---

By Ruth Gidley
Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org/
June 3, 2003

---

LONDON (AlertNet) - The war in Iraq has left the country littered with explosives - landmines, ammunition left behind by Iraqi forces and live bomblets from U.S. and British attacks -- which have injured at least 15 people a day since Saddam Hussein's government fell on April 9.

U.S. and British coalition officials said last week they had used cluster bombs in Iraq, in spite of pre-war pleas by advocacy groups to avoid using them in civilian areas where inquisitive children and men looking for scrap metal have paid a high price.

Sean Sutton of U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG) told AlertNet: "There's going to be a lot of reminders around for other children not to play with the stuff. I can't imagine there's going to be a classroom in the north without scarred children in it. It's so widespread."

Many deaths and injuries are not registered, so it is difficult to estimate casualties, but Sutton said MAG had reported 320 injuries in northern Iraq in the first month after April 9.

He said the actual figure was probably much higher, since deaths were recorded only if they took place in hospital, or if MAG gathered data by speaking to victims in hospital and found out from relatives or doctors that other people had been killed in the same accident.

"Averaging all of that out, it was over 500 injuries from April 10 to the end of April, and 80 deaths that we knew of," Sutton said.

In northern Iraq, some explosives date from the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988, military action by Saddam Hussein's government against the predominantly Kurdish population and the first Gulf War in 1991.

Richard Lloyd, director of British NGO Landmine Action, told AlertNet: "The conflict this year has made what we knew was a serious problem much worse."

Lloyd added: "There's no countrywide assessment, but all indications are it's extremely serious."

The most dangerous areas for landmines are on the former front line between the Kurdish-controlled north and government-held areas, and the border with Iran.

Sutton said: "Where there were Iraqi positions, at the moment we must assume, unless proven otherwise, that they were protected with minefields, since it was standard procedure."

There is a danger throughout the country from abandoned Iraqi stockpiles and the debris of cluster bombs and explosives used by U.S. and British forces.

Lloyd said there were reports of unexploded ordnance in Najaf, Nassiriyah and Hillah in the south of the country, as well as Baghdad and Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said on May 29 that British forces had used cluster bombs in built-up areas around Basra. NGOs said there were a large number of strikes around Kirkuk and Mosul.

The use of cluster bombs is controversial because they often fail to explode at the moment of impact and can cause serious injuries if picked up.

The British Defence Ministry says the cluster bombs used by its army have a failure rate of about two percent. The models used by Britain's Royal Air Force and the U.S. army have a failure rate of about 10 percent.

CLUSTER BOMBS QUESTIONED

Sutton said: "Forces using cluster bombs should not use them in civilian areas because they are so sensitive and children, being inquisitive, don't understand what they are and are quite likely to pick them up."

Lloyd said: "Before the conflict, we tried to persuade the United States and United Kingdom to at least restrict their use, based on what we've seen in other recent conflicts where it's caused major humanitarian problems.

"Both the U.S. and the U.K. have used them in massive numbers. The indication that we've got at the moment is that a lot were used in and around heavily populated areas. The legality of using them has got to be questionable, at best."

Ingram told BBC radio: "Cluster bombs are not illegal. They are effective weapons.

"There were troops, there was equipment in and around built-up areas, therefore the bombs were used accordingly to take out the threat to our troops."

Sutton said the biggest problem was stockpiles of munitions left behind by the Iraqi army. "As soon as the command and control collapsed then the soldiers fled or dissolved into the community, leaving piles of stuff. Kids were taking out the boosters from shells and mortars which is like cordite -- gunpowder -- and making big flashes out of it."

"A large amount of the casualties are children, kids being kids," Sutton said.

Of 290 injuries recorded in Kirkuk from April 10 to 30, 133 were children and most of the rest were men, Sutton said.

Hundreds of people have been hurt looking for useful materials - such as barbed wire used to mark minefields - taking unexploded ordnance for scrap, or fixing power lines.

The strategy of organisations such as MAG is to educate communities - working through schools and religious leaders -- about the dangers of explosives, mark dangerous areas and fence them off, and then remove or destroy dangerous items, starting with high-priority areas.

Lloyd said: "A priority for the U.S. and the U.K. must be to get those weapons cleared if Iraq is going to be reconstructed, and if NGOs are going to be able operate safely and we're not going to see a lot of civilian casualties over the coming months."

Sutton said MAG had helped clear villages in northern Iraq where booby traps had been laid with trip wires. "The community was terrified," he said.

Sutton said he was photographing children picking flowers and playing next to a minefield in Baldaresh, on the former front line, when he was approached by a man who told him the family had returned to the village two weeks before, after years in Baghdad. They had fled the bombing and unexploded ordnance in the city. "This is the joke," he told Sutton. "Look what my son's playing with."

"I turned around and his son was holding four machinegun rounds," Sutton said. "I told him what MAG was doing and asked him what he thought. 'I could kiss you!' he said."

MAG has been active in northern Iraq since 1992 and is now working with the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF in the south and centre. Norwegian People's Aid also works in northern Iraq.

Denmark's DanChurchAid, French-based Handicap International and Intersos of Italy are starting operations in the country.

Archie Law, U.N. Mine Action Service (UNMAS) programme officer for Iraq, told AlertNet from New York that the Swiss Federation for Demining was surveying access routes for the U.N. World Food Programme. He said they were checking if food distribution points, warehouses and flour mills were safe from mines and unexploded ordnance.

'COLLABORATIVE EFFORT'

He said that Minetech, a commercial company, was active on behalf of UNMAS in the south, using sniffer dogs to detect explosives, and a geographic information system (GIS) specialist from the Danish Demining Group was providing mapping for UNMAS.

UNMAS is coordinating U.N. work on landmines and its emergency response programme in Iraq is based in Basra.

The U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which offers its project management services to the United Nations and usually implements UNMAS programmes, has been operational for some time in the north of the country.

Law said UNMAS was working closely with occupying authorities. "We're just looking at the overall response to make sure there are no gaps.

"We're not in the business of telling people where to go. It's a very collaborative effort."

British and U.S. forces have been involved in clearing explosives. Sutton said: "Both British and U.S. forces are working on this and doing what they can."

He said their capacity was limited. "In Kirkuk, troops initially were airborne and didn't have an explosives specialist to start with. In Mosul they had engineering capacity and were doing more."

Sutton said: "We were coordinating with them and it obviously made sense to communicate with them on this."

He said in one case MAG teams had been too busy to clear a school that had been used as a munitions dump, where a child had been killed. "We talked to the Americans, who put guards on the school to stop any other kids going in, and later on that day we came and cleared it."

However, he said MAG was careful to show its independence from the military.

Lloyd said he believed British and U.S. forces should pay for clearance of their own munitions, but NGOs would be better placed to do the work.

He said: "Until NGOs are there, the military should be at least warning people, marking contaminated areas and beginning the process of clearing."

Civilian landmine specialists say that the military uses different standards.

"Military ways of clearance are for military reasons -- to get as quickly as possible through a mined area -- and those technologies do not involve 100 percent clearance," Sutton said, adding that, for civilian safety, an area needed to be 100 percent clear.

"When it comes to ordnance it's a different scenario, because it's a matter of clearing everything you can find. And they are doing it. It's just that there's so much of it."

He said MAG had Kurdish teams who were fluent in Arabic and could train Arab teams. As part of the peace process we can have mixed teams of Shi'ites, Arabs and Kurds. Sending 100 percent Kurd teams into Arab areas could be insensitive."

Law said that once the emergency phase was over, UNMAS would try to build institutional capacity and incorporate Iraqis as soon as possible. "We're looking at a well-educated, skilled and talented local staff, and there's no need to pump huge numbers of international staff into this country.

WELL-EDUCATED POPULATION

"It will provide some jobs as well and that's a spin-off that's encouraging."

Sutton said Iraqi medical staff had all the expertise they needed to deal with injuries from explosives.

"It's largely burns and children who've lost eyes. Burnt heads, hands and feet and large amounts of their bodies. Horrible," he said.

"They have the staff, but they don't have enough medicine and they have much less than they had before." He said hospitals had received deliveries from aid convoys in the past month.

Law said it would take some time to deal with unexploded ordnance. "Maybe we're looking at a year or two to sort that out. Then in the north and on the country's borders, and particularly on the border with Iran where there hasn't been any clearance work or surveying to establish the nature of the threat, there's a fair bit of work to do."

Sutton said a team could clear up a cluster bomb strike in a day, because the explosives remained close to the surface.

He said a cluster bomb strike covered an average area of 400 by 300 metres. "To clear that amount for landmines would take at least a month."

Lloyd said: "I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it is one of the 10 worst affected (by landmines and unexploded ordnance) in the world."

---

Direct Link:
--http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/IQmines.htm

---