These areas cover 24 million square metres in the 33 districts of these three provinces, which were covered by research undertaken by the NGO Handicap International, one of the humanitarian agencies working on mine clearance in Mozambique.
According to the coordinator of the Action Against Mines department of this NGO's Mozambican operations, Aderito Ismael, the research is far from complete. The researchers were unable to reach 190 of the suspect places due to difficulties in access.
Some of the mine fields are decades old. Mines were planted during the independence war waged by Frelimo against Portuguese colonial rule (1964-1974), which reached Manica and Sofala in the closing years of the struggle.
Other mines were planted by the Rhodesian forces which attacked Mozambique repeatedly in the late 1970s, and others were sown during the war of destabilisation that pitted the apartheid- backed Renamo rebels against the Frelimo government.
Not all the explosives found in these places are mines. "We even found 200 kilo bombs dropped during Ian Smith's war along Mozambique's border with Zimbabwe", Ismael told AIM.
In Vuilankulo district, in Inhambane province, cases were reported of small lakes that are inaccessible to the local people, becaue the access paths had been mined. Ismael believed that rains may well have moved these mines from their original position, perhaps sweeping them into the lakes.
But the result is that local people dare not use these lakes and have to fish, or seek water, elsewhere in areas known to be free of mines.
Although similar research has not been undertaken on a country- wide scale, Ismael thought it likely that there are still many mined areas in other provinces. He recalled that last year Handicap International had worked in Chifunde district in the western province of Tete "and in just one week we destroyed 60 devices. The situation may be the same in other provinces".
This situation, Ismael warned, means that Mozambique may be unable to meet the mine clearance deadline of 2009 set in the Ottawa Treaty outlawing anti-personnel mines, to which Mozambique is a signatory.
He blamed donors for turning their attentions to other matters at the expense of demining. NGOs such as Handuicap International depend on donor funding: Ismael said his organisation has the staff, the vehicles and the equipment for the job - but not the money.
Handicap International, he says, only has enough funds guaranteed to pay wages and buy fuel up until March.
"When demining began in Mozambique, a lot of humanitarian organisations and commercial companies were involved, but in the last two years many of them have left, because the activity is no longer sustainable", he said. "It is becoming difficult to find funds for demining".
Ismael thought that Mozambique would have to ask for an extension to its 2009 deadline, and that several more years would be needed. He thought that Handicap International could remove all the remaining mines in the provinces where it was working by 2013 or 2014, but only if donor funding was forthcoming.
SOURCE: AIM
