Demining delayed due to lack of money

Tajikistan's demining programme for 2005 has been delayed due to lack of money. "We need around US $3 million for our activities this year, at the moment we have just half of that amount pledged [promised], so we cannot start urgent demining programmes," Jonmahamad Rajabov, head of the Tajik Mine Action Cell (TMAC), told IRIN on Tuesday in the capital Dushanbe. Underlining the urgency of restarting demining in the country, on Sunday three children were seriously injured by an anti-personnel mine in the village of Chorcharogh in the country's central Rasht district. At least 30 people have fallen victim to mines in Rasht since the Tajik civil war ended in 1997, of whom 21 have died. The TMAC, established in 2003, is Tajikistan's lead agency for mine clearance, mine risk awareness and assisting victims of mine accidents. The agency had three mine clearance teams working in the centre and south of the country in 2004 and is hoping to put four teams in the field this year. Hard winters in Tajikistan mean demining is limited to a four- to five-month window over the summer. "I have just come out of a meeting with the district chairman of Vanj, in the Badakhshan region on the border of Afghanistan, he is unhappy that we have not yet begun demining in the area as promised. Last week, a shepherd near Vanj lost an arm when a mine exploded near him, the chairman told me," Rajabov said. Tajiks face threats from landmines laid during the country's civil war from 1992-97 that killed at least 50,000 people, and from mines laid on the border with Uzbekistan. Tashkent mined the border to discourage Islamic militants from crossing into its territory. As a first step to tackling the mines there, a bilateral commission is busy delineating the border on maps, but the frontier remains largely unmarked and strewn with mines. According to the TMAC, 14 local residents fell victim to anti-personnel mines on the Tajik-Uzbek border in 2004, of whom seven died and another seven were wounded. But in the first two months of 2005 alone, nine people were affected by landmines, of whom four were killed. William Lawrence, senior technical adviser for mine action with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Tajikistan, told IRIN last week that limited land resources in the mountainous former Soviet republic were a key factor contributing to the growing landmine risk. For Rajabov, the lack of funding for the TMAC is of growing concern. "Unless we get the money we need very soon to begin our demining activities in the south and centre of the country we will fall behind schedule – meanwhile people continue to be killed and injured, while we are delayed." Over the past 13 years, 455 people, 239 of whom have been killed and 226 have become disabled, have fallen victim to mines in Tajikistan.