Half a million dollars needed for demining dogs

The Tajik national demining body needs at least half a million US dollars in funding in order to establish a dog demining centre. The centre would form an important part of Tajikistan's efforts to clear millions of mines in the former Soviet republic by 2010. "We need US $500,000 in order to implement the programme on demining mined areas in Tajikistan with the help of demining dogs," Parviz Mavlonkulov, deputy head of the Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC), said on Tuesday in the capital Dushanbe. The money is needed to buy demining dogs and train deminers to work with them but TMAC has so far been unable to find sponsors to fund the programme, Mavlonkulov explained. Most land mines in Tajikistan were laid during the devastating five year civil war, which ended in 1997. In many areas the mines still pose a deadly threat as well as a major impediment to effective land use. Additional mines were laid along the Tajik-Uzbek border by the authorities in Tashkent in the late 1990s. The action was reportedly taken to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a terrorist organisation listed by the US State Department, that trained and operated from Tajik territory. Tajikistan signed the Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on their Destruction (the Ottawa Convention) in 2000. All signatory states undertook to ensure the destruction of all anti-personnel land mines they possess, as soon as possible but no later than 10 years after signing the convention. In the case of Tajikistan, this means that the country should be mine-free by 2010. "With the manual [demining] methods that we employ today it will be impossible to fulfil our obligations under the Ottawa Convention," William Lawrence, the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) chief technical advisor to TMAC, said in a statement, adding that dogs had shown themselves to be very useful in mine detection and could increase the efficiency of demining teams by a factor or five. "With mine dogs, we would fulfil the Ottawa convention on or even before time and make the inhabitants of Tajikistan safe from mines by 2010," Lawrence maintained. According to the TMAC, since 1992 landmines have killed more than 240 people and injured 239 more in the Central Asian country. "The landmine risk is still there in the north, including six districts of the Sogd province [Asht, Isfara, Pyanjikent, Kanibadam and Shakhristan districts and the settlement of Taboshary], in central parts of the country and in the south, on the Afghan border," Jonmahmad Rajabov, head of TMAC, explained. Despite the current lack of resources, there have been successes. Tajikistan completed the destruction of its anti-personnel mine stockpile in March 2004 and in the armed forces, the use of landmines is no longer part of military training or activities, according to the TMAC. "Moreover, almost 100,000 sq metres have been cleared and is now used for civilian purposes," Rajabov noted.