Afghanistan Anti-Mine Group Seeks Funds
KABUL, Afghanistan, 27 March 04
(The Associated Press)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)—Millions of mines and unexploded bombs that kill or wound 100 Afghans on average every month could be cleared in a decade if international funds are made available, a government official said Saturday.

Afghanistan needs $425 million for a 10-year drive to clear mines and ordnance left by a quarter-century of war, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Haider Reza said.

“So many people suffered from mines in Afghanistan,” Reza told reporters in Kabul during the Asian regional conference on the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines. “It shows the need for a big campaign.”

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with millions of explosives laid down during Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the brutal civil war which followed.

Afghan officials say they have no useful maps of where the mines are.

The Nobel Prize-winning ICBL's Afghan representative appealed to international donors to provide funds to continue clearance.

“We need sustained, multiyear funding to help us maintain our high rate of clearance and to address the needs of land mine survivors,” Shohab Hakimi said.

Afghanistan, which joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, or Ottawa Convention, on Sept. 11, 2002, has begun destroying its stockpiles of mines.

But warlords and faction leaders who still control much of the countryside have yet to do so.

Anti-mine campaigners hope that progress in Afghanistan will help persuade Asian countries such as Indian and Iran as well as the United States to join the treaty, which bans the production, stockpiling, trading and use of anti-personnel mines.

According to the ICBL, Afghanistan has the biggest de-mining program in the world, with 5,000 de-miners at work clearing explosives. Still, it estimates that about 100 people a month are killed or maimed by mines or unexploded ordnance every month.

© 2004, The Associated Press.