PAKISTAN: The Maiming by Landmines Continues

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen T. Ebrahim*

BAJAUR AGENCY, Pakistan, Mar 29 2005 (IPS) - When Abdul Malik’s best friend Salahuddin stepped on a landmine in a village schoolyard six years ago and lost one of his legs, little did he realise that later in 2002 the next victim would be him.

Malik’s face still bears the crisscross marks caused by shrapnel when the landmine he thought was a ”shiny shoe polish box” exploded in his arms, blowing them away.

One can’t help but marvel at the way Malik deftly picks up the spoon filled with rice with his forearms, and without dropping anything, puts it in his mouth.

But rice is not an everyday fare is his household. He usually has someone to break the chapatti (bread made of wheat flour) dip it in curry and feed him. Then someone has to help him with his daily routine of washing up, changing clothes and combing his hair. But he says at home there is plenty of help with four older sisters and three brothers who are younger than him. He probably does not realise that his disability is life-long and he will be dependent on someone for the rest of his life.

He missed a year of school as he was unable to write. But when he shows you his handiwork – holding a pen with both stumps of what were once his hands – you know he will accomplish his dream of becoming an engineer and ”build roads”.

In the meantime, Salahuddin cannot recall much of what happened to him that fateful day as ”I woke up and found myself in the hospital with one leg broken and the other one missing.”

For forty days, seven-year-old Salahuddin remained in the Tehsil Headquarter Hospital in Bajaur Agency, in a lot of pain and pining for his mother who could not be with him.

After Salahuddin’s accident, his father Mohammad Nazir, a high school teacher in the village took it upon himself to wage a war against landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs).

”I monitor all landmine accidents taking place in my tehsil (sub-district). I visit all the victims personally, report the accidents to the organisations working for landmine victims, mobilise the communities, if possible get media attention towards the issue,” Nazir tells IPS. ”I do all this voluntarily, for I don’t want other parents to go through what I go through every day when I look at Salahuddin.”

After six years of waiting, the Sustainable Peace and Development Organization (SPADO), an organisation working actively on mine awareness action and a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) was able to arrange funds for a prosthetic limb for Salahuddin late last year.

Ironically, the picturesque Bajaur Agency – a valley surrounded by the towering snow-capped Himalayas in the North-West Frontier – belies the reality in the area.

Beautiful Bajaur, one of the seven principalities in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in Pakistan’s north-west, is marred by images of men, women and children with missing limbs and scarred faces. And they are all landmine victims.

The Pakistani military has used landmines in wars with India in 1947, 1965, and 1971. In addition Pakistan used landmines in its 1979 conflict with the Soviet Union over Afghanistan. Pakistan continues a policy of using landmines as a way to defend its borders.

In 2003, there were at least 138 new landmine/UXO casualties of which there were 48 deaths and 90 serious injuries. From 2000 to 2003, ICBL’s Landmine Monitor reported 428 new landmine/UXO casualties in the border areas with India and Afghanistan. Between January to June 2004, 32 new landmine casualties were reported by the Landmine Monitor.

While the Landmine Monitor Report of 2004 states: ”Pakistan reported in November 2003 that it had cleared about 99 percent of the mines laid in December 2001 and early 2002 on its border with India”, it fails to mention whether these mines were cleared from FATA.

SPADO director Raza Shah Khan, who has done recent research on small arms in FATA says: ”You can buy a landmine for a mere 200 rupees (3.40 U.S. dollars). It’s that cheap and getting it across the border is not a problem.”

”You can put it anywhere. It remains dormant till someone steps on it and then it can kill or injure a civilian, a friend or a foe, a soldier or peacekeeper, even animals,” adds Khan.

According to ICBL, in the past Pakistan was a major exporter of antipersonnel mines. Pakistani mines are found in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and other locations.

Pakistan has a state-owned Pakistan Ordnance Factories that produces six types of antipersonnel landmines. As of Jan. 1, 1997 only detectable mines were being produced. The production of what is known as a ”fragmentation mine” was abandoned. On December 1999 all detectable hand-emplaced remotely delivered mines were replaced with self-destruct and self- deactivating mechanisms.

It is said that as of 1991, Pakistan has not exported landmines. In 1997, there was a unilateral moratorium on exports and finally on February 1999 there was a total ban on the export of antipersonnel landmines. However, antipersonnel and antitank mines with the Pakistan Ordnance Factories seal were spotted and photographed by a South Asian researcher during an interview with Indian border security force officials and Indian army officials.

Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines, which has been ratified by 124 countries and signed by nearly 150 nations.

SPADO has started mine awareness and risk avoidance education using the popular game of soccer to reach out to the young. Trainers visit schools, mosques and public places in villages to disseminate the message, particularly in vulnerable communities.

But one important group is women, whom trainers often cannot access directly due to their seclusion on account of local traditions – something not lost upon Dr. Qibla Ayaz, a prominent scholar and dean of faculty of Islamic and Oriental Studies, University of Peshawar.

”Educate the masses, specially women and the girl-children of rural areas and you will have a changed country. I think the time is ripe and people have realised the importance of education,” he said. ”And with education will come a positive behavioural change.”

(*Zofeen T. Ebrahim wrote this story under a media programme on reporting on conflict, with IPS Asia-Pacific and the Japan Foundation.)