Afghanistan's "Devil's Garden" Blooms Again
30 August 2006
Unexploded land mines, munitions cleared from former battlefield
Washington – It was called “The Devil’s Garden.” Planted with land mines, booby traps and unexploded ordnance, leftovers from fierce battles that raged there for more than two decades, the fertile lands around Bagram, Afghanistan, were considered the most dangerous minefields in the world. A walk through it could cost a life or limb.
Now, after five years of painstaking work by HALO Trust, thousands of the deadly weapons have been cleared from a significant stretch of land, once a section of the front line between Northern Alliance and Taliban forces.
According to Cameron Inber, Central Asia desk officer for HALO Trust, 4.9 million square meters of Bagram Junction have been made safe. He told the Washington File that 9,140 mines and 12,180 pieces of unexploded ordnance and other explosive remnants of war have been removed from the land.
That makes at least part of the Shomali Valley, famous for its vineyards, safe to farm. But there is more work to do. While the Bagram clearance is an important success, “This isn’t the end of mine clearances,” Inber said. “We are still talking about another decade at current levels of funding.”
Although land mine removal and awareness programs have reduced the casualty figures in recent years, according to the 2005 Landmine Monitor Report, there were nearly 900 land mine and unexploded munitions-related casualties in Afghanistan in 2004. “Afghanistan is definitely the most mine-afflicted country in the world,” HALO Trust U.S. program officer Kurt Chesko told the Washington File. Mine clearance operations remain critical for life to return to normal.
The U.S. State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement gave about $5 million to support the Bagram effort, which has allowed more than 72,000 Afghan refugees and thousands of internally displaced citizens to go back to their land. Other donors are Roots of Peace, a California-based nongovernmental organization dedicated to restoring farmland in areas of conflict through its “mines into vines” program, and American philanthropists Tracey and George Begley, in public-private partnerships with the State Department. The United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway also contributed funds.
Mines were introduced into Afghanistan by Soviet forces, which mined it heavily during their occupation between 1979-1989. More land mines were laid during the civil war in the early 1990s, and the subsequent fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance between 1996-2001.
HALO Trust, an independent organization established in 1988 is active in 10 countries and fields 7,000 mine clearance workers. The organization reports that as of the beginning of 2006, it cleared more than 5 million land mines and other unexploded munitions.
New technology promises to speed up the process of land mine detection. After development and rigorous testing in the United States and in minefields, the U.S. Department of Defense has a new tool, the Handheld Standoff Mine Detection System (HSTAMIDS), which allows those removing land mines to distinguish mines from metal debris. According to a U.S. State Department spokesman, the device “promises to revolutionize mine clearance.” (See related article.)
HALO Trust Director Guy Willoughby called HSTAMIDS “the main breakthrough in mine clearance since 1940.” It is the first operational dual sensor mine detector, it is lightweight, durable and facilitates significantly faster mine clearance. HALO is currently testing it. “Everyone is optimistic about it,” Chesko said.
The detection system, now in use in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Thailand, integrates an electromagnetic induction metal detector and a wideband ground-penetrating radar unit. Its sensors and software can tell land mines from metal clutter. Previous detection tools wasted many hours with false alarms caused by harmless metal bits in the soil.
The U.S. military began using HSTAMIDS for humanitarian land mine removal operations in spring 2006. Currently, 2,000 systems are in the field, with an additional 1,100 expected to be delivered by the end of the year.
Partners from the International Test and Evaluation Program for Humanitarian Demining, including Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom assisted in field tests of the system. HSTAMIDS was created by L-3 CyTerra, a U.S.-based company that develops trace explosive detection technologies, land mine detectors, and counterterrorism products.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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