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Toronto Star
Canada key to disarmament
By Levon Sevunts
Special to The Star
June 20, 2005
Page: A14
Section: News
KABUL - Canada
is a key player in an effort to bring under
government control the huge arsenals of weapons and munitions
held by Aghanistan's private militias.
Christopher Alexander, the Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan who co-chairs the
Ammunition Steering Group along with Afghan
Defence
Minister Gen. Wardak, said that over the last 18 months, Canada has also been
intimately involved in dismantling and demobilizing different militia groups
that fought against the
Taliban in
2001.
"They
were factional units; they were ethnically
homogeneous
units," said Alexander. "And the new
national
police, the new national army have to be truly
national."
About
60,000 Afghan combatants and soldiers have been
demobilized in
Afghanistan, according to documents released by
the
International Security Assistance Force. More than 46,000
have
been reintegrated into civilian life, mostly through
agriculture
retraining programs, as part of a program run by
Afghan
authorities under the auspices of the United Nations.
In
addition, more than 8,960 heavy weapons and more than 32,027
light
weapons have been taken out of public circulation, ISAF
says. Weapons
that can be used by the new national security
forces are
given to them, and the rest are destroyed.
The
general disarmament will grow to include disarming illegal
armed
groups and their warlords, Alexander said.
"We all
know that there are a lot of weapons around and
there
is a lot of intimidation in villages and districts. There
are people who
still call themselves commanders and, in the
absence of
government authority, take decisions on behalf of the
community," Alexander said. "Ensuring that their
impunity is
reduced, ensuring that they are not sources of
criminality and instability (and) disarming them is the next
challenge."
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for Sept. 18, and many of
these
commanders and warlords plan to run for a seat.
"But
the law says that no one who has a link to an illegal
armed
group shall be a candidate," Alexander said. "So
the
Afghans, with the support of the international community, are
giving
these candidates the opportunity to disarm."
Those
who do not disarm will have to be disqualified from
running
in the elections, "and that's going to be a big
issue over the
next two years," Alexander added.
Every
piece of ammunition and weapons recovered is inspected by
Afghan
and international experts, said Moudood Halimi, an
ordnance
disposal supervisor working with HALO Trust, an
international
organization dedicated to destruction of mines and
unexploded ordnance. These experts then decide whether the
ammunition or
weapons can be transferred to the fledgling Afghan
National Army
or are too dangerous for use and must be destroyed.
"Sometimes we get ammunition
from mujahideen commanders but
we are
not sure if it's booby-trapped," Halimi, a
former colonel
in the Afghan Communist army, said, watching his
workers unload
dozens of rockets, mortar rounds, cluster bombs
and
other munitions for destruction by Canadian combat engineers.
"Sometimes the ammunition is too old to be used by the
ANA."
Halimi
said as part of the disarmament program members of his
group
regularly conduct ammunition surveys across the country.
"Often
we know that a village commander hides ammunition in
his
private house," Halimi said. "We go to him and try
to
convince him to surrender it. If he accepts, we destroy the
ammunition,
but if he doesn't we can't do anything; we
don't have the
power to force him."
A lot
of the ammunition and ordnance the group finds in the
capital
region is turned over to Canadian combat engineers based
at Camp Julien
in southern Kabul. Lt. Chantal Tetreault, a troop
commander with
the 23rd Field Squadron 2nd Combat Engineer
Regiment, said
since April her unit has destroyed more than 4,000
kilograms of explosives from munitions. Twice most weeks, the
Canadian
engineers drive to a mountaintop range they call Indigo
and destroy
ammunition delivered by HALO Trust, she added.
Sgt.
Wade Osmond, one of the squadron's explosives experts,
said
the weapons originated all over the world: "Everything
is here:
Chinese, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, Soviet, you just name
it."
One day
last week, the HALO Trust team delivered Egyptian
cluster
bombs, Chinese projectiles for recoilless rifles, Russian
Katyusha rockets and howitzer shells, and Yugoslav mortar rounds. Tetreault said
it's estimated that there are between 75,000
and
150,000 tonnes of munitions and unexploded ordnance in
Afghanistan.
"It's
an important part of our job," said
Tetreault, who
planned to spend her 24th birthday last Saturday
on a range
blowing up these relics of 25 years of war. "At
the end
of the day you feel like you did something tangible,
something
important for this country."
Levon Sevunts
is a Canadian freelance journalist travelling in
Afghanistan.
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