Focus on IDPs in Surkhandarya

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Istiklol village, 60 km away from Termez, the administrative centre of the southern Surkhandarya Province, face real challenges this winter, having to live as they do in derelict houses with electricity and gas supplies sporadic and access to potable water limited. "Every day my daughters go to nearby fields to work for farmers to earn something that we could use for food this winter. Sons go up to Termez town to find a job," said Jumakul Muhitdinov, 62, the chairman of the Istiklol Mahalla [locational] Committee, who is desperately worried about his family's future. "Today they worked at the butchery and were given offal - a cow's head and intestines," he added. He has 12 children; four sons now live separately with their own families in the same village. But he still has to take care of the others, as his youngest son is only nine years old. His family was among 3,500 mountain villagers who were forcibly relocated between August 2000 and March 2001. The government's controversial eviction policy was its response to incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan into northeastern Surkhandarya from neighbouring Tajikistan. The government declared the area a closed military zone. Human rights groups noted that the villagers, who are minority ethnic Tajiks, were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes, transported by military helicopter to resettlement camps, and subsequently refused permission to return home, despite early promises that their relocation was temporary. They had been accused of selling food to visiting Islamic fighters, a very serious crime in Uzbekistan. While some local people condemn the villagers for having dealings with the Islamic insurgents without notifying the authorities, others suggest that they were so isolated that they had no idea they were doing anything wrong. "We led happy, contented lives, self-sufficient with crops and livestock, in the mountain village of Kishtut, 200 km away from here. We lost everything overnight, our houses were burnt, livestock killed and horses taken away," Muhitdinov said. Now the house he and his family inhabit is empty except for one tattered carpet. The cold, damp mud floor serves as a bed for the family, blankets and heaters are in short supply. "What keeps me alive here is a hope to reach my homeland one day and die there," Muhitdinov told IRIN with tears in his eyes. Observers doubt that the families will ever be allowed to return to their home area. The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) had been carrying out assistance operations, mainly targeting the IDPs now subsisting at Istiklol and Tamshush villages in the Saryasiya District between February 2001 and March this year. They were provided with plastic jerry cans, food parcels, wheat flour, mattresses, blankets, kitchen sets, second-hand clothes and shoes. Apparently many families are being forced to sell what they received in order to buy food as no household articles can be seen in most houses. "For ICRC, the emergency phase is over, and we are not planning any relief operation. But we think there is enough space for developmental organisations in the village," Pascal Hundt, the ICRC Deputy Head of Regional Delegation for Central Asia, said in the capital, Tashkent. Istiklol village, which houses 1,800 extremely impoverished IDPs from nine mountain villages, at first glance looks well laid out, with dozens of white painted houses, gas and water pipelines. But a closer look reveals a different picture. Houses, hastily built of mud bricks, are starting to fall down - rooms are collapsing and walls cracking. "The houses that the government has provided us with are death traps, they may collapse at any time. We are afraid of living here. But the police threaten us with criminal cases if we start to complain," one elderly IDP, Abdurahmon Eshonkulov, 68, said. A local builder said the hastily constructed dwellings had been put up by nonprofessional builders, with the brickwork unprotected from damp rising from inadequate foundations. "It is obvious that they could not survive any earthquake," he said. International humanitarian organisations have said that the IDPs in Istiklol are most vulnerable, because the land they have been allocated is uncultivable, health-service provision is well below standard, and access to clean water limited. "We cannot grow crops in this salty land. For the past three years I have tried to grow all kinds of plants and trees available here, without any result. Then I bought 16 hens; in 10 days all of them died because the land is highly contaminated," Rahim Avazov, 53, a father of six, said. The international NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) carried out an emergency nutritional intervention to provide targeted food distribution to vulnerable families to supplement their existing food supplies in November 2002. However, villagers asserted that no one seemed to care about them this winter. "Our children are barefoot and have a few dirty clothes. Some are not in school. Sometimes we are forced to beg for bread. Even animals should not made to live like this," Turdi Imomov, a teacher, said. He believed that there were many illnesses caused by the poor quality of the water, and that there was no sign that the current situation might improve in the near future. MSF's last mission to Istiklol - prompted by reports that a number of deaths had occurred in the area over the summer - was carried out in September this year. "The results of health assessment showed that no deaths occurred for the past two or three months, but 12 to 16 people from Istiklol were hospitalised," Micky van Gerven, the MSF Head of Mission in Tashkent, said. According to MSF, the local authorities are trying their best to alleviate the situation in this resettlement area, and have sent a team of doctors to conduct medical checkups. "These people are uncertain about their future life here. It is very difficult for them to get used to living in this desert-like area," Muhitdinov said. "The local authorities installed a water pipe to the village from the artesian well, but the water pump is broken. The villagers have no money to replace the pump," he added. CHF International is planning to launch an electric power supply project under which the villagers would be entitled to pay only 5 percent of cost of their consumption. However, the villagers doubt that they would be able to pay even such a small amount unless the economy of Istiklol is boosted to enable some sustainable development.