10 Million Mines Make FootTravel a Risky Business
Khwaja Bahauddin, Afghanistan, Chicago Tribune, Stephen Franklin, 29 October 2001

Abdul Magid knew well the risk when he set out. He had faced it many times before. To cross the Taliban's lines, he had to pass their land mines, and they were scattered everywhere on his way to the bazaar.

But what choice did he have, Magid would ask later from his hospital bed. He is a poor merchant who must travel to and from the market to buy and sell goods. And he was trying to be careful the night that he or a friend stepped on a mine.

About midnight, he and two friends were walking very slowly with their donkeys when someone tripped the mine. Luckily when it exploded, passersby quickly strapped him to their donkey and took him to the nearest hospital, a two-day journey in the baking sun.

The small, grizzled 60-year-old merchant lost his right leg. But he is still a lucky man in an unlucky land.

Most land mine victims, if not killed in the blast, die before they can reach one of the few hospital or clinics in the country, said Dr. Said Ibrahim Kowit, acting minister of public health for the government driven into refuge in northern Afghanistan in 1996 by the Taliban.

Haunted by war and mayhem for more than 20 years, Afghanistan has an estimated 10 million unexploded mines, according to various United Nations agencies. While the counts vary, there is no ignoring the potential threat of these mines to U.S. ground forces and others involved in the anti-terrorism offensive in Afghanistan. They would be fighting on unfamiliar terrain and in winter conditions that might hinder the detection of mines and other unexploded ordnance.

During the past decade, UN organizations have defused or exploded 650,000 mines in Afghanistan. But many have not been detected or surveyed, according to the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation, a UN-sponsored agency.

The UN estimates that 881 million square yards of minefields exist in Afghanistan. It also notes unexploded munitions from the U.S.-led bombing campaign endanger civilians.

The UN said Wednesday that nearly 200 pieces of unexploded ordnance about the size of soft drink cans are scattered around the Afghan city of Herat.

OMAR reports an estimated 400,000 Afghans have died over the years from land mines, with four out of five being civilians like Magid. About 4,000 die yearly from land mines, OMAR says. But that number may be low, health officials caution, because record keeping is far from complete.

Nor is the problem likely to fade away. In addition to the mines planted during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and the civil war that followed, the Taliban continued to mine roads and fields near their front lines against an attack by opposition forces of the Northern Alliance.

The tragedy is compounded by the lack of roads, the lack of hospitals and the danger that mine victims face in traveling to areas close to the Taliban's lines. In northern Afghanistan there was only one facility that helped replace lost limbs for land-mines victims until recently, but it was a four-day trip away from Khwaja Bahauddin across difficult and dangerous roads. Another facility opened recently in a city that is only a day's ride away. The facility that has been treating Abdul for the past month has only four rooms with beds. The emergency room is outside, shielded by straw mats barely able to keep out the powerful dust clouds. There is hardly any examination equipment, hardly any medicine, hardly anything. There are, however, two young doctors and their assistants.

It is the only so-called public hospital for eight surrounding districts in the Tarhar province, which has more than 100,000 inhabitants. The Iranian government recently set up a more impressive hospital, but it focuses on caring for soldiers from the Northern Alliance.

The tiny facility is nearly always busy treating people with malaria or tuberculosis, treating land-mine victims and treating people wounded in the Taliban shelling of villages under the control of the Northern Alliance.

In the room where Magid, the merchant, was resting recently were two such victims of village attacks. One young man was injured by shell fragments and another shot by a Taliban sniper. They were villagers, not fighters.

As Magid uncomfortably turned in his bed, Abdul Sattar, a hospital worker, showed a pair of crutches that had been prepared for him. They were crudely cut from wood.

“I was afraid that night,” Magid said as he recalled the incident one month ago.

“But I had to find food for my family. I have five to feed,” he continued. “Now what can I do? I will be like this for the future. I have no future. I have nobody to help me.”

Still, he was lucky.

The night of the land-mine explosion, he survived. His two friends did not.

Copyright © 2001 Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved.