wfn.org | Land mines cripple peace in Angola

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 23, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
10-31-71B{319}

NOTE: Photographs and related reports, UMNS stories #318, #313 and #312 are
available.

By Paul Jeffrey*

LUENA, Angola (UMNS) -- Like many teen-agers around the world, 16-year-old
Ester Cagila enjoys dancing. Yet Cagila dances so that other Angolans will
know more about the threat posed by land mines, a brutal tool of war that
continues to kill and maim Angolans even though their country is now at
peace.

Cagila was forced to flee her home village of Luacano in 1998 when fighting
between government forces and UNITA rebels made life impossible. Shortly
before that, Cagila's grandmother had stepped on a land mine while planting
cassava in a nearby field. The old woman lost a leg and uses crutches today.
Cagila says she often thinks of her grandmother when dancing. "I'm doing
this so that it won't happen to anyone else," she said.

Cagila is part of a theater and dance troupe in the Moxico province that
educates rural villagers about the dangers of land mines. The group is
sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), a member of Action by
Churches Together (ACT), the international alliance of churches and church
agencies responding to emergencies. The United Methodist Committee on Relief
(UMCOR) is a major member of ACT.

Originally formed in 1990, the group is called "Havemos de voltar" ("We will
return.") All the participants are people displaced by Angola's long civil
war, which finally came to an end after UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was
killed in February.

During the past decade, the group has used its drumming, dancing and skits
to help educate Angolans about HIV/AIDS and other community health issues.
With the fierce violence of the war's final stage, group members shifted
their focus to land mines, which have maimed or killed more than 86,000
Angolans in recent years. The Moxico province, where Savimbi made his final
stand, is probably the most heavily mined area of Angola today. While
estimates of the total number of land mines here vary, they all run into the
millions. Yet de-mining experts say numbers alone are misleading.

"No matter the total number, of all the countries in the world Angola is the
one most heavily impacted by land mines," said Steve Priestley, director of
operations for Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British nongovernmental
organization that works in 12 countries around the world. In Moxico
province, MAG works closely with the LWF/ACT team. 

"Whatever you want to do, whether it's plant a field or rehabilitate a
school or open a road, you've first got to clear away the mines. The threat
of mines has paralyzed the country," Priestley said.

More than 70 types of mines--manufactured in at least 22 countries -- have
been planted in Angola during recent decades. Mines were installed by the
government military, the South Africans, the Cubans, the Russians, UNITA,
the police, by neighboring governments and several other Angolan armed
groups. This panoply of mine layers makes de-mining -- which includes
understanding the strategy and patterns of mine laying -- even more
complicated. Mine clearance experts say only the Cubans made accurate maps
of their minefields.

The tens of thousands of one-legged Angolans hobbling around their country
on crutches provide graphic evidence that most of the mines laid here are
small anti-personnel mines designed to maim rather than kill. Yet the
explosives are often targeted at civilians, most often women and children,
rather than soldiers. Planted by water sources and under shade trees in the
savannah, they are designed to terrorize, often with the goal of
depopulating the countryside.

Several techniques are employed in removing mines, but none alone is
sufficient for all cases. Metal detectors and specially trained dogs are
often useful. Mine-removal machines are employed in some places where the
terrain permits, yet certain mines, designed to be thrown from helicopters,
can withstand the momentary impact of a vehicle-mounted mechanical flail and
not explode. The sustained pressure from a human foot, however, will
activate the mine.

Some mines are specially designed to thwart-and kill de-miners. On the road
from Luena to Lucusse, which MAG cleared for emergency use in early July,
the organization has found mines that are activated by the magnetic field of
metal detectors. It also found one mine, whose battery had fortunately run
down, which was designed to explode when light hit an optical switch on the
mine casing. It may have been one of these mines that killed a MAG de-miner
on the Lucusse road in 1997.

Unexploded ordnance littering the countryside also poses a deadly threat.
Many Angolans have been killed while disassembling unexploded rockets and
artillery shells in search of the mythical "red mercury," a substance whose
existence is reportedly promulgated by unscrupulous metal scrap dealers.

Peace in this southern African country has brought the dramatic plight of
hundreds of thousands of desperate Angolans to the world's attention, and
United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations are rushing to get
food and other aid to displaced populations and demobilized combatants and
their families in scores of isolated locations around the country.

Mine experts warn that accidents are bound to happen unless roads can be
completely cleared ahead of aid convoys. Aid workers acknowledge the risk
that humanitarian action can imply in a place like Angola.

No one can guarantee perfect safety, a point that was loudly underscored on
July 9 when an anti-tank mine exploded under an aid convoy in Bie province,
injuring two people. And there aren't enough de-miners to go around.
Priestley noted that the focus of de-mining operations shouldn't be "chasing
mines" but rather lowering their impact on civilian populations.

"You can run around clearing mines forever and have very little impact on
people's lives. So we focus on creating what we call a 'safer village,'
where we enter a village and quickly do limited clearance of the important
paths and areas for housing and cultivation, and demarcate the remainder,"
Priestley said. "This means that life can begin again, the men can go to the
fields, the women to the well."

This approach depends on the participation of people in the community, and
MAG has partnered with LWF/ACT in Moxico to make mine awareness and
clearance an integral component of rehabilitating lives and communities.
Since the mid-90s, the two organizations have worked together -- MAG
clearing areas where LWF/ACT would then rehabilitate a war-ravaged clinic or
school. LWF/ACT field staff regularly includes mine awareness in their
education about agriculture or community health. And Ester Cagila continues
dancing.

With financial support from ACT member Finchurch Aid, LWF/ACT has also
sponsored one of MAG's mine clearance teams in Moxico province. It was that
team which provisionally cleared the Luena-Lucusse road in early July,
permitting the transport of urgent U.N.-provided food aid to the families of
demobilized UNITA combatants at Lucusse.

On July 5, the Angolan government ratified the Ottawa Convention prohibiting
the use of anti-personnel land mines. So perhaps no more land mines will be
laid here. Yet millions remain, waiting quietly for a chance to take a limb
or a life.
# #-#
*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America. He was on
special assignment in Angola for ACT International.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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