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For more than forty years, Afghanistan has been bombed, shelled and mined.
Bags of ammonium nitrate are now smuggled over the border from Pakistan under the guise
of fertilizer and used in home-made explosives or HMEs. Old Soviet mines and shells still
litter the countryside, and insurgents use innocuous household items to make improvised
explosive devices or IEDs. "These numbers are saved here. Whenever you
are dialling these numbers on the cell phones, then there is caps, electric caps, and automatically
those caps are activated and the IED goes off."
And while stepping on one almost certainly means serious injury or death, disposing of
them can be just as dangerous. Just outside Kabul local elders discover what
they believe to be old Soviet explosives. A specialist team from the Organisation for
Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation or OMAR, led by Hukum Khan Rasooly is called
out to investigate. "They look like a toy for the children. When
they come across them, they do not have that knowledge to recognise that these are UXOs
or sub-ammunition. They start playing with them, and that causes them to blow off. And
most of the casualties now in Afghanistan are from these items."
The first thing that strikes you about these unexploded devices is just how inconspicuous
they are. They really do look like any other rock. And you can just imagine a child from
the local village, which is about 100 metres in that direction walking over and picking
one up. And that is how thousands of people die in Afghanistan every year.
After the explosives have been found, many are destroyed in place, work that requires
a deft hand and nerves of steel. One wrong move could see an explosive ordnance disposer
blown to pieces. But not all explosives are detonated in location.
Explosive ordnance disposal teams from the Afghan security forces collect weapons caches
from all over the country and bring them to police stations like this one where they are
prepared for disposal. "The bags you see contain 300kg of ammonium
paste. We found it in a 2007 model Toyota Corolla ready to use in a suicide attack.
It was discovered at Pul-e-Charkhi Gate in Kabul and diffused."
"The danger is the threats to the roads, villages and people. Children cannot go to school.
It has threatened agriculture. Farmers cannot work freely. "
After the explosives are diffused, they're taken to controlled disposal sites such as
this one in Jalalabad. Today, conventional weapons destruction teams or CWDs funded by
the US Department of State prepare to remotely detonate 2.5 tonnes of explosive materials.
"Around 100,000 tonnes of UXO are separated around Afghanistan. Just imagine, by the collecting
and destroying of those items, how many innocent lives have been saved."
Organisations such as OMAR, HALO and Sterling (two other organisations which like OMAR deal
with mine clearance and explosive ordinance disposal) focus efforts on training diffusers,
clearing ordnance and running programmes to educate local people on the risks of unexploded
ordnance. And with counter-IED now an integral part of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan,
the battle against explosives and the huge loss of civilian life they cause, remains
a top priority for both the international community and the Afghan forces.
"He is ready." This is Jake Tupman, from Jalalabad, for the
NATO Channel.