IRAQI KURDISTAN: Landmines in the fields–an ever present danger

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CPTnet
6 June 2013
IRAQI KURDISTAN: Landmines in the fields–an ever present danger

 by Kathy Moorhead Thiessen

IMG_1701  
Field where the mine exploded  

As the recent CPT delegation climbed the road into the
Quandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan we felt the coolness of snowfields still
present at the end of May.  The
tips of the rocky range marked the border with Iran.  We emerged from our minibus in the idyllic mountain village,
Kani Spi, to spy the blue tractor moving below us on the field.  It made its way up to the yard and
stopped.  Fifteen-year-old Halgurd (named for the highest mountain in
Iraq) climbed out.  He greeted us
and we all introduced ourselves.

As he spoke to Mohammed,
our translator, he quietly and matter-of-factly told us that the day before a
mine had exploded under his tractor.  “I was very scared.  But not even the tractor was harmed.  The mine made a big hole deep into the
ground.  I was OK too.”  Halgurd’s father lost a leg to a mine
and he knows people who have lost their lives to the same destructive weapons.

Later, his father, Mahmoud, told us again about their situation.  The shelling from Iran has stopped for
now, and he hopes it will end forever.  However, the mines remain an ever-present danger. 

CPT Iraqi Kurdistan has visited with this family many times and written
releases about life in Kani Spi.  The
incident of four days ago impressed on the team again that their situation with
the mines has not changed.  Mahmoud
said, “We must keep a careful eye on our children, especially those who visit
us.  Sometimes even the adults get
absent-minded and may walk into the area of mines.”

IMG_1703  

Halgurd and two CPT delegates
sitting at the head of the
White
Spring (“Kani Spi” in Kurdish.)

 

He requested that we go to the office of the authorities who are in charge of mine
clearing in the region to ask them if they would come again to Kani Spi.  He said, “The mines that are far away on
the mountains do not bother us.  We
can avoid them.  But there are mines close to our house and we have
asked them many times to clear them. 
They still have not come back.”  He also asked that they come to look again at the field,although it was cleared again last year.  The mines have been there since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s
when the mountains were littered with these tiny, inexpensive, and volatile
weapons.  The weather and seasons
sometimes bury them deep or bring them to the surface.  Then an incident can happen like the
recent explosion.

That evening, we spoke with his wife, Maryam, and expressed our gratitude that the
detonated mine had not harmed Halgurd.  “Thanks be to Allah,” she said.

The next day the delegation stopped at the mine clearing office in the nearby
city.  We presented the director
with a letter asking him to consider working again in Kani Spi.  We have not yet heard his reply.

 
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