The United Nations Mine Action Program for Afghanistan (MAPA) closely supervises the activities of a series of the Afghan NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations); these organizations, made up almost entirely of Afghans, have done most of the actual work of demining. On December 24, 2001, just two days after the official start of the interim government in Kabul, Afghanistan, I went with an ordinance disposal team from ATC (Afghan Technical Consultants) on a journey from the outskirts of Kabul to the Bagram Airport along the new road clearing UXOs (Unexploded Ordinance).

The search for unexploded ordinance (UXOs) this day was directed by Peter LaSueur, the munitions expert whose job it is to supervise the removal or detonation of the bombs found in the Kabul area. Peter also develops training materials for teaching UXO demolition to Afghan demining teams.

In the early morning the men of ATC gather before work begins. Trucks are loaded and gear is assembled before heading to the field. Here at the start of the road to be explored for munitions Peter is painting a marker on the road, so that teams that come later or this group the following day will know where to start measuring distances to discovered problem areas.

The first shell that needed to be left in place for later demolition was marked on the highway, so that later it could easily be found again.

In the lead vehicle are two or more spotters. We then moved down the highway gathering shells and other explosives that were lying close to the highway and safe to move. Fused devices or other objects to dangerous to be hauled away are either marked or detonated.

It is difficult for someone who has not been there to imagine how much ordinance there really is in Afghanistan. Smaller shells like these are scattered about by the millions.

The RPG or Rocket Propelled Grenade is probably the most common weapon in Afghanistan after rifles and pistols. One often sees teen-agers carrying such weapons.

We moved along the highway, stopping frequently. More than once we stopped for shells that I myself spotted from the third vehicle back in our small convoy. Bombs of all kinds were scattered randomly here and there.

In a Passing Car

This highway is one of the two routes from Kabul to the Bagram Airport and to several villages. There was no heavy traffic, but cars did occasionally drive by.

There were several hundred UXOs of a variety of types in piles here, in a nearby waddi, and scattered about the area. This had been a defensive position not many weeks before.

This area is not one of Afghanistan's worse sites, not by a long way. However, it is along a main road where people are very likely to stop. South of Kandahar there are areas that stretch for miles where the ground is heavily littered with UXOs and mined very densely with a variety of landmines. Near Herat are terrible sites, near populated areas, where cluster bombs struck large ammunition dumps scattering large amounts of explosives amid the debris of buildings.

Without their fuses many shells are relatively stable. They can be moved about by truck and stacked in piles.

Size is not always an accurate indicator of the danger of an explosive. Relatively small fuses can be deadly.

Very little of the destruction of Afghanistan was done with weapons made in Afghanistan. Few of the weapons used could have been made in Afghanistan. So, most of the tools of destruction have been imported. This one was made in China. Supplying the combatants has been a joint effort; many nations have contributed.

This artillery fuse was designed and made in the United States. Serial numbers can be seen inscribed in the brass ring at its base.

This nearly identical artillery fuse is a copy made in the Middle East or Central Asia; the serial numbers on its brass ring are Arabic numerals.

Several extra 122mm shells have been placed with this Egyptian-made Sakar cluster rocket as it is readied for demolition. These "donor charges" will make sure that the rocket is destroyed completely when the explosion is detonated. The red-orange wire is detonation cord. This material explodes, burns at a fantastic rate, and for all practical purposes, two blasts connected with it will go off the same time.

Three fist sized blobs of PE3A plastic explosive were strategically placed with the rocket and the donor charges. Sandbags will keep the debris from the blast from scattering across the highway where it could cut automobile tires.

The fuel for a rocket does not explode instantly, and the relatively slow burn of this material made the glowing particles that were expelled in the explosion. Here we were a little closer to the blast than was wise.

After the explosion the area is checked to make sure that all of the connected explosions went off and nothing was left behind.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 2001 we went out again to clear the road of unexploded bombs and shells and rockets from Bagram Airport into Kabul along the new road. About a third of the way toward the city from the airport along the right-hand side near the road was a rather dramatic ruin of a mobile rocket launcher. The vehicle, which originally looked something like a small version of the trucks used to haul automobiles in the West, had been hit by a recent air strike and was a blackened ruin. However, fused rockets were still in some of the tubes. Other UXOs were scattered about the area.

Directions

Peter LeSueur waves his arms as he directs the clean-up and demolition work.

Take Away

Ordinance that can be safely moved it loaded onto a truck to be taken away.

Demolition

Shells that might explode in a bouncing truck are gathered together for destruction. This was part of a 107 mm Multiple Rocket Launcher, made in China.

PE3a Explosive

PE3a Plastic Explosive is handled with rubber gloves. Most people, familiar with plastic explosives from motion pictures think that these are exotic and extremely powerful new materials. However, most bombs and plastic explosives are either TNT or RDX or a mixture of the two. These materials were invented just before and just after the First World War.

Again the road is protected from fragments from the explosion by sandbags. This task is to clear the areas near the road from explosive devices. Vast areas, including the Shamali Plane will later be systematically cleared of landmines and UXOs, but the first priority is to clean up places which pose the greatest threat, like the verges of the road from the Bagram Airbase.

In this photograph of the exploding materials found at the site of the rocket launcher one can clearly see the wire which ran from our position to the site of the explosion and the detonators connected to the detonation cord.

After the destruction of the rocket launcher on Christmas morning, Peter LeSueur and I left the team to get on with clearing the edge of the highway. We went instead to investigate several areas that had been hit by cluster bombs. Here we see Peter walking amid the cluster bombs; four are visible in this photograph.

A cluster bomb is a large bomb that contains inside itself many small bomblets. A BLU97 contains two hundred two small bomblets the size of a soft drink can. One of these bomblets is capable of destroying a tank, killing everyone on board.

Many explosive devices contain a shaped charge that focuses the energy of its blast in a focused direction. For this to work properly a shaped charge usually has an open space in the container in the direction of the focus of the explosion. Often a deadly device looks empty because of this recess, this empty space. The cluster bombs expand when released from the main bomb, and a drag chute causes them to fall nose down and more slowly.

The metal casing around the explosive charge in an American BLU97 cluster bomb has a grooved pattern that causes it to break into bullet sized fragments.

This is a piece from the main outer casing of the cluster bomb, a BLU97 A/B.

When the 202 bomblets are released from the mother bomb, they scatter into a pattern. Small caps pop off each of the bomblets as the chutes jerk the bomblet open. The necessary open space ahead of the shaped charge is formed when the metal outer shell of the bomblet slides out to form the extra space. Most of the bomblets explode leaving only these caps scattered about.

In between the bomblets in a BLU97 cluster bomb is a matrix of Styrofoam. Fragments of this yellow-orange Styrofoam is scattered about the landscape wherever the cluster bombs have been dropped. This is something to watch out for in war zones, especially where such munitions have been dropped in civilian areas.

In most cases in Afghanistan where cluster bombs were used, more than one was dropped in a given area. Deminers try to determine the scatter pattern for the bomblets, because it can help them to find bomblets that might otherwise have been overlooked.

Figures for the number of bomblets that fail to explode vary, and the number of the small munitions that fail to go off when they strike the earth varies according to the material that they fall into. Figures go as high as thirty percent. Tentative counts in this area indicate a rate of at least 10%. Of these many bury themselves deeply in the earth, or in houses and walls. It is important not to come through an area clearing the visible bomblets until a study has been made of the area, so that the entire location can be combed for buried bomblets.

These children had bomblets scattered about their front yard. They were playing within ten or twenty meters of bomblets when we arrived.

While we were examining these sites we were rarely without children nearby who watched us work.

The pattern of the falling bomblets is visible on this stretch of road where we parked to go into one of the cluster bomb sites.

While we were examining the last cluster bomb area of the day, someone came and asked if we could take care of a mine that had been found nearby, just across the pitted road and behind several houses.

The mine that the villagers had found was a PMN2, a Russian anti-personnel mine. This device was designed to maim, not to kill but to blow off legs. If a soldier looses a leg in battle, it takes several other men to carry him away, so you effectively stop several soldiers for a time.

In Pakistan shaped charge cases are made in large numbers for use by the United Nations Mine Action Program for Afghanistan. A detonator was soon inserted through the hole in the white plastic cap. The thin legs welded to the shaped charge make it possible to set and aim the charge in a variety of positions and situations without touching the device to be destroyed.

The number of landmines in Afghanistan is indeed very large, but many news sources often quote a figure of ten million landmines in Afghanistan. According to statistics based on the number of mines already cleared, an estimate of between one and a half and two million is probably more accurate. While this is still a huge problem, it is a finite one, and it is a problem on which a great deal of work has already been done.

Important elements of the United Nations Demining Program for Afghanistan are education and personal contact day to day in the field with the effected communities. Organizations from outside Afghanistan provide funds, technical expertise, training and supervision, but it is the people of Afghanistan who are demining the country.

Afghanistan has long been one of the best places on earth for growing grapes. In antiquity Afghanistan produced fine wines. Before the war raisins were a major Afghan export.

This area along the old road from Bagram to Kabul had few inhabitants in the late fall of 2000. But, by the beginning of 2002, the main obstacle to the return of people to these towns and villages was the presence of so many explosive devices.

This village was relatively lucky. Many areas were flattened in order to provide clear fire zones and to deny protection to an advancing enemy.