mines or mushrooms end of a secret war 20 years with mag iraq

MINES OR
MUSHROOMS
Special report from the
Democratic Republic of
Congo
END OF A
SECRET WAR
Reflecting on 40 years
since the end of the
bombing in Lao People’s
Democratic Republic
20 YEARS WITH
MAG IRAQ
Salaam Mohammed talks
about his time as MAG’s
longest-serving member
of national staff in Iraq
WINTER 2012/SPRING 2013
clear
landmines
dest
weaporonsy
COMING SOON!
MAG challenges you to cycle over 400 kilometres through the beautiful landscapes of Laos,
discovering more about its history following years of conflict and isolation. Experience the historic
royal city of Luang Prabang and the rural life of the Hmong and Hkmu.
Email [email protected] for more information.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
4End of a Secret War
Forty years have passed since the end of the bombing in Lao PDR.
We look at the ongoing impact of unexploded ordnance in the country
6Mines or Mushrooms
MAG photographer and International Communications Manager,
Sean Sutton, reports from DR Congo
8Our Impact
MAG News in Brief
1020 years with MAG Iraq
Interview with Salaam Mohammed, MAG Iraq’s
longest serving national member of staff
12Fundraiser Focus
Key supporter Graham Allen tells us why MAG’s
the charity for him
14Landmine Spotlight
The Valmara V69 is one of the most
recognisable and deadly landmines
MAG
68 Sackville Street
Manchester M1 3NJ
United Kingdom
+44 161 236 4311
[email protected]
3
End of a Secret War
by Geoff Turner, Information & Production Manager
When I talk to friends about Laos, most don’t
know where it is, and pretty much all of them
have no idea about what happened there.
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is a SouthEast Asian country that sits landlocked between
Cambodia to the south, Thailand to the west,
Vietnam to the east and China and Myanmar to
the north. It’s also a country with a tragic past from
which it’s still suffering the repercussions. It has
the dubious reputation of being the most bombed
country [per capita] in history and was the victim of
a secret war.
Between 1964 and 1973, during the conflict with
the United States, the North Vietnamese used
a network of supply lines known as the Ho Chi
Minh Trail, running from North Vietnam through
the jungles and mountains of neighbouring Lao
PDR. In an effort to staunch the flow of troops and
weapons, the US dropped more than two million
tons of bombs on the country, including in excess
of 270 million cluster bomb submunitions. The US
war effort in Laos was kept secret from Congress
and the American people, full details of the scale
of the bombing sorties only becoming declassified
in the 1990s.
By the time the aerial campaign ended in 1973
more bombs had been dropped on Lao PDR than
the Allies dropped on Germany and Japan during
World War II. Many of these failed to explode when
they hit the ground, leaving the landscape littered
with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of
unexploded bombs, as lethal today as when they
fell from the sky four decades ago.
The often brightly coloured cluster bomb munitions
are dubbed ‘bombies’ by Laotian villagers. They
are still found in the clefts of bamboo branches,
by children playing in shallow dirt, or in the fields
where farmers till the soil by striking the earth with
a hoe.
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Since 1974 more than 20,000 people, many of them children, have been killed or injured by bombs
or other unexploded ordnance. Today, the lives of around 300 Laotian people are still devastated
each year by the deadly remnants of this war.
January 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the end of the bombing. Twenty years ago, MAG
received a request from the Mennonite Central Committee for technical support to clear unexploded
bombs in the country. Since 2004, MAG has cleared more than 38.7 million square metres of
contaminated land, destroying 161,802 items of unexploded ordnance. As a result, 450,894 people
now have more safe land for farming, clean drinking water, latrines, irrigation for rice crops, school
compounds and roads.
And things continue to improve. Today Lao PDR has a greater national capacity to deal with the
issue of unexploded ordnance. A National Regulatory Authority has responsibility for the
coordination of clearance activities and ensuring high quality standards, while MAG’s own
programme now relies heavily on Laotian expertise, developed by training national staff over the
years. The task is ongoing and the challenges ahead remain considerable, however the positive
impact on Lao PDR’s poorest communities is undeniable.
Additional content taken from Laos: Legacy of a Secret by Sean Sutton
The landscape in many parts of Lao PDR is scarred by bomb craters
5
or
mines or
mines
mushrooms
mushrooms
A special report from the Democratic Republic of Congo by
Sean Sutton, International Communications Manager
I recently spent a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo documenting the impact of
armed violence - especially the remnants of war - and the work MAG is carrying out here.
The first leg of my mission was to Bas Congo, a region south and west of the capital Kinshasa.
A narrow strip pushes out to the coast where it is only 20 kilometres wide, sandwiched
between Angola to the south and Angolan Cabinda to the north. The area has vast oil
reserves and is very important for both countries.
This is also where the mighty river Congo meets the sea. Ships travel up river to
Matadi where there is a huge port. This stretch of river is very dramatic and the
scenery is stunning. It is well documented in a number of books describing
Stanley’s exploration to map the Congo for King Leopold in the 1800s.
MAG is working on a minefield that stretches across about a kilometre
of relatively flat ground. The land was mined in 1974 to stop attacks
by rebel forces in Cabinda; it is the only area where tanks could
cross as the other parts of the border is made up of steep gullies
that are impassable in a vehicle.
The team of deminers is made up of soldiers serving with
the FARDC, the national army. This is the case with
some parts of the MAG DR Congo programme as
we work towards developing a national capacity
that can operate to international standards. The
team are employed by MAG and supported
by a Technical Field Manager, a medic and
drivers.
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The MAG tented base camp is just a few hundred metres from the
minefield. The Technical Field Manager Daniel Dobbs doesn’t find it
easy but is keen to get the work done. He has built a small gym for
himself out of wood to keep fit and lives on Portuguese chorizo, which
is imported from Angola.
When clearance here is complete it will be handed to the local
community. I met three women, Pitu, Kunji and Fyuti who were
harvesting cassava leaves in their field right next to the minefield.
Their village was only about 400 metres away across a gully. When
I asked them about MAG’s work and how it will help them they were
ecstatic. “We thank MAG. We thank MAG so much,” Kunji said. “We
know what mines can do. They can cut off your hand or your foot. It
is very dangerous here. This is a very good place for mushrooms and
now we will be able to collect them.”
Opening up access to vital agriculture and food sources through
clearance is an essential part of MAG’s work, ensuring that safe land
is once again handed back to communities that need it most.
See this MAG deminer in action in DR Congo by visiting
http://www.maginternational.org/MAG/en/news/video-demining-in-drc/
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9
“
People thought I was
mad and should have
been doing
something else
with my degree,
but seeing people
I knew killed and
injured each and
every day left a
great impression
on me
“
Salaam Mohammed is MAG Iraq’s longestserving member of national staff and was
the first to work his way up through the ranks
to become a Technical Field Manager.
After leaving Baghdad University with a
Degree in Management in 1992, Salaam found
himself at a crossroads. Initially wanting to
continue studying at post-graduate level he
found this option blocked when he refused to
become a member of Sadam Hussein’s Ba’ath
party. Instead he returned north to the Kurdish
village of Penjwen, where he’d grown up,
and it was there that he became aware of the
ongoing hidden danger caused by landmines.
Friends and neighbours, both young and old,
were suffering dreadful injuries and even being
killed on a daily basis by landmines left over
from the Iran/Iraq war.
Still considering what to do with his life, he
was told by a friend that a British organisation
was in nearby Suleymaniyah looking to
recruit volunteers to become deminers. That
organisation was MAG and Salaam made a
decision that would change the path of his life
forever.
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aq
AG Ir
ith M
with
MAG
Iraq
ears w
0 yyears
220
Interview by Geoff Turner, Information & Production Manager
“They were looking for people who could read and write
in Kurdish,” he remembered. “I was one of the first 72
volunteers, but I was the only person there who was
university educated. People thought I was mad and
should have been doing something else with my degree,
but seeing people I knew killed and injured each and
every day left a great impression on me. Communities
just wanted to get on with their lives; plough their fields
and grow crops, but this was proving impossible due to
the mines. At that point I knew there was something I had
to do. I knew that I had to help them in any way I could.”
Training started in August of 1992 and after its completion
Salaam began work as part of a team clearing in and
around Penjwen. He was quickly promoted to Team
Leader then took on a Supervisor position for multiple
teams working in Penjwen and Halabja Districts. After
that he fulfilled a range of roles in many locations. By
1995 he was the first national staff member to run his
own operations base out of Maydan Sub-District. After
working there for eight months he was promoted to the
post of National Senior Technical Advisor and worked
as counterpart to the Senior Technical Advisor. In 1996
he became Head of the Training and Evaluation Unit for
MAG Iraq. By the time of the conflict between 2000 and
2003 he was working as Technical Operations Manager
for the programme.
Following the liberation of Iraq by international coalition
forces, he worked in the Governorates of Erbil, Duhok,
Kirkuk and Mosul leading MAG teams in the clearance of
mines and unexploded ordnance in the newly liberated
areas. During 2004 and 2005 he led a project assisting
the reintegration of former combatants into civilian life by
training former members of the Iraqi National Guard as
deminers.
In 2006 he had the opportunity to travel on behalf of
MAG; seconded to Lao PDR for three months to assist
MAG operations in the Kammouane project. “Going from
Iraq to Lao was a new environment for me in different
ways; on the technical side of life I learned a lot from
the MAG TFMs in Lao on how to deal with unexploded
ordnance and practiced new disposal techniques on
American bombs and submunitions.
Also I learned a lot about Laotian history and culture and
how to gain the trust of national staff trust to maximise
their effort in achieving MAG’s aims in saving lives there.”
Also in 2006 he led a team of Kurdish Supervisors and
Team Leaders to the Lebanon programme following the
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. There he acted as
a Technical Project Manager running training sessions in
Battle Area Clearance (BAC) and recognising and dealing
with cluster sub-munitions.
After a busy 20 years with MAG he now works as a
Technical Field Manager in MAG Iraq’s largest sector,
Chamchamal. Here he manages nine Mine Action Teams
two Conventional Weapons Destruction teams, two Mine
Detection Dog teams and manual support teams, two
mechanical teams and three Community Liaison teams.
It’s a very different career than the one he imagined for
himself after leaving university back in 1992.
Reflecting on his achievements over the last twenty
years, Salaam smiles as he says, “I learned English
and I also learned about a great many different types of
landmine and unexploded ordnance. But without doubt
the greatest achievement is when I return to places that
were cleared years ago and think about the lives that
have been saved. Communities always remember us,
and the work we did. We’re always welcomed with open
arms.” Thinking about how MAG has changed his life,
Salaam concludes by saying: “MAG hasn’t just changed
my life, but also the lives of so many people on a daily
basis. I remember watching farmers plough safe land
almost as soon as it was cleared. MAG’s achievement in
Iraq has been incredible and I’m proud to continue to play
my part.”
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Fundraiser
Focus
Ingrid Turner, Community Fundraising Officer
talks to MAG Ambassador, Graham Allen
“I believe that everyone has basic
rights to safety, food, clean water,
education and employment. I feel that
I need to help in some way to make
this possible. No matter how little my
effort is, it is stillb etter than no effort
at all.”
If you would like to
know more about
supporting MAG in your
local community, contact
ingrid.turner@
maginternational.org
or call 0161 238 5437
We would love to hear
from you!
Tell us a bit about yourself...
I have run a commercial finance business for 23 years. Whatever
challenges I have faced, including recessions and economic downturns,
I have always been aware that there are people in the world facing much
bigger problems. I have travelled to countries where remnants of war
deprive people daily of the opportunity to make a living by denying them
access to education, land, resources, health and in many cases to life itself.
I have also seen the way that communities can flourish again once their
land has been cleared of the remnants of war.
Why have you supported MAG for so many years?
The reason I chose MAG is because of the difference it makes to
communities by empowering them to rebuild their lives and businesses.
People want their children to grow up in safety and to build their own lives.
It gives me great personal satisfaction to know that I have been able to help
people less well off than myself to live in a safe environment and to build
better futures. MAG brings multiple benefits to communities by training
local men and women to clear the remnants of war, thereby providing
employment to local people whilst enabling the rest of the community to
return to education, agriculture, industry and business.
What have you done to raise funds for MAG?
I did a sponsored trek across the Namib desert, have talked to schools,
universities, churches and community groups, run awareness and
merchandise stands at events, assisted MAG at a national abseil event,
and organised a music event.
What have you got planned for the future?
Lots more! I’m particularly keen to engage more schools with MAG’s work,
hopefully visiting more countries and writing about my experiences there,
and planning film nights and talks.
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www.maginternational.org
Saturday 8 June – Sunday 9 June 2013
Registration fee: £39
Sponsorship: £175 minimum
MAG has guaranteed places on the 2013 Nightrider cycle challenge.
Join Team MAG and raise funds for our life-saving global landmine
and UXO clearance operations.
The London Nightrider is a unique 100km cycle ride past the capital’s
most iconic landmarks while the city sleeps.
Numbers are limited so register today to secure your place on this
great event by emailing [email protected] or
calling 0161 238 5437.
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LANDMINE SPOTLIGHT:
VALMARA V69
BY SEAN SUTTON
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
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With its spiked crown of fuse prongs, the Valmara V69 is an all too familiar sight in northern Iraq and is also
known to have been used in Angola, Egypt, Kuwait, Mozambique, Sudan and Western Sahara (reference:
Jane’s Mines and Mine Clearance). When detonated, the body of the mine jumps about a metre into the air before
exploding. More than 1,000 steel fragments packed inside the mine are sprayed outwards by the blast. They tear
through flesh and bone and can injure people at least 50 metres from where the mine was laid; people close to the
blast are ripped apart.
The V69 Valmara was made and sold to Iraq by Valsella, an Italian company, in breach of the United Nations arms
embargo imposed during the Iran-Iraq war. Work by Italian Customs and a number of journalists in the early 1990s
brought the arms sale to light, resulting in the prosecution of seven officials from Valsella.
Through the Italian Campaign to Ban Landmines, the impact of these mines on the
population of northern Iraq was brought to the attention of the workers at the Valsella
factory. The workers and their union, despite the threat to their jobs, came out in
support of the campaign and demnaded an end to landmine production at the
company. Supported by the Italian government, production was halted without the
loss of jobs that many had feared.
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18-23 JUNE 2013
A physical challenge with a historical twist!
Cycle 500km from London to Paris taking in Normandy landing beaches and WWII sites to commemorate
D-Day 2013 and finishing under the Eiffel Tower.
We will be accompanied throughout by an expert battlefield guide, Andrew Date of Battlefield Journey.
For more information visit www.maginternational.org/ddaycycle
call 0161 238 5486
or email [email protected]