On the morning of 23 July he will meet with the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson. Following that, at the invitation of the North Atlantic Council, he will meet with the Permanent Representatives of NATO member states. These ambassadors are the members of the Council.

After a working lunch and meeting with senior European Union officials, Mr. Brahimi will have a meeting with Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative for common foreign and security policy.

There are also unconfirmed reports of tension in the village of Mir Haj village, Charkent district in Balkh Province. The Security Commission of the north is verifying these reports. In the meantime the UN has suspended road missions in that area specifically on the road that goes from Dahan-i Karnai (past Sholgara Bazaar) in Balkh Province to Aibak in Samangan Province.

We have been reporting to you on these spells of tension in the north and we have discussed with our colleagues in our Mazar office to be able to give you an overview of the situation. Since April we have reported several cases of factional fighting and in the unofficial count at least 66 people have been killed in these incidents since April and that includes civilians. I want to point out however that often it is difficult to have a breakdown of civilian and military casualties. I also want to further bring to your attention that in these situations there are other kinds of casualties: the destruction of houses, businesses, killing and theft of livestock, in other words, the disruption of life in the villages is tremendous by these skirmishes that often happen in isolated areas but do have the potential of expanding into larger conflicts. Thus this constant attention of the Security Commission of the North with the support of UNAMA and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

The mission will review the current situation of forest resources, assess the capacity of the forestry sector in Afghanistan and identify priority actions. The Minister for Irrigation, Water Resources and the Environment, Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani will join the mission on their field trip to Nuristan and Kunar, two of the provinces most badly affected by deforestation.

There have been serious levels of deforestation in Afghanistan in the last twenty three years caused by over-exploitation of natural and planted forests to meet basic livelihood needs. This has resulted in serious erosion, a chronic shortage of wood for fuel and insufficient wood products amongst other things.

According to the environmental assessment carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) around 50 to 70 per cent of forest cover has been lost in the last two decades.

We are late in the distribution of this edition as we had all kinds of logistical, software, printing problems. This is the June issue which covers the month of May but nevertheless I think you will find information there that you have not seen elsewhere and we hope it will become a good reference source.

Afghan Update is aimed primarily at Afghans. The publication has a few pages of written text and we will attempt to focus on visual information, graphs, tables and maps to facilitate grasping of the information by those who cannot read and write.

The technology called the Mechanical Explosive Dog Detection System (MEDDS) is likely to be used on other road and infrastructure activities including the Kabul to Jalalabad road, the Kandahar to Herat road and irrigation projects.

The technology has improved the speed of demining work along the flanks of the Kabul to Kandahar road but it is less suited to demining fields.

Update on Chaman
UNHCR assisted relocation continues from Chaman waiting area - to date, 1,543 families (7,394 individuals) have moved voluntarily to Zhare Dasht. The total number of internally displaced people at Zhare Dhast stands at 36,000.

Situation in Badghis
In the remote province of Badghis, northeast of Herat, many displaced people are returning, with the easing of drought conditions this past year. Earlier this month UNHCR's Chief of Mission, Filippo Grandi, visited Qalai-Naw and Bale-Murghab, a town at the border with Turkmenistan, where we saw endless wheat fields and many livestock along the way.

In Qalai-Naw, I've met a returnee family harvesting wheat. They had returned last year from Maslakh, a camp west of Herat, to which they had fled two years ago due to the severe drought. They were very happy to be home and were optimistic that the level of harvest this year would be as good as the years before the drought.

The provinces of Badghis and Ghor have been severely affected by drought over the past few years, prompting tens of thousands of farming families to move west and south in search of food. By the end of 2001, camps near Herat had swollen to over 150,000 IDPs. More than 74,000 displaced people have now returned to Badghis. We estimate that this is about 50% of the displaced population originating from the province.

While this is good news for the drought-affected displaced families, there are still many families who cannot return as they are afraid of harassment and human rights violations in their home villages. They are mainly displaced in Herat and Kandahar areas.

Bale-Murghab, Ghormach and Sange-Tash areas in Badghis province had been a scene of factional fighting this spring, with at least three factions competing for power, not necessarily divided along ethnic lines. We had received then reports of illegal taxation, harassment, forced recruitment and in few cases, rape, by rogue soldiers and commanders, victimizing civilian villagers, who are mainly ethnic minorities in the region.

The situation had subsided somewhat in the past month, but UNHCR is concerned that the current easing level of extortion and harassment is strongly related to recent cultivation of poppies in the area, which boosted the local economy. Many of the wheat fields, in fact, were overgrown, with lack of labour force to harvest them. Villagers themselves had told us that they were worried that the harassment will start again towards the year end, once the poppy income will have been spent.

This is a case of a remote province, void of law and order allowing gunmen rule over civilians, who become victims of both local and larger factional fights. The villagers as well as local authorities strongly requested the presence of international forces in the area, as well as more attention given by the central government to their plight. In this context, UNHCR is closely following with interest the recent discussion on the deployment of PRT forces (Provincial Reconstruction Team). We believe that a PRT presence in the region, even minimal, can help also in improving the security in these communities and help eventually to allow those still displaced to return to their homes.

There are some pockets of Pashtuns in Badghis, who are currently the main victims, but this is only a recent trend in the cycle of violence between ethnic and factional groups over the years. But UNHCR believes that, although it will take quite some time, the past must be forgotten in order to cut this vicious cycle. While speaking to displaced Pashtun families, who were quite bitter about their past abuses, UNHCR's Chief of Mission said: "If you don't forget the past, your children will have no future."

Update on cases of Diphtheria found in IDP Camp in Kandahar
On July 15th, the World Health Organization Kandahar Sub-office received information from Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Kandahar on suspected diphtheria cases at Zhare Dasht camp in Kandahar.

According to the initial investigation by doctors 17 children have been affected up to 17th July. Six suspected cases were transferred to Pakistan (Quetta) with the assistance of UNHCR for treatment on the 17th July; three cases died; and eight possible cases are in special isolated unit of Infectious Diseases Ward (IDW) in Kandahar Public Health Hospital receiving antibacterial and diphtheria antitoxin treatment. MSF-H has started prophylactic measures for the close contacts (family members and medical staff).

Diphtheria is an acute bacterial disease of the tonsils, pharynx, larynx, nose, skin and occasionally other mucus membranes of the body. Diseases caused by local proliferation of the diphtheria bacillus and by diffusion of the diphtheria toxin in the organism, which is very dangerous. The bacteria transmitted by contact (usually direct, rarely indirect) with the respiratory droplets of a case or carrier respiratory droplets, mainly from the nose.

With support from WHO the Emergency task force at the Ministry of Health (MOH) Kandahar and Kabul has conducted the following emergency interventions in coordination with MSH-H and UNHCR in Kandahar:

• Confirmation of the information by professional doctors who confirmed the cases clinically and stated that the first case sought medical clearance on July 14th.
  
• Preparation for isolation of affected people within the camp
  
• Establishment of special unit within IDW (Infectious Diseases Ward) of Kandahar Public Health hospital
  
• Referred 6 highly suspected cases to Quetta (Pakistan) with support of UNHCR
  
• WHO has provided 2 million units of diphtheria antitoxin to Kandahar, updated guidelines on diphtheria outbreak response.
  
• WHO has prepared emergency guidelines on collection of specimen (throat swab-slides) to confirm the suspected cases in Kabul. The first 3 specimens arrived in Kabul for laboratory investigations by WHO/MOH.
  
• MSH-H has started prophylactic treatment with erythromycin for close family members of the highly suspected cases and prophylactic measures for clinical staff
  
• Health education is being conducted focusing on early warning, personal and environmental hygiene and sanitation.
  
• REMT is working on administration of DPT vaccines to the children under five years
  
• Close monitoring the cases in IDW and suspected cases in the camp
  
• Result of epidemiological investigations and laboratory confirmations still being awaited in order to confirm the actual number of reported cases.

Questions and answers

Question: About Mr. Brahimi's trip to Brussels, what will he be pushing for there, will he be urging NATO to expand their military presence in Afghanistan?

Spokesman: As I said he has been invited by the North Atlantic Council to talk about the situation here in advance of NATO's taking over the leadership of ISAF early August and he will talk about the situation of the country, you know his views, and he will answer questions from the ambassadors

Question: Could you explain what his views on this are again?

Spokesman: Well he has concerns about security and we have expressed them in the past and he will reiterate that.

Question: Is there any reason for optimism with NATO taking over ISAF that there will be an expansion of the military presence around the country to increase security?

Spokesman: We have always made clear that we believe that there should be international military security presence beyond Kabul. This request has been made by President Karzai, by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, by Mr. Brahimi. The member states of NATO are member states of the United Nations. Our position has been made clear by us long ago [but] the decision does not belong to us the decision belongs to the member states and so far they have not been able to decide on some form of expansion. But we continue to do our work we continue to have the position we have and we have to wait for what member states can do.

Question: On DDR, General Dostum has published his detailed plan for DDR, if you have seen it, can you comment on it?

Spokesman: No I have not seen it but I read a short news dispatch saying that he was in favour of DDR [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration]. I don't know the details of what he proposed therefore I cannot comment on what his proposal was. However I can tell that there is a DDR plan that has been worked out with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the institution established by the Afghan Administration to implement DDR is called Afghanistan's New Beginnings Programme. They opened their central office last week, regional offices will follow. They are ready to proceed with DDR once the reforms in the Ministry of Defence begin. By the way I should add that [administrative] reforms should also be happening in all ministries. All the public administration of Afghanistan needs reform. [The MOD] reform is particularly relevant because it will facilitate DDR; those who will be demobilizing will feel more comfortable to demobilize and disarm to an institution that is perceived as a national institution, which is the objective of the reforms of the Ministry of Defence which the government is working on.

Question: In Badghis and other places where the kind of situation you were describe exists, is there any way UNHCR is working with NGOs to create a form of permanent human rights monitoring presence, to be able to communicate effectively to the authorities exactly when to intervene, is there any monitoring?

UNHCR: As you know we do have an office in Qala-e Naw in Badghis, we do have our missions going on quite regularly from our Herat office which is the head office in that region. We do have our protection staff in terms of legally protecting these people. There is a bit of a problem for us really doing direct reporting because we don't want to jeopardize our operation and especially our staff going into these remote villages. But what we're trying to do is in line with what we have in the north up until Faryab. In the northern region we set up the return commission basically involving the central government as well as the leaders of various factions and their working groups to look into the ways, to identify the reasons why people cannot go home, what are the reasons for insecurity and so forth. After the Chief of Mission having visited this remote area we are thinking of perhaps even expanding the return commission to include a little further west even the Badghis area. I just spoke about the displacement from the Badghis area itself but Badghis itself has around 500 families who were displaced from Faryab so all these places are really interlinked so in a way yes we do have our monitoring role. We will go into the villages and talk to people but eventually and ultimately we want the authorities to take responsibility for that.