Reduced funding threatens land mine clearance

Demining workers in Afghanistan have this week expressed regret and anxiety over the downsizing of the UN's Mine Action Programme (MAP), and concern that this could not only increase safety risks but also damage the programme in the long term. On 1 September, the MAP began cutting down its operations by 50 percent due to a major shortfall in funding. Operational teams are to be sent on two months unpaid leave over the next four months, and all operations put on hold during the fasting month of Ramadan at the end of the year. "This cutback means that mine survey, clearance and mine awareness activities will be substantially reduced during the last third of the year, on top of previous reductions earlier in the year when the funding crisis became apparent," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan stated. Each NGO in the programme has been told to cut back its activities independently to save 50 percent of its costs and, although some have had staff volunteer to continue working throughout spells of forced 'unpaid leave', they have been unable to allow the volunteers to do so because of associated transport, administration and food costs. The potential damage to the mine-dog breeding programme, which is a component of the MAP in Afghanistan, was pointed out by Shah Wali Ayubi, training manager of the Mine Detection Dog Centre (MDC) in the capital, Kabul. Dog teams worked two to three times faster than manual demining teams, and were particularly effective in detecting the plastic or minimum metal land mines frequently found in Afghanistan, but easily missed by mine detectors, he said. The dogs had been used to clear roads, irrigation systems and low-density mine-contaminated areas. The MDC's breeding and training programme now produced complete mine-dogs at a cost of about US $1,300, whereas the centre had previously been importing trained dogs - but not complete mine-dogs - at $4,000 each, said Ayubi. The programme cutback would have a negative effect on the MDC, he said, because dog handlers had already been sent on compulsory leave, in spite of the fact that mine-dog training was intensive and the dogs needed to work every day to be maximally effective. "It's not good for security either," he said. "You have people out in the field with their minds on the pressure of money and a bit demoralised, and they're not concentrating properly. That's when accidents happen," he added. CHILDREN MOST AT RISK Land mines do not differentiate between man, woman, child or beast, but children are very vulnerable to unexploded ordnance (UXO), the removal and safe disposal of which is also a key function of the demining programme. "Children are very vulnerable, because they collect firewood and water, so they are 'easy victims'. Lots of people are also victims of UXOs. In some places it's a bigger problem than the land mines themselves," said Dr Farid Homayun, the director of Halo Trust. Running awareness classes for 20 children a day to repeatedly hammer home the dangers of land mines and UXOs is one approach, but that too is difficult to sustain when funding cuts mean staff have to be sent on forced leave. While there has been progress in Afghanistan from the dark days in 1995-1996 when there were 50 to 60 accidents per week in Kabul alone, there are still indications that casualties may be as high as 150 to 300 per month countrywide. Moreover, both the Taliban and Northern Alliance are still laying land mines in the north and northeast, despite statements to the contrary from the Taliban, according to sources in Afghanistan. However, there were very few reports recorded of demined areas being remined by the warring factions, so the case for demining was as strong as ever, the operation being a necessary, efficient and cost-effective intervention with a proven and measurable economic effect beyond its life-saving immediacy, they added. Dr Homayun estimated that there were still between 600,000 and one million mines in Afghanistan, but warned against overstating the problem, because experience had given the clear message that the problem of posed by mines could be solved. AFGHANISTAN HIT BY DONOR FATIGUE The crux for the MAP is that it needs US $3.5 million in funding to the end of the year, but funding is not coming through for it in sufficient quantity. MAP mine awareness adviser Polly Brennan attributes the shrinking funding to donor fatigue with Afghanistan, where war has been raging for over 20 years and civil war is ongoing. "The international community does not always understand that, despite the conflict, we have been able to conduct successful mine action operations throughout the past decade," Brennan said after the 1 September announcement of programme cutbacks. In addition, global funding for mine action reached its high point in 1997-98 at the time of the Ottawa Treaty against land mines, but has been gradually declining since, she said. The Afghanistan programme - considered to be perhaps the first example of humanitarian demining, a concept which evolved in the 1980s - was particularly successful in world terms and did not deserve to be halted because of competing funding requirements from other parts of the world, said Dr Homayun. "If we leave minefields uncleared or partially cleared, we are only encouraging more victims, because people will not, cannot stay clear [of all the areas that are mined]. The international community has a responsibility to carry on funding this programme in order to get rid of the problem," he said.