Desperately Seeking Landmines

Mohammed Inazario-Mendes digs for mines near Monte Belo, Angola. (Vince Beiser)

By: Vince Beiser
Miller-McCune
March 1, 2010

Despite years of research on everything from 'HeroRATS' to TNT-sniffing bees, humans still remove most landmines by poking — very, very carefully — in the ground.

On his knees in a field of freshly cropped weeds, protected by a Plexiglas visor and a bulletproof smock, Mohammed Inazario-Mendes digs carefully in sun-baked dirt. He loosens a little with a long-handled steel spoon, then scoops it out with his hands. Then he does it again. Inch by inch, he painstakingly advances a little trench toward the spot a foot away marked with three red sticks.

Inazario-Mendes has good reason to work slowly. Just this morning, two landmines were unearthed only yards from where he’s digging. His job is to find out if the object that triggered his metal detector — the thing underneath those sticks — is another one.

A row of red-tipped wooden stakes marches away to either side, delineating the bounds of this minefield in the lush central highlands of the southern African nation of Angola. Residents of the nearby town of Monte Belo once used this area to pasture their goats and cattle. But during Angola’s decades-long civil war, government forces set up a military position here and surrounded it with mines. When the war ended, the troops went home but left the mines behind — somewhere. No one knows exactly how many there are or where they’re buried. In the last couple of years, one incautious person and two unlucky animals straying into the area have had limbs blown off.

Inazario-Mendes is one of 14 local men working to clear the Monte Belo minefield under the auspices of the HALO Trust, a British nonprofit that removes the lethal leftovers of war — from mines to unexploded ammunition — around the world. The pay isn’t great, but he likes the work. “I’m never scared,” he says. “You just have to concentrate.”

The careful concentration required, however, makes for very slow results. It has taken Inazario-Mendes and his team almost nine months to clear an area barely larger than three soccer fields. Though HALO has been active in Angola for 15 years and employs some 1,100 deminers, it estimates there are still as many as 600,000 mines left there. At this rate, it will take 10 years to clear them all.

(More here.)