The National , UAE
June 28 2009

A decade’s work to clear the minefields

Daniel Bardsley Correspondent
Last Updated: June 27. 2009 11:13PM UAE / June 27. 2009 7:13PM GMT

AMARAS, Armenia // In a picturesque mulberry orchard, two men pick up
a white plastic frame and slowly walk forward through the long grass.

As they edge ahead, a colleague behind plants red stakes in the ground
to mark the area the pair has covered.

Then, as they move a few more feet, a shrill alarm sounds: something
underground needs investigating.

It could be an anti-tank mine of the kind that have killed a string of
residents and white stakes are planted in the soil to indicate where
further tests are needed.

This is all in a day’s work for the Halo Trust, a British charity that
has been helping to clear Nagorno-Karabakh of mines and unexploded
ordnance for nearly a decade.

The risks posed to local people from the remnants of the conflict with
Azerbaijan that ended 15 years ago are not in doubt. The self-declared
independent state has seen, since 1995, 73 civilian deaths from
unexploded material, plus more than 250 injuries, many to children.

In total, 30 square kilometres of mostly former agricultural land were
contaminated with Soviet-made anti-tank and anti-personnel mines laid
by both sides.

Cluster munitions from Azerbaijani aeroplanes that left unexploded
bomblets also pose dangers, especially to children who think they are
toys, while shells and other weaponry are an additional threat. About
180 sq km were contaminated with these types of material.

`In Stepanakert [the capital], people might not wake up in the morning
and think there’s a problem, but in the villages people come across
unexploded ordnance on a daily basis,’ said Yuri Shahramanyan, Halo’s
Nagorno-Karabakh operations officer. `Unfortunately, there are still
accidents happening. One [in April this year] was in an area that was
mined and where there were signs warning about the mines. People just
ignored them and a tractor blew up on an anti-tank mine.’

In the same month, a man died when he accidentally triggered an
anti-tank mine while digging. A month later, two people were hurt in
an explosion as they collected poles from an abandoned vineyard.

Clearing an area of anti-tank mines is a fairly relaxed process since
the devices are not triggered by a person walking above them.

Typically, two men carry a two metre by one metre large loop metal
detector that detects material up to one metre below ground.

With anti-personnel mines, the work is more stressful ` staff have to
wear protective gear and edge forward much more slowly.

It is important, said Mr Shahramanyan, to know who laid mines in a
given area, since the two sides had different mine-laying patterns,
and these determine the best strategy.

Halo tries to spread the message that people finding material should
not dismantle it themselves, although as many people in
Nagorno-Karabakh are ex-military, a lot try to do just that.

Each month in an isolated hillside in the east of the enclave, the
trust holds a controlled explosion of collected material. Anything
with a fuse is destroyed where it is found, but the likes of mines and
tank projectiles can often be picked up and dealt with en masse.

At the detonation site, the material is covered with sandbags while
scouts check no one is nearby. A man in a sheltered hut 300m away then
sets off the explosion. So far, about 400 minefields have been
declared safe, with less than half this number remaining to be
cleared. Prime agricultural land is prioritised when it comes to mine
clearance.

Since 2000, Halo has dealt with more than 7,200 anti-personnel mines,
over 2,200 anti-tank mines, 10,100 pieces of unexploded ordnance,
9,200 cluster bombs and 28,400 pieces of stray ammunition. More than
125 sq km have been declared safe. And the number of accidents has
fallen. Since 2005 there have been five deaths, a quarter of the
number of the previous four-year period.

Funding in Nagorno-Karabakh comes from the governments of the UK, the
US and the Netherlands, and the Julia Burke foundation, a
California-based charitable organisation.

Mr Shahramanyan said the trust, which also operates in places such as
Angola, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, was keen to secure donations from
the Armenian diaspora for its work in Nagorno-Karabakh, where it is
the only mine clearance organisation. Halo, which also worked with
the de facto local authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1995 and 1996,
now employs 260 staff there.

There are many clearance teams operating across the enclave and the
trust has had six accidents itself, although none was fatal.

If funding remains adequate, Mr Shahramanyan estimates it will take
five years to clear the enclave of mines, and another year to rid it
of unexploded ordnance.

A short walk from the mulberry grove Halo recently cleared, the
results of mine explosions are all too apparent. Kolya Kocharyan, who
looks after Amaras Monastery, walks with a limp and cannot straighten
his left arm because he blew up an anti-tank mine while driving a
tractor in 2000.

It was the fourth time since the end of the conflict that he had
unintentionally detonated material and this time his injuries were bad
enough to stop him working. `It’s so important,’ he said of the
mine-clearance work. `It’s one of the priorities of Karabakh.’

dbardsley@thenational.ae
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