For many Afghan farmers, poppies remain the most profitable crop to grow. "It is a compulsion for us to grow poppy," says Noor Pacha. Such views are indicative of a serious threat to Afghan reconstruction.
"This project is not effective yet, because it still needs to be ratified by the other chamber of parliament," the head of the World Bank office in Kazakhstan, Elena Karaban, told IRIN on Wednesday from Almaty. Ratified by the Majlis (lower house of parliament) on 13 February, it now has to be sent to the Senate.
The anthrax attacks in the United States during the fall of 2001 prompted the American initiative on former Soviet bio-weapons facilities. US specialists arrived on Vozrozhdenie Island under an agreement signed October 22 between the Bush Administration and Uzbek President Islam Karimov's government.
The Kyrgyz parliament touched off a fresh controversy in June with the adoption of a law that classified water as a commodity. In August, the Kyrgyz government followed up by announcing that it was preparing regulations to charge neighboring states, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, for the water they use.
The importance of the reservoir is clear. The waters contained in its basin nourish agriculture in the Ferghana Valley, Central Asia's breadbasket. Given its economic importance, the reservoir can be considered a potential target of a terrorist raid.
Tajikistan is a signatory of several international treaties on environmental issues, including the 1985 Vienna Convention and the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. The Montreal pact called for the elimination of most sources of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 2000.
On July 2, municipal authorities in Dushanbe -- which has a population approaching 1 million, according to some estimates -- announced pumping equipment would be turned off for up to five days in order to carry out repairs.
Urgench, the capital city of Khorezm oblast, had normal weather once. It snowed in the winter and rained in the spring; the temperature changed with the seasons. Now Urgench is warm and dry all year round. The winter is colder than the summer, but the climate can no longer be called temperate. In the absence of rain, rivers and canals are drying up.
Weather specialists are forecasting a hot and dry summer this year in Central Asia, posing a threat to Uzbekistan's cotton crop and Kazakhstan's rice crop. Having suffered severely during the winter because of Tashkent's gas cutoff, Kyrgyzstan now appears less inclined to honor its irrigation commitments with Uzbekistan.
