Unenvious task of demining the North

by Shanika SRIYANANDA in Mannar

Both soldiers - Lance Corporal Prematilake and Namal Kumara - are deeply concentrated on their work in a deadly zone that would decide their fate if they creep forward hurriedly. It is a game of losing a limb or life in a narrow stretch of land, one metre in width and 10 metre length.

Their work is tough and needs lots of dedication and patience. Kneeling on the sun-baked dusty ground, the young soldiers, clad in heavy protective jackets and helmets, slowly sweep the soil around them inside the demarcated lane and creep forward inch by inch until the mine detector beeps giving an indication about a deadly device. Then they start digging into the earth until they find a mine which is normally 10 cm underneath.

The mine detector suddenly alarms Prematilake. He carefully sweeps the upper layer of soil with the small spade. It’s a small mine, six inches round, a button like device which is deadly enough to take a life or blow off a limb. He lifted the device slowly and sighed a relief. With the discovery of that mine, his collection goes up to 600 mines only from the Rice Bowl.

Prematilake and Kumara - the two de-miners assigned to remove mines in a single lane, get an interval in every half an hour.

Working from dawn to dusk since July 1 to October 20, the two soldiers with other 648 de-miners of the Sri Lanka Army Engineering Unit are busy removing the last haul of Anti-personnel mines, Unexploded Ordnance (UXOs) and hidden explosive dumps in the former LTTE battlefield of Mannar Rice Bowl. Their main intention is to free the land from deadly devices, so that displaced people can return home.

Risking their lives, the two soldiers in their 20s, have cleared the mine laden paths to soldiers in the humanitarian operation to break the iron gates of the LTTE’s open prison to liberate over 300,000 civilians, few months ago.

Today, the same dedicated hands, again facing risk, are busy clearing the mine laden land to resettle the displaced people sheltered in the welfare camps.

Last October 22, the government kicked off the mass resettlement drive in the North starting from Mannar Rice Bowl areas covering the four main townships - Adampan, Andamkulam, Manthai and Parappakandal.

The Army de-miners were given special training on humanitarian de-mining at the Embilipitiya before they commenced mine clearing in the Rice Bowl on July 1. Prematilake, who was in the military operation from Adampan to Vellamullivaikkal, the area where Asia’s longest battle came to an end, had removed over 2,000 Anti Personnel (AP) mines.

Moving forward with eight-man teams, Prematilake has cleared paths full of AP mines, trappings and land mines to make the ground safe for the infantry troops to capture the land.

“We also cleared the LTTE offices, bunkers and other buildings after capturing the areas”, Prematilake, whose leg was injured due to a mortar attack while proceeding to capture Vedithalativu, says.

He remembers his seven-month-old son whenever he steps onto the 10 meter path, which is demarcated with yellow tapes.

When the detector alarms him about a metal device his heart beat rises, but the experience and commitment spur him to reach his day’s target.

Kumara, who had removed over 3,000 mines during the military operation, has removed over 1,500 mines in his humanitarian de-mining mission. The two young soldiers say that though the task was risky, they were happy as they helped to make the deadly lands safe for resettling people.

Indiscriminate use of mines by the LTTE terrorists in the end battle have left a scourge that hinder the post-conflict recovery in Sri Lanka.

Though there is international pressure to resettle displaced people in their own habitats, the time consuming task to ensure that every inch of the former battle fields are free of mines have delayed the resettlement process.

Removed 10,000 AP mines

Lt. Col. Prashantha Wimalasiri, the CO, 5th Field Engineer Regiment and the Officer-in-Charge of the Humanitarian de-mining Operations said that the Army de-miners had removed 10,000 AP mines, 15 to 20 booby traps and over 1,300 unexploded Ordnance (UXO) like hand grenades, mortar shells. He says that humanitarian de-mining differs from military de-mining and needs to be carried out according to international standards as they have to ensure the land is free of mines.

“The task of clearing the Rice Bowl was entrusted to the Army de-miners on July 1. There were scattered mine fields and we checked almost all the identified risk areas”, he said.

The LTTE had laid mines not according to a conventional pattern, but buried a large number of mines in all the possible paths that the soldiers would approach. First, the Army Engineers will do an initial assessment to identify the mine fields. The de-mining soldiers, who are well aware of the terrain as all of them had been in the fighting in the same locations, carry out an initial assessment to identify the risk areas.

“In some mine fields, there were 50 to 100 mines and in some there were only 10 to 15 mines. Whether there is a single mine or 100 mines we have to clear the entire land “, he said.

Lt. Col. Wimalasiri said that the Army possesses all the vital de-mining tools - de-miners, de-mining machines and mine detection dogs and it facilitated speeding up the process. With the government intention to send displaced people back home soon, the de-mining process has picked up. While the NGOs are actively involved in de-mining the North, 75 per cent of the task is given to the Army. Out of 95skm in the Rice Bowl, over 60m per cent of the land is cleared by the Army de-miners. The rest were carried out by the NGOs - Sarvathra, Horizon, MAG and FSD.

The latest addition - the 14 remote control machines including five DOK-ING MV-4 to expedite the de-mining process - were used to identify the mine fields accurately. Each machine can de-mine over 5,000 square meters a day. “These machines are vital in the de-mining process as they can blast the mine on the spot. They can clear large area of land and will facilitate the manual de-mining”, he said elobating that a detection of a single mine indicates that the terrain is a mine field.

Heat stroke caused due to heat from the heavy protective jacket and the safety helmet when working under strong sun, is the common health problem that these de-miners suffer. According to Lt. Col. Wimalasiri, facilities are available to treat such soldiers at the same location.

The metal concentration in these grounds are high as the LTTE had been involved in heavy fighting in the Mannar Rice Bowl.

The Rice Bowl Mannar spans over 95 skms and consists of 52skms of paddy land. There are over 13,000 acres of paddy and the entire Rice Bowl has a population of 17,000 people. The rich soil in the Rice Bowl produced one per cent of the country’s total rice and it was sufficient to feed over 250,000 people. It produced 1.56 million bushels of paddy in each season but was abandoned during the LTTE control.

Cultivate

While resettling displaced people of this highly fertile land, the main target of the government is to cultivate in the coming maha season.

According to Lt. Col. Wimalasiri, the Army de-miners have completed removing all the mines and devices buried in the Rice Bowl area and District Mine Acting Office of the UNDP had certified that the area is free of mines.

The most `deadly’ about deadly mines is that they are active even if found decades later.

“The only change is that when a mine goes undetected, the removal gets difficult due to environmental factors like over vegetation and hardness. But the danger remains the same”, he said.

Even after 20-years, when the pressure from 40 to 60 kg is exerted on a mine, it will blast with the same vigour.

“A standard mine has only 20 grams of explosives, but the mines like `Rangan 99’ laid by the LTTE have 100 grams. The terrorists had increased the content of the explosives to inflict a maximum damage to the soldiers”, he said.

In the humanitarian operation that lasted for two years and 10 months, the Army did not bury a single mine as the soldiers moved forward and did not remain in a one location.

“There were no threats of the LTTE re-capturing land”, he recounted.

According to the Human Rights Watch, there are more than 340 anti-personnel land mine types produced in 48 countries and an estimated 110 million mines are buried in 64 counties.

The most shocking factor is that mines including land mines maim or kill 1,000 to 2,000 people per month and majority are innocent civilians.

According to reports, humanitarian de-mining will take 10 to 15 years to free Sri Lanka of mines. It is reported that an estimated 900,000 mines have been laid only in Jaffna and Killinochchi districts. De-mining is not easy but costly. The slow moving process to ensure the land is free of mines has delayed development in many war ravaged countries. The best example is Vietnam War, which ended 33 years ago. But, Laos still faces the problem of removing mines as there are an estimated 80 million mines buried in its soil. In the decade long de-mining process has removed only 900,000 mines so far.

Over 650 de-miners of the Army Engineering Unit, who had cleared the Rice Bowl, have now moved to remove mines in Vedithalathivu - a fishing village in the North.

Capt. Samantha Siriwardena, the Officer Commanding of the De-mining Squad, Vedithalathivu, said that Army de-miners had taken the task of clearing 99 skm land and the entire workforce had been deployed to clear the mines.

He said that there would be more mines in Vedithalathivu as it was a former strong point of the LTTE and found four main defence lines and secondary defence lines run parallaly. “The LTTE camps, bunkers and several other places are visible and identified as highly mine laden places in the area”, he said. The road to recovery is not so far. The soldiers, who battled `human bombs’ to rescue innocent civilians from the LTTE, have now sped up their battle with `live bombs’ buried in the soil to make the Northern region a mine free world.