Stockpiles gone but landmines a continued threat

Guinea-Bissau's government has announced the destruction of its stockpile of roughly 5,000 landmines but disposing of the ones already in the ground is likely to prove far more difficult. A number of areas around the country continue to be plagued by anti-personnel mines and other explosive devices. The majority of these were laid during the West African nation's brief 1998-1999 civil war, although some date as far back as the country's struggle for independence from Portugal in the 1960s and 70s. "For the time being, our priority is the north of the country along the border with (the southern Senegalese region of) Casamance," Cesar de Carvalho, director of the National Centre for Coordinating Mine Action Activities, told IRIN. "But because of the lack of security in the area, we haven't been able to start de-mining operations yet." Senegal's lush southern region has been the scene of a low-level separatist conflict for over two decades and its rebels have, in the past, used Guinea-Bissau's border region as a staging point for their operations. Over the years, this presence has led to crackdowns by government troops and cross-border incursions by the Senegalese army. Last December's peace accord between the Senegalese government and the main separatist group MFDC has not put the issue to rest, as demonstrated last week when a rebel leader vowed on national radio not to give up the fight until Senegal withdrew from the region. This uncertainty makes it difficult to implement operations designed to rid Guinea-Bissau of a scourge that has maimed hundreds of people in the last seven years alone and can have an equally crippling effect on the economy if fields and key infrastructure sites are out of bounds. Money is the other big obstacle to de-mining in a country that desperately wants to lure foreign donors back after being largely shunned in recent years, according to Olivier Shu, director of the landmines project for Handicap International in Bissau. "You can't exactly say that there are legions of foreign donors in Guinea-Bissau," he said in a telephone interview. The situation was unlikely to change until the president and prime minister resolved a personal feud threatening the country's stability, he explained. But to date, Guinea-Bissau's de-mining programme is on track. The terms of the Ottawa Convention, named after the Canadian city where the mine ban treaty was signed in 1997, require countries to destroy all their stockpiles of mines within four years of ratification. Guinea-Bissau, where the treaty came into force in 2001, fulfilled these obligations two weeks before the November 1 deadline and now has six years to clear all the mines that have been laid throughout the country. Despite chronic instability and a devastated economy, the government remains optimistic that it will soon finish cleaning up the region around the capital and that the whole country will be mine-free by 2009, two years ahead of the Ottawa Convention's timetable. Handicap International's Shu thinks such a schedule is possible for such a small country as long as there is enough money to complete the process which he calls a precondition for growth and development. "A country that's affected by mines is a country that can't make progress," he said. "It's a country that's dying."