestan, meaning ‘land of light’, lies on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush. The inhospitable region used to be known as Kafiristan, or ‘land of the infidels’ because it was inhabited by an ethnically distinctive people, who practiced animism until their forcible conversion to Islam at the end of the nineteenth century. Nurestanis live in isolated villages in deep, narrow mountain valleys, surviving on subsistence agriculture, growing wheat, fruit and raising livestock, mainly goats. The province was the scene of some of the heaviest guerrilla fighting during the 1979-89 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Like many rural areas in the south and east, the province can be a dangerous place for aid workers, the army and government agencies. The area is used as a route into equally isolated regions of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on the Pakistani side of the open border, by Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants. Several government officials including two soldiers and aid workers on the way to the valley have been killed in insurgent attacks since the beginning of the year. The lack of security or central government presence means development aid has all but dried up. The last operational NGO in the troubled valley, Afghan Aid, ceased work after an armed attack on its sub-office. Karim said the NGO had been the only source of employment in the area and that more than fifty people have lost their jobs while several public utility projects have been abandoned before completion. LACK OF GOVERNMENT PRESENCE "We don't blame aid NGOs but we blame the government. They never come to see what is happening and provide security for aid delivery," he said. He added that even the US-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) stationed in neighbouring Konar province did not visit the area. "People need a government presence here. This is the most important thing," Karim noted. A local resident who declined to be named told IRIN that extremist religious elements continue to dominate the entire province. "The top people here are people from conservative groups or linked to those people who don't want aid, stability and peace," he said. IRIN eventually found the district administrator, Sarmalem Kamdishi, cowering in a bunker on the outskirts of Barg-e-Matal. After several attempts to get him to speak, he said the security situation in the area was "tense" and that journalists were not welcome in the province. "You find all sorts of problems here. We have very tense local disputes and very high rates of attack by insurgents. Poverty, health issues and lack of roads are major humanitarian concerns," Kamdishi told IRIN nervously. He said NGOs wanted to help but no one could guarantee security. "As a district administrator I do not feel secure even though I am from this locality," he said. Kamdishi said rival tribes often fire missiles at each other or plant landmines on agricultural land or on what pass for roads in the region. He pointed to the Kushtuz Valley, where tens of people were killed and several hundred displaced after their houses were completely burned by armed men in January. "All the problems here originate from local disputes. Every year many people are killed or injured due to missile attacks or land mine plots as a result of local disputes," he said. The district administrator added that the absence of police, judges or public institutions means that the law rests with traditional tribal councils which are unelected, uninformed and very conservative in outlook. He added that eastern Nurestan has several connecting border points with the neighbouring Pakistan and extremists easily cross the border after launching attacks in Afghanistan. "We need a strong border police force to help us prevent this happening," he said. WIDESPREAD POVERTY People IRIN interviewed said poverty and health problems are their main concerns. Tuberculosis, malnutrition, maternal and infant mortality are common. As a result of poor health awareness and a lack of adequate nourishing food, almost every household has malnourished members, usually the women and children. The nearest health clinic is in the town of Chitral, two days walk across the border into Pakistan. There isn’t a doctor in the entire province according to Zulaikha, a 45-year-old midwife. She and two male tuberculosis technicians are the only health workers serving nearly 100,000 residents in the two populated districts. There is a single clinic in Bargmatal, where the sign above the rusty door says "Funded by the World Bank and CARE" but the building has been used as a government office and home to bodyguards protecting the district administrator. "This is a health clinic but neither Kabul nor any aid agency have been able to send health workers and run the clinic. Therefore, it is used as the district administration office," Zulaikha explained. Zulaikha graduated from high school and later attended a midwifery training course in Pakistan. She is the only literate women in the valley and a ray of hope for many mothers and children in the valley. She regularly walks for hours to visit patients and often has to deliver babies and cope with birthing problems in the most primitive of conditions. "Unfortunately, often mothers die before I can reach them. Because of the lack of roads I have to walk or go by horse," she said. "I know which medicine is needed for certain health problems. But the problem is medicine takes at least 48 hours to bring from Konar or Pakistan," said Zulaikha. RULE OF THE GUN Abdul Karim, a local lawyer in Barg-e- Matal, sat in his empty office said he had not processed any criminal cases since he was appointed by Kabul early in 2002. But he pointed out that this did not mean crime rates were low, simply that he and eleven other civil servants did not have the means to try people in a part of the country where mass killings, extortion, drug trafficking and forced displacement are widespread. "Government means nothing here because local militias are stronger than the police," Karim said, adding that people tend to rely on tribal councils to solve disputes rather than referring them to the local administration. "The provincial authorities were not able to prosecute several criminals many of them big killers, so now we have lost the trust of people" he added. According to local officials there are just thirty police officers serving the Bargmatal/Kamdish region and they are without vehicles, logistical support, communications equipment or even a police station to operate from. PRESSURE FROM RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES Lack of government and law has meant conservative religious leaders hold sway in most of Nurestan. Shah Zaman, a local shopkeeper, was forced to burn his television and a CD player by local clerics. There is no local TV or radio and so Zaman had dared to operate a clandestine video rental scheme to provide some entertainment for his customers. "The religious people here said it was against Islam and I had to burn them in front of the public," he told IRIN. A local teacher who declined to be named said as a result of pressure by religious elders the local high school was forced to turn girls away and transform into a Madrassa, or religious school. "This [school] used to be a place of learning and hope. Now we have been forced to hand it over to the fundamentalists. You cannot talk of Afghan progress here," he whispered sadly.