DUSHANBE, September 22, 2008, Asia-Plus — Two persons have been killed and two others have been injured in landmine explosions in Tajikistan since the beginning of this year, Jonmahmad Rajabov, director of the Tajik Mine Action Cell (TMAC), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
Three explosions have occurred on the Tajik-Uzbek border in the Sughd province. Two persons have been killed one other has been injured in those landmine explosions. Landmine explosions that occurred in the Saghirdasht area of GBAO’s Darvoz district left one injured.
The latest explosion occurred on the Tajik-Uzbek border in Sughd’s Panjakent district last Friday. A 36-year-old shepherd from the village Jonbuloq, Kosatarosh jamoat was killed after a land mine along the Tajik-Uzbek border exploded.
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).
The Uzbek government’s unilateral decision to mine rural border areas between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan highlights a serious problem for many Tajik citizens living in border areas. The civilians of these rural border areas suffer the most by Tashkent’s latest security initiative. Most of 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. There are no any special engineering and technical installations on the border, which would demarcate the border. Another words, Tajik civilians living along the country’s mountainous, rural border, could never be sure whether they were in Tajik territory or had inadvertently crossed over into Uzbekistan.
According to TMAC, demining teams have cleared more than 500,000 square meters of land and defused more than 2,000 antipersonnel mines and unexploded ordnances over the first eight months years of this year. In all, they have cleared some 2 million square of land so far and have to clear another 20 millions square meters of land, the TMAC director said.
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.
