Demining on Tajik-Afghan border underway

Deminers recently resumed clearing parts of the Tajik-Afghan border of mines in an effort to reduce the risk posed to the local residents, a senior demining official said on Tuesday.

“The demining work at two sites on the Afghan border has been underway for two weeks. They are among the highest risk places [of the border area],” Jonmahmad Rajabov, head of the Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC), told IRIN from the capital, Dushanbe.

“Those sites are a threat to the local population and are creating economic problems for them, particularly for cultivating land and maintaining local irrigation networks,” Rajabov said.

Mines have been laid in a number of areas within Tajikstan and on its borders. Most of them were laid during a five-year civil war between the secular government and largely Islamist opposition groups that ended in 1997.

In addition, Russian border troops, who were stationed in Tajikistan in the 1990s, reportedly laid minefields on the Tajik-Afghan border to protect it from smugglers and intruders.

And the Uzbekistan government began planting mines on parts of its undemarcated border with neighbouring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1999 to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) militants, then based in Afghanistan.

IMU - currently known as the Islamic Party of Turkestan – seeks to create an Islamic caliphate in the region and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. IMU militants made several incursions into southern Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000 in an effort to move further into Uzbekistan.

TMAC started demining parts of the 1,344 km-long Tajik-Afghan border in April 2006 and this year plans to continue the work until November.

“Due to weather conditions, the demining season in Tajikistan lasts only five to six months - usually starting in spring [March/April] and ending in autumn [November],” Rajabov said.

According to TMAC, there are about 25 million square metres of mine risk areas in Tajikistan.

Tajikistan relies on donor assistance for demining. In 2003, the country signed the 1997 Ottawa Convention, which calls for a complete ban of all anti-personnel landmines, and is expected to destroy its mines by 1 April 2010.

“The problem is getting funds on time. If we could get them in April-May, we would be able to carry out our work fully, but the money tends to arrive in the middle or sometimes at the end of the demining season, which seriously slows down our work,” Rajabov said.

TMAC requested US $5.5 million from donors for 2007, but this financial assistance is yet to arrive.

About 300 people have been killed and another 300 injured or maimed by mines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) in Tajikistan over the past 15 years.

Since its launch in mid-2003, TMAC, in collaboration with the Swiss Mine Action Foundation, has cleared about 500,000 square metres of mines and UXOs in the country. The is TMAC’s mine risk survey and mine clearance partner providing technical support.

at/ar/ed