/REPEAT/POLITICS: Afghan Anti-Mine Efforts in Peril

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2001 (IPS) - Efforts to rid Afghanistan of millions of landmines are being disrupted and risk being reversed as the country girds for U.S. military attacks.

Many of the anti-personnel explosive devices date back more than 20 years and are scattered about the harsh terrain in such numbers that Afghanistan is believed to be the most heavily mined country on earth.

Several international groups and countless Afghans have been striving since 1989 under U.N. auspices to find and remove the landmines. The organisations include the Danish Demining Group, Mine Detection Dog Centre, and HALO Trust.

Working as part of the U.N. Mine Action Programme in Afghanistan, the world’s oldest and largest undertaking of this kind, they have cleared more than 1.6 million explosives from former battlefields, agricultural lands, roads and residential areas.

Mark Hiznay of Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Afghan nationals did most of the actual clearance under the supervision of international advisers. These are now being withdrawn from the country, along with U.N. personnel and most other international aid workers.

Some 10 million mines were sown during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s alone. In recent years, the Taliban and its main rival, the Northern Alliance, have accused each other of laying new landmines.

Washington has threatened to launch military attacks against the Taliban for its refusal to hand over exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of masterminding the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. More than 6,000 people remain missing, presumed dead in the rubble of the World Trade Centre.

If U.S. ground forces are sent into Afghanistan, the landmines will be among the biggest hazards they face.

Martin Barber, head of the U.N. Mine Action Service, says more than 3,000 Afghan nationals were involved in the daunting task of clearing landmines. They were capable of continuing with their work, he said, despite the absence of international staff. Whether they would be permitted to is another matter.

According to U.N. officials, landmines and unexploded ordnance cover about 724 million square metres of land in Afghanistan. Some 344 million square metres are classified as high priority land for clearance.

The latest annual ‘Landmine Monitor Report 2001’, published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, says that mined areas are still being discovered at the rate of 12 to 14 million square metres per year.

If current funding levels and clearance rates are sustained, it will take seven to 10 years to clear the 344 million square metres of high-priority land, according to a June 2001 socio-economic survey of Afghanistan sponsored by the World Bank and the U.N. Development Programme.

The U.N. mine programme received about 173 million dollars for its work between 1991 and 2000. Washington has contributed about 25 million dollars since 1993.

In addition, the non-governmental U.N. Association of USA has raised some 620,000 dollars for its Adopt-a-Minefield Campaign, which covers 22 sites in Afghanistan. Since 1999, the association says, its programme has funded 3.5 million dollars worth of mine clearing work in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Croatia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, and Mozambique.

In 1993, an estimated 600 Afghans were killed or injured by landmines every month. By last year, the rate had fallen to between 150 and 300 per month. Nearly half of the victims died before reaching a medical facility, according to the monitor report.

The office of the U.N. Coordinator for Afghanistan says landmines also have been a major obstacle to the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes. It estimates that the devices have blocked access to about 87,500 houses.