At an artificial limbs centre in Kabul. Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid/IPS.

By Esmatullah Mayar
KABUL, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

Efforts to clear Afghanistan of landmines have been painfully slow. At least 45 people on average lose their limbs every month to deadly anti-personnel mines, according to the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan, formerly a project of the UN Mine Action Service, and now a national entity.

Under the UN’s mine ban treaty, Afghanistan should have been free of landmines by the end of 2013. The country was granted until 2023 to clear all mined areas in Geneva in December last year.

Since 1997, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global network of non-governmental organisations, has been campaigning to make the world free of landmines and cluster ammunition. It has a presence in 90 countries including Afghanistan.

A signatory to the UN Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, or the Ottawa Convention as it is called, Afghanistan is littered with anti-personnel mines that are built to maim.

Demining activities were started in 1979. The work, which is extremely time-consuming, has meant that a million Afghans in an estimated population of 30 million still live in areas with unexploded ordinances.

At the prosthetic centre of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kabul, 36-year-old Ghulam Siddiq of Khogiani district in Nangarhar province 200 km east of Kabul has come for an artificial leg. “I was cutting some grass in the mountain in the early evening when suddenly an explosion occurred,” he told Killid/IPS.

He said he could not believe he had lost a leg. “When I recovered consciousness I found myself in the hospital. My leg was cut below my knee. It was painful for me. I began to remonstrate with God: one side is poverty and the other side I have trouble with my leg. Then I kept my patience. This might be the will of God.”

Baz Mohammad is a 40-year-old resident of Shakardara district of Kabul who has also come to the ICRC centre to get artificial limbs. The ICRC has limb-fitting centres in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Gulbahar, Faizabad and Jalalabad.

He said he lost both legs in a landmine accident. “When I was loading wheat I stepped on a mine. I did not know what happened.”

There appears to be a lack of understanding among people about the slow pace of mine clearing work. There are also complaints that mine clearance is being undertaken in areas where mines do not exist. The areas that are being surveyed for mines are free of mines, some people say.

Dr Mohammad Dayem Kakar, head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), addressed a meeting in Herat in December, before the start of demining operations in parts of Herat’s Karokh, Obi and Chesht Sahrif districts. He said mines were spread over 599 sq km.

“An estimated 3,000 people were killed or injured by mines and unexploded materials each month three years back,” he said. “But now the figure has decreased to 45 people each month.”

Kakar hoped that the contaminated areas in Herat would be cleared by 2018 and the whole country demined by 2023. Kakar praised the perilous work undertaken by demining organisations. “The mine is a danger for human beings, and our duty is to identify the areas and clear it.”

Mines were laid by the communist regime of Dr Najibullah, during the fighting with U.S.-supported mujahideen groups. Further mine-laying took place between 1996 and 2001 during the conflict between the Taliban government and the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. Landmines were planted also in residential areas and agricultural land, making Afghanistan one of the most mined countries in the world.

Farid Humayun, head of The HALO Trust, said 54 sq km were cleared over five years in three districts in Herat where the demining charity works. Another 12 districts, including the border districts of Ghorian, Kuhsan, Shindand and Adraskan in Herat will also be cleared, according to the plan. Halo is a demining charity based in Britain, and is the oldest and largest group engaged in demining work.

The HALO Trust, according to its website, has 200 mine clearance teams working in Herat and nine provinces of the northern and central regions. Between 1988 and May 2010, HALO destroyed more than 736,000 mines (195,000 emplaced mines and 541,000 stockpiled mines), 10 million items of large calibre ammunition and 45.6 million bullets.

At the Herat meeting in December, HALO’s director Humayun said their teams do not touch the new roadside bombs, the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), placed by armed opponents of the Hamid Karzai government. These were the cause of 30 percent of civilian fatalities in the second half of 2012, according to the UN. A reported 967 people were killed and 1,590 injured.

Shahab Hakimi, head of the Mine Detection and Dog Centre (MDC), which trains dogs to do the dangerous work, urged donors to continue funding for the humanitarian mine-clearance efforts. He was hopeful the landmines littering the country could be cleared with continued funding and the efforts of non-governmental demining organisations.

Afghanistan will be able to meet its 2023 deadline, said Abigail Hartley, programme manager of the UN Mine Action Services.

*Esmatullah Mayar writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.

Palestinian women want to turn their backs on laws that deny them justice. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Jan 22 2013 (IPS)

“Before she was murdered, she wasn’t alive. We’ll tell her story backwards from her murder to her birth”…so begins a powerful new song by critically acclaimed Palestinian hip-hop band DAM to draw attention to the continuing murder of Palestinian women by male relatives declaring that “family honour” has been damaged by alleged sexual indiscretions.

The accompanying video to the song shows a young woman’s expressionless face on a bed; her body floats back to standing position, a bullet enters her forehead. Her brother has pulled the trigger.

Across the world, the United Nations estimates that 5,000 women and girls are murdered and abused every year by male relatives as punishment for behaviour judged to have damaged family reputation.

Between 2007 and 2010, 29 women in the West Bank were officially reported murdered in the name of honour. A relatively small number, but one that is cause for concern because the actual number is believed to be far higher. The Palestinian Interior Ministry refuses to divulge exact statistics on honour killings.

The West Bank has a population of about 4 million, and Gaza about 1.5 million.

“Thirteen Palestinian women were (known) murdered in the Palestinian Territories in 2012 in so-called ‘honour killings’,” says Soraida Hussein from the Palestinian Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC), an advisory group to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) formed shortly before the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.

“The majority of these murders had nothing to do with protecting the honour of families. They were carried out for various criminal reasons. Often women are killed during family or financial disputes, and then the men claim the honour killing defence to get reduced sentences,” Hussein told IPS.

Palestinian law in the West Bank is based on Articles 97 to 100 of the Jordanian Penal Code, which reduces sentences for any act of battery or murder committed in a “state of rage”.
The law in Gaza is based on the Egyptian Penal Code, which also reduces sentences for men found guilty of killing female relatives in crimes of passion, particularly relating to declared sexual indiscretion and family honour.

According to the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) in Ramallah, only a minority of men who carry out these murders are ever convicted, and when they are the sentences are generally a few months.

In 2006 the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls the West Bank, became a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Hassan al-Ouri, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently stated that the PA supported the ending of discrimination against women so long as this didn’t clash with Sharia law.

Hussein says this is nonsense. “Nowhere in the Quran is the murder of anybody justified on the basis of sexual indiscretion or rage. Our organisation is supported by religious leaders from various backgrounds who condemn these murders and in fact call for stronger penalties against the perpetrators.”

Contrary to popular belief the crimes of passion laws were in fact inherited from the region’s colonial occupiers including the Turks, the French and the British, said Hussein.

PA spokesman Hassan’s comments followed his confirmation earlier that the PA had no intention of outlawing honour killings despite pledges from Abbas last year that he would change the laws. Abbas had promised to suspend Law 340 which offers pardon for murder if the perpetrator committed the crime on finding his wife in bed with another man.

His comments were broadcast on television via video link following public outcry over the brutal murder of a young woman in the southern West Bank. In May 2011 Aya Baradiya from Hebron was strangled and beaten by family members who falsely believed she’d been socialising with men. Her body was found dumped in a well.

The PA President’s promises were seen by many as a politically expedient to whitewash the issue. Article 340 has never been used in Palestinian courts since it was legislated in 1960. The Jordanian and Egyptian Penal Codes which permit reduced sentences for crimes of passion committed by men remain intact.

“The issue of women’s rights is used as a political football. Promises for change are made when those in power seek political points as a result of public pressure, but the issue is ignored when conservative forces raise their heads. Furthermore, the PA only signed CEDAW because it carried no legal weight at the time as Palestine was not officially a state,” Hussein told IPS.

“Our leadership is out of touch with the majority of Palestinians who are against these murders.”

Hussein believes that Israel’s occupation has further damaged the fabric of Palestinian society.

“People are struggling to feed their families in a crippled economy. Palestinians are being indiscriminately killed by Israel on an almost daily basis. Sometimes women’s rights become secondary in people’s minds. Despite this there is no excuse for not at the very least introducing new legislation.

“The laws need to be changed as do the school curriculums and the attitude of the media which all reinforce the idea that women are inferior to men. I don’t see that happening under the current leadership especially as Fatah (the ruling party in the West Bank) and the even more conservative Hamas (in Gaza) are in the process of uniting,” said Hussein.

“But the younger generation will eventually take over and they are far more progressive and that is when change will eventually come.” (END)