Landmines from Afghanistan’s war are still killing civilians – including children

Landmines and other explosives left behind after decades of war killed at least 92 people and injured 379 others in Afghanistan last year.

More than two thirds of the victims were children, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Afghanistan now ranks third globally for casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance, UNAMA said in its latest report published this week.

“Civilians continue to bear the brunt of this contamination,” Nick Pond, head of the UN Mine Action Section in Afghanistan told The Telegraph. “And it’s overwhelmingly children who are paying the price.”

With girls largely confined to their homes, young boys are disproportionately affected, he added.

“Boys [make up] by far the most casualties, by a long way,” Mr Pond said. “They are herding animals in the hills, walking to school, or simply playing. They’ll find it potentially buried, and throw stones at it or pick it up to see what it is, and that’s when it explodes.”

UN data shows that at least 1069 sq km of Afghanistan is known to be contaminated by landmines, including anti-personnel and anti-tank mines.

Despite clearance efforts that have neutralised nearly 25,000 devices, large areas of countryside remain dangerous and millions of Afghans live in areas contaminated with unexploded ordnance.

“Their origin can be from any of the periods of conflict, Soviet-era munitions, weapons from the post-2001 war, or more recent fighting,” Mr Pond said.

With global sanctions on the Taliban regime, poverty has intensified the danger. Children and adults sometimes attempt to dismantle unexploded shells to sell them metal as scrap.

In one incident in September in northern Afghanistan, seven members of the same family, including parents and five children, were killed when one of the children brought an explosive device into the house.

“These reports come in quite regularly to us, unfortunately,” Mr Pond said. “The war has not ended for these families. It’s just lying in their fields and orchards.”

The highest casualty rates are recorded in provinces that saw intense fighting over many years, including Kunar in the east and Helmand in the south.

“The pattern is very clear,” Mr Pond said. “The places that witnessed heavy fighting, there is heavy contamination of munitions that didn’t explode.”

Since the fighting stopped after the US withdrew its last troops in 2021, mine clearing agencies have been able to gain access to contaminated areas that were once too dangerous to clear.

But civilians are also returning to areas that once saw heavy fighting, exposing them to heightened risk, Mr Pond said.

“It’s a sort of double-edged sword,” Pond said. “We now have access to clear areas we couldn’t reach before, but it also means the civilians can go everywhere, and many of them have no awareness training. They’re walking straight into contaminated fields.”

The biggest challenge at the moment for civilians is the unexploded ordnance lying on the ground, not marked minefields.

“What was once a battlefield is now somebody’s orchard, or their route to school, or a ditch by a road or a hillside, these are the places killing people now.”

While coalition forces did not lay any mines in Afghanistan, many Afghans are still being killed and injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted and left by the Taliban.

“The Taliban laid IEDs to target Nato and Afghan forces,” he said. “So areas where Nato operated, especially Helmand, are heavily contaminated with IED mines. That clearance work is still ongoing.”

Mines and unexploded ordnance have killed an estimated 40,000 people in Afghanistan since 1979, according to the UN.

Yet the clearance effort has slowed in recent years amid funding shortages – the mine action workforce has shrunk from about 15,000 people in 2011 to just 1,100 today.

“Afghanistan is no longer high on the list of humanitarian priorities,” Mr Pond said. “That’s the reality. But the contamination is still here, and people are still dying.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]