Rehab Sayed Ahmed reports on plans to de-mine and develop the northwest coast The United Nations Department for Humanitarian Affairs' latest statistics reveal that Egypt is among the most heavily-mined countries in the world, with an estimated 23 million landmines, most of them concentrated in border regions and around 10 per cent in arable land. "Over the last 25 years landmines have caused the deaths of 3,200 people and injured 4,723," Ambassador Fathi El-Shazli, director of the semi-governmental Executive Secretariat for De-mining and Development of the Northwest Coast, told Al-Ahram Weekly. During the World War II Axis troops implanted most of the 17.5 million mines still to be found on Egypt's north western coast Desert, said El-Shazli. In the last 15 years, the government has cleared up to seven million mines in the area, though many local residents still live in fear of landmine accidents. The Executive Secretariat has now joined forces with the state-affiliated Social Fund for Development (SFD) to develop a plan aimed at both de-mining the coast and its south extension in the Western Desert and developing the region. De-mining the area, though, is a difficult task. "Landmines along the northwest coast were laid in random, cluster-shaped patterns at varying depths," says El-Shazli. Faiza Abul-Naga, minister of international cooperation and president of the Executive Secretariat, says the plan being drawn up will create job opportunities for landmine victims as well as providing them with artificial limbs. In establishing a data base of landmine casualties the Executive Secretariat has been working in cooperation with The Gardens of Peace, an NGO formed by residents of the area in 2003. Ahmed Amer, a de-mining technician, is secretary-general of the group. The majority of accidents that occur, he says, are a result of civilians, mainly Bedouins, not knowing whether the land they use on a daily basis has been de- mined or not. The case of 32-year-old Mahmoud El-Ashhab is typical: at the age of 22 he stepped on a mine and lost his right leg in the ensuing explosion. He has since been unemployed, and can support neither his wife nor children. So too is the experience of a Bedouin woman who declined to giver her name. At the age of 13 she stepped on a mine and lost both her left arm and leg, since which time, as an orphan, she has been dependent on charity for her survival. Along the northwest coast landmines not only kill and maim innocent civilians, they also have a devastating effect on the development process. They disrupt the cultivation of vast stretches of potentially arable land in areas such as Al-Hammam, Al-Alamain and Marsa Matrouh, where the necessary water resources are available. Abul-Naga said the plan's objective is to promote economic progress across the area following a five-year de-mining phase. When this is complete the subsequent boost to economic development is expected to create 384,000 job opportunities for residents in the fields of de-mining and land reclamation. Hani Seif El-Din, secretary-general of the SFD, told the Weekly his fund "will help victims either develop existing private businesses or establish small projects of their own which should raise the income of the area and reconnect the population with Egyptian and international markets."
