| U.S.
Campaign to Ban Landmines In this edition. . .
Beware
of Land Mines On the First Fairway Tim McGirk Like most obsessive golfers, Paul McNeill occasionally ponders the game's standard frustrations--the blown putts, the sliced drives into the rough--and questions his devotion to such a maddening pursuit. But as a regular at Kabul's only golf course, McNeill puts up with some extra hazards that would test the mettle of Tiger Woods. The grassless fairways of rock and stubble are cratered by rocket shells. The greens are in fact brown, a mix of oil and dirt with the consistency of quicksand. Approach shots are complicated by the possibility that insurgents have planted land mines on the course. And your swing may be off-kilter because you probably have a pistol strapped to your thigh, just in case kidnappers are lurking nearby. "Sometimes you look over," says McNeill, an aid worker from North Carolina, "and your partner is carrying a rifle in his golf bag." Despite these inconveniences, golf Afghan-style is witnessing a boomlet. The nine-hole Kabul Golf Club boasts some 60 members, drawn mostly from the armies of aid workers and expatriate businessmen who have flooded the capital since the fall of the Taliban. The club's revival reflects Kabul's transformation, from a dusty no-man's-land to a bustling hub of commerce. Earlier this month the city opened its first five-star hotel; rooms start at $250 a night. To read the full article, go to: www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1129590,00.html
Thirty Landmine Fields
To Be Destroyed in Colombia Eric Green Washington -- Some 30 landmine fields scattered across Colombia are being destroyed, starting the week of November 8, in an operation carried out by the Colombian military with the support of the Organization of American States (OAS). In a November 8 statement, the OAS said the initial phase of the mine removal operation will run for about two months in the Colombian province of Bolivar. The operation will be carried out by 28 members of the Colombian Navy and Army and will be supervised by two military officers from Honduras. Colombia's mine-action authority, called the Antipersonnel Mine Observatory, is coordinating the clearance activities in Colombia with the help of the OAS. That inter-American body has provided training for the soldiers who support mine removals and also provides life insurance to the personnel, logistical support and international supervision for the work. An official with the Colombian Embassy in Washington says Colombia has at least 100,000 landmines. Under the terms of an agreement the OAS and Colombia signed two years ago, the OAS will provide physical and psychological rehabilitation to about 20 anti-personnel landmine victims, selected by the Colombian mine-action authority. According to Colombian national statistics, the Andean nation has an average of 2.5 anti-personnel landmine accidents every day. Anti-personnel mines are said to be having a severe effect on the civilian population in Colombia, where the use of those mines is reported to be on the increase and the country's ongoing civil war makes it difficult to clear the weapons. Under a program called "Comprehensive Action Against Anti-personnel Mines," the OAS addresses several topics related to landmines, including mine-risk education for the civilian population, support for minefield surveying, mapping, marking and clearance, victim assistance (including physical and psychological rehabilitation and the socioeconomic reintegration of cleared zones), and establishment of databases on activities directed against anti-personnel mines. Besides Colombia, the OAS program for mine removal has operated in a number of countries in Latin America, including Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Suriname. The United States supports mine-risk education and mine survivors' assistance coordination in Colombia through a $75,000 donation to the OAS. The United States welcomed Colombia's destruction in October 2004 of nearly 7,000 "persistent" land mines from its stockpile of such explosive devices. The State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement said it applauded Colombia's "destruction of a batch of its stockpiled landmines that were not needed for its defense." The State Department defines persistent land mines as munitions that remain lethal indefinitely, affecting civilians long after the cessation of military conflict. The State Department has called on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the left-wing group engaged in a long-running armed conflict against the Colombian government, to destroy its accumulated persistent land mines, booby traps and improvised explosive devices (IED). IED refers to an explosive device that is constructed in an improvised manner designed to kill and maim people, or to destroy property. (See related article http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2004/Nov/02-891919.html .) The State Department said that since 1993, the United States has provided about $1 billion for reducing, throughout the world, threats to innocent civilians posed by land mines left in the ground after conflicts end. That figure represents between one-third and one-half of all the money invested worldwide on mine action by donor nations, according to the State Department. The goal of U.S. assistance is to help avoid deaths and injuries caused by land mines, and also to promote economic development and social reconciliation in mine-affected countries that have been beset by conflict. For more information on U.S. efforts to address this problem, see the electronic journal, Protecting Lives, Restoring Livelihoods: The U.S. Program To Remove Landmines http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0104/ijpe/ijpe0104.htm. Additional information www.state.gov/t/pm/wra/c10387.htm about the U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program, which provides assistance to countries suffering from the presence of persistent landmines, also is available on the State Department Web site. More than 700 die in Chechnya in landmine explosions Almost 700 civilians have died in Chechnya in the past ten years as a result of landmine and blind shell explosions, UNICEF representative in Russia Carel de Rooy told Interfax on Monday. The official said that there have been 3,033 incidents involving landmine and blind shells explosions from 1995 to November 2005. As a result, 692 people died, and 2,341 were injured, de Rooy said, adding that 126 of those who died were children, and that another 613 children have been injured. To read the full article, go to: www.interfax.com/3/104985/news.aspx. Students rock out for land
mine survivors Juliana Goodwin Ken Rutherford, a land mine survivor and double amputee, has been touching people's lives for years. A group of Central High School students are no exception. Rutherford, an associate professor of political science at Missouri State University, lost his leg in 1993 in Somalia when his jeep struck a land mine. "We were so inspired by his account," said Andrew Fogle, now a senior at Central. "We heard about the problems land mines are causing all over the world, even in developed countries, and thus the benefit was born." The benefit is an annual spring concert to raise money for Landmine Survivors Network, a nonprofit Rutherford co-founded to assist survivors. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The students adopted the cause, passed the concert down from year to year and raised thousands of dollars in the meantime. At first members of the group -- which is active in environmental and social issues -- knew they wanted to do something, but didn't know what. The teens brainstormed and settled on a concert. Matt Taylor and Josh Head, the founders of STAT, were seniors at the time and members of the band Bogart. They headlined the first concert. The band members graduated, but the concerts continued. To read the full article, go to: www.news-leader.com/ . For more information on the US Campaign to Ban Landmines, go to www.banminesusa.org U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines To make a donation to the US Campaign to Ban Landmines go to: www.banminesusa.org/support/body.html and click on Donate. |
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