DUSHANBE, January 3, 209, Asia-Plus — Tajik border guard on a routine patrol in Khatlon’s Shahritus district has been seriously injured after a landmine along the Tajik-Afghan border has exploded.
According to the Tajik Mine Action Cell (TMAC), the incident took place near the border village of Aivaj on December 27 2008, around at 3:00 p.m. Border guard Rajab Rahimov, 22, was injured in the mine explosion. Rahimov is currently in serious health condition at military hospital in Dushanbe receiving necessary medical treatment.
We will recall that TMAC demining teams are clearing the mine-strewn areas that are a legacy of the country’s disastrous civil war in the 1990s. Most land mines in Tajikistan were laid during the devastating five-year civil war, which ended in 1997. In many areas the mines still pose a deadly threat as well as a major impediment to effective land use.
Additional mines were laid along the Tajik-Uzbek border by the authorities in Tashkent in the late 1990s. The action was reportedly taken to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). However, the victims of this Uzbek government’s unilateral decision have been civilians living in border areas. Most the victims were women and children who were gathering firewood along the border as well as shepherds pasturing cattle in the areas. Almost all who have survived have become disabled for life.
Since 1992 when landmines wee first laid in Tajikistan, antipersonnel mines and unexploded ordnances (UXO) have killed 351 people and injured 443 others in the country. In 2008, four persons, including two children, were killed nine other, including three children, were injured in mine explosions, according to TMAC.
Last year, the TMAC demining teams cleared 1,003,307 square meters (more than 100 hectares) of land. Since the beginning of the Program, 2,271,071 sq meters of land have been cleared.
In 2008, 5,371 landmines, 407 unexploded ordnances (bombs and other types of exploded munitions), 66 cluster bombs and more than 4,659 bullets f small arms and light weapons were neutralized, according to TMAC. Since the beginning of the Program, 9,956 landmines, 1,386 unexploded ordnances, 498 cluster bombs and 4,659 bullets of small arms and light weapons have been discovered and neutralized in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan signed the Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on their Destruction (the Ottawa Convention) in 2000. All signatory states undertook to ensure the destruction of all anti-personnel land mines they possess, as soon as possible but no later than 10 years after signing the convention. In the case of Tajikistan, this means that the country should be mine-free by 2010.
