IPS-English DISARMAMENT-NICARAGUA: Landmine-Free by 2009?
 
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:12:21 -0800

 
José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Feb 18   (IPS)  - Military sources in Nicaragua and Organisation
of American States (OAS) officials warned that dozens of minefields
remain live and dangerous in this country -- a legacy of the 1981-1990
civil war.

Carlos Orozco, regional coordinator for the OAS Assistance Programme
for Demining in Central America (PADCA), told IPS that 51 minefields
have been discovered in the border zone with Honduras, an area where
about 24,000 campesinos (small farmers) live.

This area was the theatre of war between the so-called ”contra fighters”,
irregular rightwing forces organised and financed by the United States,
and the Sandinista People's Army (EPS), the government armed forces,
reorganised after the leftwing Sandinista guerrillas overthrew the
decades-old dynastic dictatorship of the Somoza family in 1979.

According to official statistics, 50,000 people died, 500,000 were
displaced from their homes and around 50,000 were seriously injured
during the war against the contras.

Orozco said that the army laid 135,000 anti-personnel landmines.
The number of mines laid by the contras, mainly in areas bordering
Costa Rica and Honduras, is unknown.  

The OAS programme's records show that at the end of the war, the
Nicaraguan army had a stockpile of thousands of tons of explosives
and 133,435 landmines, which were systematically destroyed by 2002.

”In 1990, there were 500,000 Nicaraguan civilians living less than
10 kilometres from minefields,” said Orozco.

Over the last five years, complaints from campesinos in the provinces
of Jinotega and Nueva Segovia, bordering on Honduras, as well as from
Matagalpa, northeast of Managua, alerted the military authorities
to explosions occurring in these mountainous areas.

An army investigation uncovered minefields in the vicinity of former
contra military camps.

Staff in charge of the OAS programme identified eight municipalities
with a total at-risk population of over 24,000 people living within
five kilometres of the minefields.

The inspector general of the Nicaraguan army, Major General Ramón
Humberto Calderón, told IPS that this year the armed forces plan to
begin clearing the 51 remaining minefields left by the civil war,
under the National Humanitarian Demining Programme.

The armed forces estimate that there are about 17,000 mines. They
intend to destroy 7,600 this year and the remainder in 2009, if funding
can be secured.

Army chief General Omar Halleslevens said that since the beginning
of mine clearing operations, a total of 157,972 anti-personnel mines
had been destroyed.

Approximately 1.1 million people have benefited directly or indirectly
from the clearing of 397 minefields, military authorities said.

”Around my village there were over 15,000 mines. Many people were
killed, and others left the village because of poverty, as no one
would go into those deadly fields to plant crops. Now there are roads
and schools where there used to be buried bombs,” said Agresio Osejo,
mayor of Somotillo, a municipality in Chinandega province in the west
of the country.

According to the Nicaraguan army, since 1990 they have cleared minefields
on agricultural land, as well as 145 kilometres of roads in the northern
border zone and 96 kilometres along the southern border.

In spite of the progress, retired Colonel William McDonough, head
of Humanitarian Demining at the OAS, does not believe that Nicaragua
will be declared landmine-safe in 2009 as had been hoped in 2005,
when 90 percent of the mines were thought to have been eliminated.

”The remaining 51 minefields are the most remote and inaccessible.
The army won't be able to destroy them in two years,” McDonough, who
has been supervising demining operations in Latin America since the
late 1980s, told IPS.

McDonough is concerned about the cessation of funding by Denmark
and Sweden for Nicaragua's demining operations. Aid from these countries
ended in December.   

However, Canada, the United States, Japan and European Union countries
are continuing to fund landmine clearance, said Orozco.

But in his view, more resources will be needed to eliminate the recently
discovered minefields, as even the OAS is facing budgetary constraints.

”We have about 1.5 million dollars to carry out our demining plans
for 2008, but we need another 3.7 million dollars for demining in
2009, and to continue the victim aid programme until 2010,” Orozco
said.

The OAS has a waiting list of 100 maimed landmine survivors in need
of rehabilitation, he added.

”We have already completed the diagnoses of 98 disabled people, and
we hope to train them in productive work this year so that they can
be integrated as useful members of society, but we need extra resources
to do this,” said Orozco.

Since the victim aid programme began in 1990, 1,187 people have survived
mine explosions, while another 50 have died.

The Defence Ministry's National Demining Commission reported that
in 2007 alone, it provided care for 425 survivors.

”A total of 1,250 consultations took place with people needing ongoing
treatment, who came to have their prosthetic limbs changed, undergo
eye and ear operations and receive psychological help, or other interventions,”
the Commission said.   

Oswaldo Danilo Mairena, a 45-year-old former soldier, is one of the
people being treated by the demining authorities.

He lost his left leg and left eye in 1991 while attempting to deactivate
a landmine. Nearly 17 years later, the ex soldier still requires medical
treatment for his injuries.

”When you trigger a landmine, you go on bleeding forever,” Mairena said.   


*****
+ NICARAGUA: Aid for Former Combatants Finally Comes Through (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40478)
+ DISARMAMENT: The Silent Killers in the World's War Zones - 2006
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35470 )
+ Organisation of American States, OAS - Taking Action Against Landmines
(http://www.oas.org/key%5Fissues/eng/KeyIssue_Detail.asp?kis_sec=11)
+ Programa de Asistencia al Desminado, OEA - in Spanish  (http://www.oeadesminado.org.ni/)


(END/IPS/LA HD IP PR DV HE CO/TRASP-VD-SW/JAS/JSP/DM/08)


 
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