World War II mines still a threat on Egypt's coast

16 April 2009

AL-ALAMEIN, Egypt: It has been more than 65 years since the guns fell silent, but the World War II desert battlefields where Allied forces defeated German General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps are still claiming lives. Each year the casualty count grows, as bedouins planting crops, herding livestock and collecting scrap metal are killed or maimed by rusting land mines and munitions hidden beneath the baking sands of Egypt's North West Coast.

More than 670 Egyptians have been killed and 7,500 injured by land mines in this underdeveloped region during the last 20 years, according to the Landmines Struggle Center (LSC), a Cairo-based NGO that collects data on mine victims. "There are dozens of casualties every year, most of which go unreported," said Sami Abada, the center's director.

The Allied and Axis armies that fought pitched battles in northern Egypt in the summer of 1942 left behind vast quantities of mines and shells. Some 16.7 million land mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) contaminate the coastal plain between Alexandria and the Libyan border, posing a threat to local bedouin residents and an obstacle to the region's economic development.

Having failed in its attempts to hold the countries that planted the land mines accountable for their removal, Egypt instead invited them to support a $10.5 billion scheme backed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to develop the expansive governorate containing the WWII battlefields. The North West Coast and Inland Desert project envisages clearing the area's land mines and UXO to make the land accessible to agriculture, livestock and mining. The economic development is expected to create 400,000 jobs, encouraging up to 1.5 million people to move from the overcrowded Nile Valley by 2022.

In 2006 Egypt's government and UNDP initiated a joint program to fund and implement the development mega-project, breaking it down into bite-sized chunks more appealing to foreign donors. The first phase is a pilot project to establish an administrative unit, procure equipment and de-mine 13,000 hectares of land. The government and UNDP covered 27 percent of the phase's $3.2 million cost. Foreign donors supplied the rest.

Mine clearance began in February on two blocks deemed high priority for development: a 1,300-hectare plot near Al-Alamein earmarked for civic expansion, and an 11,800-hectare swath along an important irrigation canal. "Currently the army is working on the second area after having already cleared the first batch," said Fathy al-Shazly, director of the executive secretariat for the De-mining and Development of the North West Coast, the agency coordinating the pilot project.

Shazly said his agency was still trying to determine the full extent of the contamination area and the amount of explosives it contains. The official estimate, 16.7 million mines and UXO littered across 240,000 hectares, was extrapolated from de-mining work carried out by the Egyptian army in the 1980s and 1990s. But the figures are contentious as they do not take into account corporate de-mining operations, nor reconcile with the geographic distribution of land-mine victims.

"We know that within this area many hectares have been cleared by oil and gas companies, the desert research centre and other agencies," Shazly told IPS. "At the same time, the contamination has been found to extend beyond the area suspected by the army. In some areas such as Ras Hekma and Siwa there are no mines indicated [on maps], yet many accidents." Shazly's team is attempting to build an accurate map of the contaminated zones using data gleaned from wartime maps supplied by foreign governments, landmine casualty reports, and the exploratory surveys of oil and gas companies. "We are now compiling all the activities of the individual operators into a national database that will enable us to state the exact number [of mines] and where they are located," he said.

The team has also conducted field surveys and reviewed existing case files to create a comprehensive database of land-mine incidents and casualties. So far, 647 land-mine survivors, including 206 amputees, have been identified. "Whenever we identify new survivors who were not available when we made the survey we add them," he added.

Ulrich Tietze, UNDP's chief technical adviser for mine action, suspects that at least half of all land-mine incidents are not reported. The bedouins who live in the region have a deep-rooted suspicion of the government and police, and may see no advantage in notifying them. They may also fear prosecution.

"Many of the areas [where bedouin graze their herds] are designated as army land or  declared off-limits," he said. "The victims often think of themselves as having done something illegal, so they feel it is better not to go to the police." Economic hardship has pushed many bedouins into collecting scrap metal, despite the obvious danger. "After 60 years all the safe scrap metal lying on the surface has already been picked up," said Tietze. "Only the dangerous items" remain.

While Egypt's development drive promises to rid the North West Coast of its deadly legacy, it could be over a decade before the funding is in place to complete the mine action program. In the meantime, efforts should be made to improve medical facilities in mine-infested areas, and secure the welfare of land-mine victims and their families, argues LSC's Abada, who accuses Cairo of neglecting these victims because they are generally poor and marginalized people living far from the policymakers in the capital.

"In 10 years [of campaigning] almost nothing has been achieved," Abada says.

Most land-mine accidents occur in remote areas. Field clinics can perform crude surgeries, but the nearest equipped hospital facilities are hundreds of kilometers away. And time is critical, Abada says. "If the victim is admitted to hospital within an hour, surgeons might only need to remove his foot. But if it takes five or even 10 hours to reach a hospital he will probably lose the whole leg."

Compensation for land-mine victims is negligible, when provided at all. The government provides neither trauma counseling nor rehabilitation programs for civilian land-mine victims. And amputees are expected to pay for their own prosthetic limbs. "Don't believe what is written in the newspapers about the government helping victims," says Abada. "It is all propaganda."

The UNDP has tried to step up with project proposals for the rehabilitation and vocational training of land-mine survivors in Bedouin communities. The response so far has been muted, but according to Tietze, state agencies of the countries that fought on Egyptian soil during WWII are cautiously expressing interest in contributing.

"There is still this old question of compensation, which has always been denied by the parties [that planted the land-mines], because they say they don't have a legal obligation," he says. "But everyone knows that there is a moral obligation, so maybe we are benefiting from this bad conscience." - IPS

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.