After 22 Years of Work, Mozambique Is Free of Land Mine Peril
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Version 0 of 1. Once contaminated with tens of thousands of land mines from a legacy of war, Mozambique was officially declared cleansed of those weapons on Thursday after 22 years of work. The achievement, celebrated at an event in the capital, Maputo, was considered especially remarkable by disarmament advocates. Some had regarded Mozambique as so riddled with land mines that clearing them would perhaps take centuries. A few decades ago, “many doubted that clearance could be completed in a timely fashion — or that it would take hundreds of years,” said Megan Burke, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines — Cluster Munition Coalition, a leading advocacy group. Most of the clearance work was done by the Halo Trust, a Scotland-based international organization that helps former conflict zones cleanse themselves of land mines and other vestiges of war that can kill and maim long after the combat has stopped. Teams are still at work, for example, clearing World War I battlefields of unexploded ordnance. Overall, Halo said in a statement, its workers cleared more than 171,000 land mines from Mozambique in a decontamination project that began in 1993, accounting for about 80 percent of the total destroyed. Destruction of the last-known land mine took place Wednesday and was witnessed by Cindy McCain, the chairwoman of Halo U.S.A., the group’s American branch, and the wife of Senator John McCain of Arizona. She said in a statement that the destruction symbolized the end of a dark era for Mozambique, “once strewn with the deadly debris of war.” A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique was consumed by conflict for decades, first in a war of independence and then a civil war that lasted until 1992 and left about a million people dead. While the casualties from leftover land mines in Mozambique have not been calculated, Human Rights Watch said in a 1994 report that more than 10,000 people had been killed or maimed by these weapons in just the first few years of peace. Under an international treaty banning land mines, known as the Ottawa Convention, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines is forbidden. Most countries have accepted the treaty. At least 30 countries have not, including the big powers China, Russia and the United States. In June 2014, the Obama administration put the United States on a course to eventually sign the treaty, announcing steps to reduce the American stockpile and find alternative ways to achieve the tactical military advantages of land mines. The United States has been a leading funder of land mine clearance work, including in Mozambique, which now joins 27 other countries formerly contaminated with them that are regarded as free of mines. |