Landmines Litter Afghanistan; Blasts Cripple Thousands
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, 1 jan 02 (Sun-Sentinel)--
By Letta Tayler

The strange toy Rahmatullah's brother had found in a field was green and conical -- something to toss or shake like a rattle, the boys thought. So did one found by a third brother, who began tapping it with a stone.

"It exploded," Rahmatullah recalled. "Seven of my relatives died."

The boy, 13, ticked off the dead relatives on his fingers: His mother. One brother. Two sisters. One cousin. Two aunts.

The blast also blew off Rahmatullah's left leg. For the seven years since then he's used a prosthesis. "Every time I look down at my leg," he said, "I remember what happened to my family."

Rahmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, is among an estimated 400,000 people who have been injured by land mines in the 23 years that this country has been at war. Almost half those people have lost one or more limbs.

Although the war is over, those numbers are expected to keep rising for the foreseeable future: Afghanistan, according to land-mine experts, harbors the highest number of unexploded land mines in the world.

Now that tenuous peace and a new interim government have been established in Afghanistan, clearing land mines is one of the most pressing priorities. More than 90 percent of the land mines are concentrated in villages, farms, grazing lands and other civilian areas. As a result, three-fourths of land-mine victims are civilian, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Until we clear the mines, Afghans can't return to their homes and start redeveloping abandoned areas," said Fazel Karim, director of the national Organization for Mine Clearing and Afghan Rehabilitation, or OMAR. "And until Afghans return to their homes, there can be no real peace."

About 5 million to 7 million land mines and other unexploded ordnance are scattered and burrowed throughout this country the size of Texas, Karim said.

Mine clearing programs ground to a virtual halt after the United States began bombing Afghanistan Oct. 7. Many of those programs are only now resuming, and the last round of conflict has increased their work.

The risk of maiming and death from mines and unexploded ordnance "is much, much greater since Sept. 11," said Dan Kelly, program manager for the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan, an umbrella group of 15 mine clearing programs. Kelly attributed the increased risk not only to the Taliban, who set additional mines before fleeing, but also to U.S. bombing of military compounds that spewed unexploded ordnance.

After the U.S. air strikes began, the U.N. Mine Action Center pulled almost all of its 4,900 land-mine surveyors, de-miners and trainers from Afghanistan. The umbrella group has resumed de-mining and hopes to have its programs back in full swing by mid-January.

Throughout the latest conflict many other programs continued to operate for mine victims, including the Afghan Amputee Bicyclists for Rehabilitation and Recreation, which is funded by UNICEF. On a recent day at the program's Jalalabad office, a half-dozen boys who had lost a leg to a land mine or to polio were learning to ride bicycles. Those with amputations below the knee learned to use both pedals; those with amputations above the knee rigged a bungee cord from the handlebar to the pedal that couldn't be used.

Each child receives a bicycle to bring home at the end of the monthlong program, which has taught 2,700 amputees over the past nine years. Directors said they could easily quadruple that number if they had the funding. They are impatient to extend the program to girls, who under the Taliban couldn't participate because they were banned from sports. Girls and women also weren't allowed to attend mine awareness classes because they were barred from all educational activities.

If the boys looked happy with their bikes, the faces of amputees were uniformly grim at a nearby Red Cross center that fits amputees with prosthetic limbs.

"The patients are filled with despair when they arrive," said Mohammed Ayoub, the Red Cross clinic's director, who like all other staff members is an amputee. "The first thing I do is show them my own amputated leg and say, 'We can work like normal people.'"

In war-wracked Afghanistan, however, even the most able-bodied or educated people have a hard time finding jobs. Among amputees the most common profession is begging.

Letta Tayler writes for Newsday, a Tribune Co. newspaper.