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Southern Africa |
SOCIAL CONDIT.
Landmines are widely used mainly because they are cheap,
easy to use, reliable and a means of attacking the enemy
without actually coming face-to-face with himThe global landmine crisis is huge and it is highly unlikely that there will ever be enough funding available to rid the world of them. Added to this is the fact that despite attempts to ban the anti-personnel landmines (e.g. by the Ottawa Treaty), this is unlikely to ever happen. Landmines are designed to maim the enemy but not to kill. They are deployed to slow up and inconvenience. In modern warfare this may seem acceptable to some, but it’s not during a war situation that there’s a real problem, rather, it’s with the legacy landmines leave behind.
Hugh Morris is Operations Director of Mine-Tech Zimbabwe, a Harare-based international company specialising in landmine removal. He says: «It is in post conflict situations, when refugees are returning home that these “sleeping soldiers” really come into effect. They prevent development, maim innocent woman and children, and their victims are never those who were initial targets».
Funding for mine clearance has always been a problem because there will never be enough money to meet the need. Mine clearance is a slow and expensive operation and few countries in the world, let alone Southern African Development Countries (SADC) can afford to fund clearance operations — especially as most of these countries are usually poor. It is therefore important that such countries seek the help of the United Nations and take the necessary measures themselves to address the problem as best they can.
People living in mine-infested areas especially in their border regions (e.g. Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Congo RDC) need to be educated and taught how to live with the minefields around them. Marking techniques must be taught so that if funding is never made available, the local population can at least learn to live with the mines. The fact is, that during the various liberation struggles which took place within the SADC region and during rebel insurrections, most of these countries’ borders are still riddled with landmines.
Some mine clearance operations
Mozambique: In 1993,Mine-Tech surveyed Gorongosa District and Sofala Province. In 1994 they surveyed 9 districts of Manica Province. 25 Mine Awareness Workshops were held in the Province for local inhabitants and returning refugees. In Sofala Province, bridges, water points, boreholes, gravel pits, railway lines and roads were cleared in 1995. In 1996, the largest single mine clearance project in the world took place at Cahora Bassa. This involved powerline, road and railway line clearance. Gorongosa Game Reserve Camp Site and 56 kms of roads were also cleared. Zimbabwe: In 1994, a survey of 766 kms of border minefields up to 15km deep, resulted in approximately 5,800 mines and other explosive devices being cleared. Other clearance operations took place in 1995. And in Angola in 1995 and 1996, a great deal of road-clearance was achieved.
However all this is but the tip of the ice-berg and many mines are still lying untouched in fields within the SADC region, hence denying communities in the affected areas much needed development.
- Augustine Deke, Zimbabwe, January 2003 — © Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment