Major mine action donation will speed clearances

A major donation of up to US $955,000 has been made to fund the second phase of the joint Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) first mine action project in Tajikistan. Both the OSCE and FSD - together with the ambassadors of Canada, Norway, Sweden and Belgium - signed the agreements to support the project during their recent visit to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "The money will be used to train, equip and deploy two new mine clearance teams and to increase the survey capacity with an additional mine survey team. We also hope to increase the mine-awareness capacities among the population," Meaghan Fitzgerald, programme manager with the OSCE, told IRIN from Dushanbe. With the addition of the three new teams, which will join two existing survey teams operating since May 2003 marking the exact location of the minefields, the project will have a total operational staff in the field of 87 specialists. In 2003 the two survey teams mainly examined the Rasht Valley region and across the Kyrgyz border, assessing 359 settlements. This year the teams will be focused on the areas not yet surveyed in that region and areas of urgent concern such as the southern border with Afghanistan. "In accordance with the government priorities we have concentrated our activities on the central region. This year we have started the General Mine Actions Assessment [GMAA] in Khatlon region. We will start clearance and [conduct] further survey [work] in both these regions in 2004," David Smyth, programme manager with the FSD, told IRIN on Wednesday. Smyth explained that in 2003 their activities were mainly focused on GMAA. He said that the clearance operation would begin this month. "However, the teams have [already] destroyed three items of unexploded ordnance [UXO] and rendered safe and removed a further 11 UXOs. Our explosive ordnance disposal [EOD] operations were suspended in December due to snow. One team is deploying this week back to the central region to continue the EOD taskings," he added. More than 70 civilian accidents have been reported due to landmines in the central region since the five-year civil war ended in 1997, although there have been none in the last year. In the Sughd region across the Uzbek border, believed one of the most mined areas together with the Afghan border, 60 cases were reported. "The minefields are blocking traditional agricultural land and [are] also [a hazard] in areas that is used for collecting firewood, etc. The majority of the casualties are among people engaged in these activities and they seem to be mostly children," said Smyth. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Red Crescent Society are working on a Mine Awareness Campaign focused on boosting civilians' awareness, which includes the placement of mine warning signs. According to the Tajik authorities, around 16,000 land mines are threatening the population over an area of 2,500 square kilometres. In addition to the potential danger to the civilians, they represent a major obstacle to the Tajik economy. "The OSCE considers economic opportunities are limited by the presence of these mines. In the areas where survey activities have been taken place, the presence of landmines have a lot of economic impact for the country in a sense of clearing land that can be used for agricultural activities or to repair or to build infrastructure," said Fitzgerald.