Landmine survivors require long-term support

D. Morrow

8 October 2014

Duhok

When it comes to vulnerable groups in the face of recent conflict, our immediate thoughts are of the religious and ethnic minorities displaced by the advance of Da’esh militants. But injured survivors of conflict have long-term needs that often go unfulfilled. 

“When people lose a body part, something psychological happens,” says Omer Hassan, who lost his left leg in a landmine accident over 20 years ago. “There is no good training, no good place, no safe spaces for handicapped people.”

There are literally millions of landmines contaminating Kurdistan’s countryside from a series of wars, and they are having a serious impact on the life of people living here. There have been over 30,000 confirmed landmine casualties by the end of the 2013 according to the Landmine Monitor. But the numbers hide the larger impact, which is that people who survive incidents with landmines must live the rest of their life with the consequences.

In 1992, Omer was a peshmerga mine clearance volunteer, working mainly in the area near his town on the Iranian border. Voluntary peshmerga at that time were given a brief training course on how to disarm landmines, and taught basic patterns that mines would be laid in. One Friday morning, two months into his work, he took a step sideways into an area he thought was safe, heard a bang, saw the smoke, and wondered who had set off the explosive. It wasn’t until he looked down and saw his leg that he realized it was himself. 

“That was the end of life for me,” he says, looking back, “I can’t walk, swim, I can’t help again, I can’t remove mines.” In addition to the loss of his leg, “there was no job, no work. I was on the street.”

But Omer slowly took back control of his own life. He began selling cigarettes on the street, and then built himself his first prosthetic out of an aluminum milk can and some cotton. When he took his first steps again he said, “At that time, I didn’t feel any pain. I can walk.” 

When Mines Advisory Group (MAG) first arrived in Kurdistan in 1993, they sought out the men who had been voluntary peshmerga deminers. Omer was offered a position and soon became a team leader. He worked for MAG for 23 years, and in the last two has switched over to commercial clearance with Sterling Global. Despite, or perhaps through his injury so long ago, he has found purpose, and success. 

There are three things handicapped people in Kurdistan need to be successful, he suggests. The first and most important of these is a job – having a focus on something other than your injury is the first step towards healing. Secondly, people need to be able to afford their medication, so landmine survivors require better salaries and support in their workplace. Finally, Omer hopes that landmine survivors and other people with mobility issues will have access to sport support, so they exercise and stay healthy in a safe space, with access to the prosthetics they need to partake in these activities. “My dream is to swim in the river,” he says. 

Iraq and Kurdistan are working hard to fulfill their clearance obligations according to their ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty in 2007, but just as important are their obligations to improve the quality of life of landmine survivors, and that will have just as important an impact on the future of the country, after the violence has ended.