Hidden enemy of people

Mines and unexploded devices in Afghanistan have killed and maimed countless civilians.

A new UN report shows that most civilian deaths are due to anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordnance.

Mines and unexploded devices in Afghanistan have killed and maimed countless civilians.

A new UN report shows that most civilian deaths are due to anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordnance. Despite the demining over the last decade, the UN says there are still 4,000 areas where the risk of mines exists. Some of the affected provinces are Parwan, Khost, Lugar, Nangarhar, Herat, Jowzjan and Faryab.

UNMAC-Afghanistan (United Nation Mine Action Centre) says combatants from all sides are still planting mines on roadsides. Unfortunately the casualties have been mainly civilians.

According to the latest information of UNMAC, on the average one hundred civilians are killed every month by IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device). Sidiq Rashed, head of UNMAC, said children were among the victims. “Unfortunately a 100 civilians mostly children are either being killed or wounded,” he told a press conference. At least one or two civilians die daily in roadside attacks, he adds.

UNMAC says 80 percent of the country was cleared of mines. Afghanistan was heavily mined during the occupation of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The Soviet army had moved into the country in late December 1979, sparking a proxy war with the US. The US through the Pakistan government flooded the country with ordnance to mujahedin groups fighting the Soviets. Even after the latter’s withdrawal in February 1989 the country was awash with weapons that the mujahedin turned on one another – a war that was to drag on through the years of the Taleban, until the US invasion in end 2001.

Earlier, the UNMAC had said that landmines have maimed and killed some 21,450 people between 1979 and 2012. However, figures from the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Martyrs & Disabled puts the country’s disabled population at 100,000. Eighty percent were disabled by war. This is 2.2 percent of the population or one in five families. Forty one percent of the disabled are women. Nearly 4 percent of Kabul’s population is disabled.

Abdul who lives in Kabul lost a limb to a landmine in the Murad Beg area in the early 1990s. “It was when Sebghatullah Mujadedi was president. The mujahedin were fighting each other,” he says.

Abdul Wakil, a landmine victim, is not the only one in his family. “After I lost my leg, my paternal aunt’s son who lived in Guzar Gah, in the 3rd District of Kabul, was killed by a mine blast. We were still mourning him when my maternal uncle’s son was critically wounded in Koh Safi.”

Budget constraints

Afghanistan should have been free of landmines by the end of 2013. But in December 2012 it was among four countries that requested extensions on their mine clearance deadlines. The country has been granted until 2023 to clear all mined areas. It is a signatory of the UN Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention or Ottawa Convention as it is called.

A global network of non-governmental organisations, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has been campaigning since 1997 to make the world free of landmines and cluster ammunition. The UN has declared April 4 the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. It has called for help to establish and develop national mine-action capacities in countries where mines and explosive war remnants constitute a serious threat to the safety, health and lives of people, or hinders social and economic development at the national and local levels.

The Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) works jointly with the UN coordination body, UNMAC for Afghanistan. The head, Dr Mohammad Dayem Kakar, believes the national demining programme would need 450 million USD to clear 556 sq kms of minefields.

UNMAC has told ISAF to clean up areas they have mined before they leave the country at the end of the year. ISAF forces have polluted many thousand square kilometres with deadly anti-personnel mines and other ordnances.

Rashed, the head of UNMAC in Afghanistan, says 53 civilians, mostly children, have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance around evacuated ISAF bases and firing ranges this year. In 2010 and 2011, before the start of the pullout, only four incidents were reported. But the accidents involving civilians spiralled as the staggered withdrawal began. There were 29 incidents in 2012, and 38 in 2013.

“Civilians go to collect fragments of iron from ordnance, and are injured by unexploded ammunition,” he says.

ISAF insists safety of civilians is a paramount concern. “We have standard rules for clearing the unexploded ammunitions from our bases throughout Afghanistan. The methods include the cleaning of areas that would not be used anymore,” an ISAF spokesman told the French news agency AFP.

Demining officials consider the action taken by ISAF is not enough. A lot of money is being spent but little has been done, they feel.

There are 53 demining organisations working in Afghanistan. The Halo Trust, according to its website, has 3,000 Afghans in mine clearance working in Herat and nine provinces of the northern and central regions. Between 1988 and 2013, HALO had destroyed over 766,908 mines (2255,908 emplaced mines and 541,000 stockpiled mines), 10 million items of large calibre ammunition and 45.6 million bullets.