SIXTH OF OCTOBER CITY: In an effort to enhance and structuralize the eradication of Egypt's 15-20 million landmines spread out over the Western Desert; a phenomenon that has caused more than eight thousand civilian casualties since the end of World War I, the Ministry of International Cooperation and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced the launch of a joint mine action program in a press conference held at a desert landmine assessment center near 6th of October City on Thursday. Ambassador Marwan Badr of the Ministry of International Cooperation stressed the importance of the program by arguing that the project "is a crucial tool in heightening the safety of Egyptian people. According to experts, the project will focus on four main priority zones on Egypt's northwestern coast, including El Hammam, Matrouh, Siwa, and El-Alamein. The area around El-Alamein is viewed as the most contaminated region in Egypt, allegedly containing an estimated 12 million landmines and Unexploded Ordnance (UXOs). Furthermore, the initiative will also include eradication of the substantive number of mines in the Sinai desert which serve as constant reminders of the Egypt-Israel wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973. Despite the large amounts of landmines in Egypt, the country surprisingly remains one of the few countries that has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty. An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated in a UN meeting in 2005 Egypt's opposition to the treaty since it does not "acknowledge or at least provide an effective alternative to the controlled government use of landmines for national border security purposes, against inter alia, threats of infiltration by terrorists and illicit drug and arms trafficking. Furthermore, in late 2005, Egypt was one of only 17 countries that abstained in voting on the UN General Assembly Resolution 60/80 which called for the universal full implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty. Marking the start of Egypt's well-needed mine action program, representatives from German, Australian, and Italian companies specializing in the production of landmine detection instruments are presenting their tools to government and UNDP officials at the isolated assessment center this week. Following careful analysis of the tested tools, a range of instruments will be picked and provided to an Egyptian military task that will conduct demining operations with the assistance of donors and partners. Upon arrival at the assessment center, confused visitors receive a crash course in landmine facts and history in addition to having the opportunity of learning the different types of mines and witnessing training sessions in desert landmine detection. Mr. Uwe from the German mine detection tools company Vallon stood on top of a mountain of sandbags of different heights frenetically swinging his beeping landmine detector back and forth. "We are testing the maximum distances of discovering mines in the desert at this training station. The big anti-tank mines can usually be found at a deeper ground level than the smaller ones. Detection of desert landmines very much depends on the size of the mine itself. For our purposes, the bigger the better, Uwe told The Daily Star Egypt. According to Hugh Graham from Australian Minelab, a global company providing mine detection tools to more than 55 countries, especially to African nations, Egypt has a "strong legacy of landmines; hosting a large amount of UXO relics that pose a grave threat to the Egyptian population. In addition, Giovanni Giustino from Ceia, an Italian company, stresses that mines grow larger in threat the older they become. "The landmines we are dealing with in Egypt are not difficult in nature. It's their age that complicates the situation. The older these things get, the more unstable they become thus increasing the risk of explosion. Also, those mines located in the desert are always trickier to find since they are buried under a large amount of sand and tend to get moved around by sandstorms, Giustino told The Daily Star Egypt. Agreeing with Giustino, Graham pointed out to The Daily Star Egypt that small UXOs which usually come in the shape of oval black hand grenade look-alikes, pose the most serious threat since they are hard to detect and also because people like taking them as souvenirs. "Small mines are for some reason popular souvenirs for people. It is common that people or even children find them in the sand and bring them home as quirky souvenirs. In many cases, they explode and have devastating consequences not only on the finder himself but on whole communities, Graham stressed. On a more positive note, Minelab might possess just the right tool for detecting such ticking disasters on a timely basis. "This mine detector here is a revolutionary tool because you can teach it what to look for. All landmine tools are programmed to detect metal, but I believe Minelab provides the most intelligent tool of them all. For example, during a test yesterday the detectors of the other companies reacted 48 times on metal and mine parts hidden in the sand while that of Minelab only reacted 24 times detecting the mines and not the metal parts. This is an efficient tool that saves a lot of time, Graham said, pointing at Minelab's newest detector. Stewart Henley, a technology specialist and consultant to the United Nations, argues that Egypt has been lagging in the eradication of landmines due to strained funding from the international community because of a low amount of casualties from mine explosions. "Egypt has not received substantial amounts of financial support from the UN in the past for landmine eradication projects simply because not that many people have been hurt in landmine accidents here compared to countries like Cambodia where tons of people have lost their lives in landmine accidents, Henley told The Daily Star Egypt. Hopefully, the new joint project between the Egyptian government and UNDP will help fill that void. According to the Landmine Monitor Report of 2006, funding for demining operations in Egypt is estimated at $ 250 million with the national government expecting to contribute a third of the cost and the private sector providing almost half of the costs.
