U.S. cluster bombs complicate Afghan cleanup

Mine-laden Kandahar may take years to rid of explosives, U.N. says

Associated Press
May 31, 2002

Kandahar, Afghanistan -- The use of cluster bombs during the U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan has pushed back efforts to clear this mine-laden city by at least a year and raised doubts about a plan to rid the region of unexploded ordnance by decade's end, U.N. officials said Thursday.

Efforts to clear the region of bomblets, known as BLUs, have become the top priority for U.N.-backed de-mining teams in five southern provinces, where they are scattered in 46 areas.

"They are just waiting to explode," said A.G. Asalati of the U.N. Regional Mine Action Center. "Many parts of Kandahar are contaminated ... and some BLUs are near populated areas."

Organizations such as British-based Landmine Action have estimated that the United States dropped nearly 125,000 bomblets on Afghanistan, based on a Pentagon statement that about 600 cluster bombs were used by early December.

Each cluster bomb contains 202 bomblets, 7 percent to 15 percent of which are thought not to have exploded.

Afghanistan's two decades of warfare left an estimated 5 million to 10 million mines littering the country, the vast majority of them left by the Soviets during their 10-year occupation of the country.

Mr. Asalati said the U.N. agency had hoped to clear Kandahar of the mines by the end of 2001, but the cluster bombs had delayed that timetable by at least a year.

Since February, de-miners have managed to clear bomblets from all but six areas encompassing about 40 square miles. The United States has provided them with maps of many strike areas and helped train the de-miners in neutralizing cluster bombs and bomblets.

The International Committee for the Red Cross estimates that about 3,000 Afghans are maimed each year by land mines. According to U.N. estimates, 100,000 people have been injured or maimed over the past 23 years.

As many as 150 to 300 people were killed each month in 2001 by mines or unexploded ordnance, according to U.N. figures. In 1993, Afghanistan had an average of 20 to 24 casualties per day up to 8,500 deaths a year, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Children are the most common victims. Tied to a bed at the Red Cross-run Mir Wais Hospital in Kandahar, 13-year-old Mohammed Raffia screamed in pain as doctors adjusted the bandages that covered his head. In a nearby bed, his friend Niaz Mohammed, 16, lay with his right hand missing.

The two teenagers were injured during the weekend as they watched over their grazing herd of cows and sheep in the town of Bagh-a-Pul, near a former Taliban tank regiment.

"Niaz saw something and picked it up. It exploded," said his father. Niaz is the second of four sons be injured in four months, he said.

Local authorities say the area, near a former Taliban weapons depot, is one of the few places near drought-plagued Kandahar that still has some vegetation.

However, the area is also littered with minefields and unexploded ordnance left when U.S. and coalition forces methodically bombed the depot.

Bending over a yellow bomblet about the size of two soft drink cans, mine clearer Nazar Mohammad, 55, sweated profusely as he cleared the area around it before fitting a small amount of plastic explosive to destroy the bomblet.

"I hate these things," said Mr. Mohammad, a mine clearer for 18 years. "They are more dangerous than mines; they will explode on touch."

When it explodes, a bomblet breaks into tiny steel fragments honeycombed into the casing an explosion so powerful that it will fuse limestone and can kill anyone within 100 feet.

Mr. Mohammad was even more frustrated because he has already cleared the area twice first of Russian mines, then of mines laid by rebels.

 
_____
Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 | Ander Nieuws week 24