Demining hit by withdrawal of US/EU funding

Twenty-four years after the liberation war ended, landmines still remain a cruel and present danger for communities living along Zimbabwe's borders with Zambia and Mozambique. An estimated 1.9 million mines were planted in the border areas during the bitter struggle that began in the late 1960s between the colonial government of the then Rhodesia and nationalist guerrillas. The minority government wanted to prevent guerilla incursions from bases in Zambia and Mozambique, while the liberation movements used the mines to cordon off their infiltration routes, secure captured areas and generally complicate pursuit by the Rhodesian army. Buried and forgotten by the soldiers who planted them, today civilians and their livestock are the victims. According to official figures, 568 people have been killed by landmines since independence in 1980, but the real toll is said to be far higher. Since 1980 the Zimbabwe National Army has been demining in the Binga-Victoria Falls area on the border with Zambia and the eastern highlands bordering Mozambique. The operation should have taken 10 years to complete, but is still ongoing. Brig-Gen Trust Mugoba, director general in the Ministry of Defence, said the army had so far cleared about 535 km (6.6 million square metres) of landmines in the border areas, but an estimated 870,000 mines still remain hidden. Addressing a workshop this week on consolidating peace in Zimbabwe, Mugoba said demining teams operating along the border with Zambia had cleared territory spanning 240 km, leaving an area of 65 km that still remained a no-go zone. "A total of 66,000 [anti-personnel] mines and 22,000 ploughshares [large fragmentation mines] were planted by Rhodesian security forces in the [northern border] area. About 2,000 mines and 140 ploughshares still remain to be cleared," said Mugoba. He added that 335 km of land had been cleared in the east of the country, but 630,000 out of an initial 1.8 million anti-personnel mines still remained. Of the 36,000 fragmentation mines planted in the area, 3,200 were yet to be removed. Only 150,000 out of the 400,000 landmines buried in the southeastern triangle of the country, where the Zimbabwe-South Africa-Mozambican borders converge, had been removed. An estimated 250,000 mines were still active. Zimbabwe's stuttering demining effort has been frustrated by a lack of funding, equipment and skilled personnel. In 1997 the US army trained 120 demining engineers and donated Zim $6 million (around US $400,000) to help kick-start the programme. A year later the European Union provided Zim $206 million ($5.8 million) to extend the exercise into the heavily mined eastern highlands along the border with Mozambique. Both the EU and the US withdrew their support in 2000, in protest over the government's human rights and governance record. Sanctions imposed by the EU and US in the wake of flawed presidential elections in 2003 included the suspension of military cooperation. Mugoba acknowledged that the demining exercise had slowed because of a shortage of funds after the withdrawal of US and EU support. The current work was now funded by the government, but he provided no figures for expenditure on the programme.