Twenty percent of Afghanistan is still covered by landmines.
April 4 is observed worldwide as International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.
Shahab Hakimi, head of MDC (Mine Dog Clearance), says 80 percent of the country has been cleared of unexplored ordnance. Some 1,200 million USD has been spent over the years, he calculates.
“We will clean up the rest of the land polluted by mines in the next five years,” he promises.
Mines have been planted in the successive rounds of conflict since the time of the Soviet invasion in 1979. While those were cleared, now civilians are likely to be seriously injured by mines laid on the side of the road in recent years.
Hakimi says these have been planted by either armed opponents of the Afghan government or US troops. Under the Ottawa Agreement signatories – Afghanistan is a signatory – have sworn not to use mines. But the US is not a signatory, and uses mines in Afghanistan. But Washington insists its forces remove the mines when they exit an area.
Under the Taleban regime, mines were outlawed, and considered a crime while deminers were feted, also by Mullah Omar, as “mujahedin” and called “brave and pious”. But unfortunately now most of the mines are being planted by groups of Taleban, says Hakimi. “Aid for demining is shrinking. We had 70 million USD last year and for mine clearing this year we have 35 million USD,” he adds.
Shah Wali Ayubi, operational head of MDC, pleads for 250 million USD to clear the remaining 20 percent of mines that are covering “557 sq kms of land”. Mines would be cleared by us “systematically”, he says.
There are four Afghan and two international demining organisations with more than 14,000 people working on mine clearance in Afghanistan. Some 200 deminers have been killed, and three times that number injured since 1989 when demining operations started.
Terrible toll
Landmines have maimed and killed countless women, children and men. Ataullah Noori, 35, a resident of Maidan Wardak province, says his father stepped on a Russian mine and died. “I do not remember his death but God knows how much I have suffered,” he told Killid.
Hekmatullah Ahmadzai of Ahmadzai village in Qarabagh district, Kabul, says two of his brothers were killed by mines two years ago in Kunduz where they were working. “One of them left three fatherless children and other also five. I have had to feed all of them,” he says.
Demining is hard work. Taj Mohammad who is with MDC considers the job “sacred and holy” because each time he defuses a mine he believes he has saved a life. “We save people’s lives; our duty is sacred like jihad,” he says.
Mohammad Nabi is also with MDC. Crippled by a landmine, he says “all deminers” are “trying that no mine should remain in the ground and no Afghan should become a victim of a mine.”
Chief Executive Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has told the media that demining was one of the national unity government’s priorities.
The Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoI) considers mines a “big problem”. According to spokesperson, Sidiq Sidiqi, armed Taleban have been planting mines. While there have been many casualties among security forces, civilian deaths have run into tens of thousands.
There are conventions on the prohibition of use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and on their destruction. There are protocols that bind signatories to stop even the use of certain conventional weapons which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects.
