Demining Starts Healing War-torn Northern Sri Lanka

The checkpoints begin about ten kilometres north of Vavuniya at Omanthe. First the ones manned by the Sri Lankan army and then a kilometre later ones manned by the Tamil Tigers. They are a maze of bureaucracy and vehicle buggering, more so on the Tigers side. Forms have to be filled up, vehicles have to be examined from every angle, reasons for travel have to be given and then reasons have to be cross checked by wireless by Tiger personnel. All this while motor cycle borne Tiger troops whizz past the checkpoints, instilling in your Sinhalese driver a sense of unease that you have to work hard to dispel.

The road rollers are advance recce parties for VIP Tiger movement. Of course, these days they are on the lookout for any attempted mischief from Karuna’s breakaway Tiger outfit. Apart from that the only vermin around are undefused mines, planted by both sides in huge numbers and which are now being prised out and defused by some 800 de-miners in the LTTE controlled areas.

Says Thomas Gillhespy of the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), in Killinochi, where the LTTE Peace secretariat is located, "If the peace holds then northern Sri Lanka might me mine free by the end of 2006.
Since 1999, roughly 43,000 sq km have been made mine free and nearly
192,161 mines of all types have been defused."

There are about 3-4 foreign NGOs working in Kilinochchi, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu and Jaffna districts clearing the mines by funding and providing training to a local outfit called the Humanitarian Demining Unit (HDU)with the most effective work happening to the north of the Elephant pass. The pass and beyond saw some of the most intense fighting and civilian disruption of life with the territory changing hands between the Sri Lankan Army (SLA), LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) at varying times.

Says S. Uday a deminer from the HDU, "The maximum displacement of population took place in 1990 when the Sri Lankan army took over the land but subsequently there was fighting again in 1998 and 2000 when the LTTE took over."

Of course, now the demining industry is the biggest employment generator in the Tamil districts. Says Gillhespy, "There are about 800 de-miners earning about US $ 100 a month." Largely, funded by the NPA the HDU had begun work in 1999 and one of its biggest handicaps was lack of any LTTE maps of areas where they had laid mines.

Says K. Sugee, operation supervisor at the HDU, "Generally the LTTE have laid mines in the areas opposite to where the SLA has laid them.
The mud bunds are usually an identifying spot. During the time when the SLA had control off the land they laid about a million mines. We have a long way to go but our target for clearing all areas is 2006 end."

Apparently, there are four types of mines that are defused by the HDU teams, the most dangerous being the wooden ’Jony’ a wooden framed, 80 gm TNT packing LTTE mine which jumps up a metre in the air before exploding. The easiest to defuse is the Pakistani P4MKI and the Type
72 from China and the most difficult being the NR 409 from Belgium.
Says Uday, "Before the arrival of the Norwegian and Danish demining teams we had more than 10 demining accidents but after their arrival it was just three."

The demining has been essential to get the population displaced by war back to their homes. Says Gillhespy, "In three areas alone we expect that 5,612 acres of agricultural land will be released and resettlement land belonging to 1,119 households will be made accessible. Clearance of irrigation facilities will further allow the harvest of 620 acres of agricultural land. Work has also begun on religious sites, schools, and roads as well as some commercial centres."

Apart from the benefits to agriculture where demining has induced displaced villagers to come back to their villages and resume farming, the traffic on the main northern artery the A 9 has increased with nearly 1,500 vehicles travelling between Jaffna and Vavuniya on a daily basis. This traffic alongwith the salary paid to the deminers, which indirectly supports more than 3,000 people, has lead to generating some purchasing power in the local communities.

Money that is spent on newly opened eating joints like the Pandian in Killinochi which serves a hodge podge of Chinese, mughlai and south Indian cuisine. Coming up after the initiation of the Norwegian sponsored ceasefire process, Pandian caters to an allround clientale comprising of NGO workers, petitioners who have come to seek justice in newly set up LTTE courts, journalists, LTTE officials and some more.

With the UN’s review conference to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty in Nairobi (Nov 29-Dec 3 2004), the ongoing efforts in Sri Lanka have lessons for both India and Pakistan. The borders of the two countries have seen huge swathes of territory being rendered useless and dangerous by landmines. Said Dr Balkrishna Kurvey, president of The Indian Institute for Peace, disarmament and Environmental Protection (IIPDEP), in a recent seminar which served as a prelude to the Nairobi Summit: "The impact from landmines is so much that they bar access to fields, irrigation canals, power plants, and roads. People have to choose between farming in fear, leaving their homes or going hungry."

While India alongwith the US, China, Russia and Pakistan is not a signatory to the treaty it has taken some corrective measures. It doesn’t use land mines in internal conflicts and uses only detectable mines.

But, recently in Operation Parakram, begun after the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indain Parliament, India laid more than one million mines on the border with Pakistan in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Punjab. The army itself reported close 176 casualties and IIPDEP reports 58 civilians killed and 310 injured by mines between January 2002 and March 2004.

All of which goes to prove that in fertile fields it’s much better to sow seeds than TNT.