Mine clearance allows water pipe rehabilitation

The joint Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)-Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) programme has cleared land mines from an area near the Afghan border, allowing for the rehabilitation of the Kumsangir water pipe. “The clearance in the Dusti-Kumsangir district has significant economical and humanitarian impact as the water pipe will immediately beneficiate the local community,” Meaghan Fitzgerald, OSCE’s programme manager, told IRIN on Wednesday from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. The local authorities received a grant from the Japanese government to rehabilitate the water pipe but they were unable to do so due to the danger of mines in the area, Fitzgerald added. Her comments came one day after the handover ceremony was held, announcing that some 3,125 square metres of land has been cleared of mines and three unexploded pieces of ordnance (UXO) were removed as a result of the second phase of the “Mine Action in Tajikistan” programme. “The local authorities have now been able to provide with clean drinking water to [roughly] 35,000 people in the area,” she said, adding that this had been the first handover ceremony of its kind in Tajikistan. “There will be more in the future as the clearance activities continue.” According to the OSCE, the demining activities will help the Tajik district to boost the local economy, as well as restoring the cultivation of cotton fields. “It highlights the humanitarian impact of the clearing of anti-personnel mines in Central Asia,” ambassador Yves Bargain, head of the OSCE in Dushanbe, said in a statement. Since the mine action programme was launched in May 2003, roughly 24,000 km has been surveyed and more than 4,500 square metres cleared so far in Tavildara, Sagirdasht, Garm and Khatlon regions and in the Rasht valley. FSD currently has a team conducting General Mine Actions Assessments (GMAA) in the regions bordering Uzbekistan, believed to be one of the heavily mined areas along with the Afghan border, and two more clearance teams are working in the mine affected areas in central Tajikistan. “In accordance with government priorities we have concentrated our activities on the central region and this year we have started the GMAA in Khatlon region,” David Smyth, programme manager with the FSD, told IRIN from Dushanbe, noting that minefields were impeding traditional agricultural activities and represented a hazard to those engaged in them. Around 16,000 land mines are threatening the population, according to the Tajik authorities, and more than 70 civilian accidents have been reported due to landmines in the central region since the five-year civil war ended in 1997. In addition to the potential peril to civilians, mostly affecting children, 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 taking place, the presence of landmines has a major economic impact for the country in a sense of clearing land that can be used for agriculture or to repair or to build infrastructure,” said Fitzgerald.