400 Experts Try to Harvest Afghanistan's Field of Mines
" So far the United States has not provided a list of areas where it dropped
cluster bombs, although on Sunday an officer at the coalition command post
in Mazar-i-Sharif told Mr. McMullen that he would request one from his
supervisors. "
The New York Times
December 18, 2001
By C. J. CHIVERS
AZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan,
Dec. 17 - Operations to clear
hidden explosives from the soil and roads of
northern Afghanistan, one of the world's
most heavily mined areas, are scheduled to
resume on Wednesday with the arrival of
more than 400 demolition specialists in
several provinces.
The specialists, Afghan staff members of a
British nonprofit organization, will move
north from Kabul, the capital, where they
have been working since the city was taken
from Taliban control. Their work in the
region has been largely idled since the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks in America, and they
return to a dangerous and complicated task.
Long before the American-led war against
the Taliban, northern Afghanistan was
cluttered with the hidden remnants of 22
years of war. Now the demolition teams
must also find and disable ammunition
discarded by fleeing soldiers or blasted from
bunkers during two months of aerial
bombardment, as well as unexploded
bombs from American planes, many of
which burrowed deep into the ground.
"This is quite a massive job," said Thomas P.
McMullen, a coordinator for the Halo Trust,
the British organization that has been
destroying mines and ammunition in
Afghanistan since 1988. "No matter how you do it, it's going to take years."
Relief and medical officials said time was pressing. When battle lines shifted
and cities fell from Taliban hands this fall, many families began returning after
long absences to villages to clean up war damage and reclaim farmland. As
more people arrive in areas once abandoned, hospitals have been reporting
an influx of wounded.
"We are getting several new mine victims every week," said Dr. Abdulhadi
Jawid, a physician at the Spinzer Hospital in Kunduz, where on a single day
last week five patients - two children, two teenagers and a farmer - were
being treated for wounds caused by mines or loose ammunition. Two of the
victims lost limbs that had to be amputated.
No one is certain how many mines are hidden in Afghanistan. Estimates
range from the Halo Trust's 640,000 to as high as 20 million. Similarly, no
one knows how many tons of American munitions lie unexploded on or
under the ground. Whatever the number, it is evident that along former front
lines and many strategic roads, mines and unstable ammunition are all
around.
Halo Trust officials said the mines had been particularly concentrated around
Kabul and cities near the border with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where
Soviet troops in the 1980's laid dense fields to protect important
infrastructure, like airports, and where the Taliban and Northern Alliance
buried mines and booby traps along battle fronts.
The problem was also in evidence in the south on Sunday, when an
American marine stepped on a mine at the Kandahar airport. The blast
severed one of his legs below the knee and wounded two of his peers.
The renewed removal effort - which will include work in Takhar, Kunduz,
Baghlan, Samangan and Balkh Provinces - is being underwritten by
donations from several nations, including $1 million from Canada, $3 million
from Britain and $7 million from the United States, Kenton Keith,
spokesman for the American-led coalition, said in Islamabad, Pakistan.
"This terrible legacy of war leaves a constant danger to the people of
Afghanistan as they try to build peace," Mr. Keith said last week. "The
coalition did not create this problem, but we will step forward to help
Afghanistan deal with it."
Some Afghans took exception to those assertions, noting that the United
States sent billions of dollars of arms and military aid through Pakistan into
Afghanistan in the 1980's to assist the guerrilla resistance to the Soviets. The
aid included mines and explosives training, several former guerrillas said. Mr.
Keith also did not acknowledge the problem of unexploded American
bombs, which in places are thick.
"America is the most powerful fighter in the world, and has been in
Afghanistan for a long time," said Merzakhan, 48, whose 9-year-old son was
wounded by a mine four months ago in Bangi. "Why do they say it's never
their fault?"
To be sure, many Afghans laid mines without external prodding, and both
sides in the recent war also laid booby traps, some of them fearsome.
Departing soldiers of the anti- Taliban Northern Alliance mined one front-line
area last year, with devastating results. In the worst case, a truck carrying
refugees hit one of the traps, killing 64, Mr. McMullen said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which compiles injury data
from hospital visits, said an average of 88 mine casualties were reported
each month in the country. Mr. McMullen said the reports understated the
problem because the committee was unable to visit every hospital, and many
victims went to small clinics. Also, most hospitals do not have data for
victims killed outright, or soon after, the blasts.
The effort this week will begin in several different areas.
In Mazar-i-Sharif, one of the trust's most experienced teams will be assigned
to the Qala Jangi fortress, where American bombs, dropped last month to
quell an uprising by Al Qaeda prisoners there, detonated a large munitions
depot.
It created an extraordinarily dangerous mess. A tour of the former depot on
Sunday found acres of loose munitions of almost every description. Many
are unstable and could explode with the slightest bump.
"This is one of the most dangerous areas in Afghanistan," said Dr. Nin
Muhammad, the trust supervisor in the region. Making the courtyard safe will
take at least two or three months, he said.
As the effort begins, the Halo trust is turning up problems peculiar to this
war. For instance, its officials said, a common and ordinarily innocuous type
of unexpended ammunition - airburst rounds for 23-millimeter antiaircraft
guns - seems to have become volatile here. In a few recent cases, they
have burst with the slightest handling.
"I thought it was a normal bullet, and when I touched it, it exploded," said
Abdul Ghany, 16, who was treated last week in the Kunduz hospital.
His face was pocked with tiny shrapnel holes, with here and there a larger
gash. What remained of his hands were bound in gauze. "His right hand was
eliminated," said his brother, Abdul Ghafor, 27.
Down the hall was a farmer, Maruddin, 35, whose left hand was amputated
after he tried to clear antiaircraft ammunition from his rice field.
Demolition teams also hope to destroy unexploded American cluster bombs
as quickly as possible. The bomblets, yellow and shaped like a can of spray
paint, are the same color and roughly the same size as the plastic food
packets American planes have dropped for civilians. There have been
reports of children picking them up, with fatal results.
"It does make you wonder who at the ministry of incompetence is
responsible for that one," Mr. McMullen said.
So far the United States has not provided a list of areas where it dropped
cluster bombs, although on Sunday an officer at the coalition command post
in Mazar-i-Sharif told Mr. McMullen that he would request one from his
supervisors.
For now, Halo Trust staff members will continue the current method: driving
through battle areas in a Land Rover, looking for the little yellow bombs
themselves.
nytimes.com
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