Kabul Zoo gets lion's share of help

14 Jan, 2002 10:14 AM3 mins to read

By KIM SENGUPTA AND AGENCIES

KABUL - The new Government is paralysed because it has no money, the starving people in the drought-stricken northeast are reduced to eating grass, but for one resident of Afghanistan there is no lack of international funding.

Marjan, the one-eyed lion of Kabul Zoo, has $US400,000 ($948,541) coming in to make his and other zoo animals' lives better.

A large part of the cash was raised in Britain after Marjan's story and photographs appeared in the tabloids with more biographical detail than any human Afghan inhabitant has commanded.

John Walsh of the World Society for the Protection of Animals says two flights of food and veterinary supplies are expected this week.

The 37-year-old lion will now have heating and lighting in his cage, a ramp to help his arthritic limbs, and a scratchproof mattress.

"That's just the start," said Walsh at the zoo yesterday. "With the kind of money coming, he will want for nothing."

The interim Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, can only dream of such largess.

Civil servants have not been paid for the last seven months and cabinet meetings are said to have an increasingly surreal quality, with grandiose plans being discussed without any means to carry them out. United Nations emergency funds meant to be a stopgap simply have not materialised.

The Afghan Government has declared it will ask for $US45 billion over 10 years at the Tokyo summit of donor nations this month.

The planning minister, Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq, said yesterday: "We have a zero budget ... We're going to Tokyo with empty pockets".

But the figure is at least triple what had been previously discussed by international donors and few believe it will be forthcoming.

"We need to see the basis for these figures," European Union spokesman Gunnar Wiegand said yesterday in Brussels. The EU has aimed to raise $US9 billion for the next five years.

Meanwhile, schools cannot reopen in adequate numbers to attempt to rectify the damage to education from the years of Taleban rule, hospitals have not got essential equipment and medicine, and the infrastructure remains shattered.

But $US100 million in Afghan assets remain frozen by Western nations as part of sanctions against Mullah Mohammad Omar's regime.

* The United States military shipped 30 more Taleban and al Qaeda detainees to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yesterday, bringing to 50 the number sent there so far for interrogation before possible military tribunals on terrorism charges.

- AGENCIES

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