The painstaking process of demining has been hit by money constraints.
Mohammad Wakil, the assistant director for Mine Action Coordination Committee of Afghanistan (MACCA), told a symposium, “Unfortunately aid from the international community has decreased.
The painstaking process of demining has been hit by money constraints.
Mohammad Wakil, the assistant director for Mine Action Coordination Committee of Afghanistan (MACCA), told a symposium, “Unfortunately aid from the international community has decreased. We needed 70 million USD for the current year but we have got only 56 million.” The government was to blame, he added.
“The reason that the international community has decreased its fund for demining is that the Afghan government has not considered the demining programme as its priority,” he said.
Efforts to clear Afghanistan of landmines have been painfully slow. At least 32 people lose their limbs or are killed every month by deadly anti-personnel mines, which have been banned by 161 countries.
Afghanistan should have been free of landmines by the end of 2013. 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.
A signatory of the UN Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention or Ottawa Convention as it is called, Afghanistan is littered with anti-personnel mines that are built to maim.
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.
Terrible consequences
Demining activities were started in 1979 in Afghanistan. The work, which is extremely time-consuming, has meant that over 670,000 Afghans live within 500 metres of areas with mines and other explosive remnants of war.
Wakil said there was a risk of mines and unexploded ordnance in 4,400 places that include 1,600 villages over 500 square kms.
Dr Mohammad Dayem Kakar, head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), said 1,861 sq kms have been cleared in 123 districts. A Department of Mine Clearance, which is under ANDMA, works jointly with the UN coordination body, Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan.
Kakar believes the national demining programme would need 450 million USD to clear 556 sq kms of minefields.
Tens of thousands of Afghans have lost limbs to landmines. Figures submitted by the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs & Disabled, puts the country’s disabled population at 100,000. Eighty percent are disabled by war. This is 2.2 percent of the population or one person in five families. Forty one percent of the disabled are women. Nearly 4 percent of Kabul’s population is disabled.
The ICRC has limb-fitting centres in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Gulbahar, Faizabad and Jalalabad.
Mines were laid by the communist regime of Dr Najibullah, during the fighting with US-supported mujahedin groups. Further mine laying was done during the conflict between the Taleban government and the Northern Alliance. Landmines were planted in residential areas and agricultural land to make Afghanistan one of the most mined countries in the world. Civilians live and work among landmines with terrible consequences.
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.
