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Dogs Sniff Out Landmines Across
Afghanistan
By Danish Karokhel
KABUL, Afghanistan, January 2, 2002 (ENS) - A dedicated
team of Afghan trainers and their dogs are perfecting
techniques for landmine detection that are now in demand in
trouble spots across the world.
With an estimated 10 percent of the world's entire stock of
landmines laid across the country during two decades of
conflict, it is hardly surprising that Afghans - or to be more
precise, their dogs - have become world experts at finding
them.
Afghanistan's Mine Detection and Dog Centre (MDC) - a local
organization under the United Nations umbrella - is now
training mine sniffing dogs sent in from as far afield as
Britain and the Czech Republic, and sending others to problem
areas such as Yemen and Sudan.
;)
Landmine sniffing dog with handler from Afghanistan's Mine
Detection and Dog Centre (Photos courtesy Adopt-a-Minefield (AAM))Mario
Boer from Germany, who works with the organization under a
government aid program, said, "The MDC training programme is
the biggest of its kind in the world and is a low cost, high
success operation. "The techniques developed in this country
are now being used in other countries suffering from the
plague of landmines."
The program began in 1989, after the Soviet Union was
forced to end its 10 year occupation by anti-communist
mujahedin, who then turned on each other in more fighting that
paved the way for the takeover by the Taliban. The student
militia's brutal regime was only ended by a United States led
offensive 12 months ago.
It was estimated that some 10 million mines were laid in
the country during this nearly 25 years of warfare, ranging
from small booby traps that can blow off a child's foot to
monsters that can take out a tank. The firing mechanisms can
be a simple pressure switch, a trip wire, or an acoustic or
seismic sensitive device.
Deployed for as little as US$3 each, they cost up to
US$1,000 to remove. These devices kill or injure around 20
people across the country every day - many of them children.
Deminer works near Jalalbad. (Three photos by Erin
Snider courtesy AAM)At the outset of the program,
the dogs were bought from abroad and trained by American
experts. But the cost of training each one, around US$9,000,
was prohibitive for one of the world's poorest countries, and
the MDC launched its own breeding and training program. They
bought 12 dogs, 10 females and two breeding males, a German
shepherd and a malinois from Belgium.
"At present we have 211 dogs, 130 of which are working in
mined areas while the others are undergoing training," said
Javed Ahmad, who heads MDC's training program. "We are getting
between 50 and 60 new dogs a year from our breeding program,
80 percent of which are suitable for training."
Training begins when the puppies are just two months old,
and takes 18 months to complete. They are then let loose in
the minefields, where their extraordinary sense of smell
enables them to sniff out the fumes coming from explosives,
even those encased in metal and plastic and buried deep
underground.
Detonated cluster bomblets, the remnants of the coalition
strikes on Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. MDC trainer
Zainuddin explained that mines were normally laid between 20
centimeters (7.87 inches) and one meter (39 inches)
underground, depending on the soil conditions. "Our dogs are
guaranteed to find them at these depths. One of them
discovered a mine buried nearly one and a half meters
underground," he said.
The Afghan training program is far more rigorous than in
other countries where the mines are planted and taken out by
hand after each exercise. This often enables the dog to home
in on the smell of the trainer left on the metal, rather than
the scent of explosives.
"We wash off all traces of humans from the mines, let them
dry in the sun and then bury them for two or three years
before we start using them in our training program," Zainuddin
said. "Foreign trainers are copying us now."
With so much invested in the dogs' training, and so much
depending on them, it is no surprise to learn that they have
their own veterinarian and a clinic with the latest equipment
and medicines from Germany. "We are dedicated to keeping the
dogs fit and free of disease," Dr. Abdul Hakim Hakimi said.
The dogs are expected to be on active duty for at least five
years.
The training starts as a game, using a rubber ball, and
gradually moves to dummy mines and then to the real thing.
The dogs, on a 10 meter (33 foot) leash controlled by their
handler, are taught to sit down next to the spot where they
sniff out a mine. "Dogs are perfect for this work - in fact
they are twice as efficient as machines," Ahmad said.
"Machines can only locate metal, which means they dig out all
kinds of objects. Our dogs are only interested in explosives,
and can smell them through plastic."
These Afghani children from the village of Mazel Khurija
have been warned about the dangers of landmines. He said
using dogs is less dangerous than other methods, adding that
over the 13 years of the program, only 10 people and seven
dogs had been killed clearing mines, while a further 26
handlers had been injured - a relatively low number for such
an intensive and hazardous operation.
The operation is split into 18 groups across the country,
with four dogs and 24 handlers and backup personnel for each
group. "Each group clears around one square kilometer a year.
So far we have cleared 90 square kilometers, which represents
some 45 percent of all the territory in Afghanistan that has
been cleared of mines. The rest has been done by other,
foreign mine clearing organizations," he said.
Some 113 square kilometers have yet to be demined, and
about 30 square kilometers (247 acres) of former battlefields
cleared of unexploded shells.
"We are getting requests from all over the world for our
dogs to come and help clear mines. Unfortunately because we
are stepping up our program in Afghanistan, and have so much
more to do, we can't spare many more of them," said Ahmad.
Tens of millions of landmines are buried across 80
countries. Someone steps on a landmine somewhere in the world
every 22 minutes.
{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.} | 
