23/12/2021 Iraq, Ninive, Mosul
“If you ever come across anything suspicious like this item, please do not pick it up, contact your local law enforcement agency for assistance”
By Ahmed Maher
A landmine removal expert has turned her hand to an entirely different way to improve Iraqi lives: planting trees. Harriet Rix, 31, first travelled to Iraq in 2014. The country, fighting a losing battle with extremist group ISIS, was in a state of crisis and landmines littered the landscape, endangering civilians. The Oxford biochemistry graduate had been training Iraqis and Syrians to identify unexploded ordnance via video calls, but decided to shed her “incredibly safe and privileged position” behind a computer screen for the realities of dealing with the indiscriminate use of landmines and other explosives. “I was at Rabban Hormizd monastery as ISIS moved into Mosul. Earlier in the week I’d seen the effects of minefields for the first time up on the border with Iran at Haji Omran, and talked to a man who had lost his leg trying to farm there,” she tells The National in an interview. “I remember seeing people on the road desperately getting out of Mosul; the fear, the uncertainty, the feeling that this had happened before. Some still haven’t returned, partly because of the threat of explosive remnants of war, others because of the impossibility of making a living.” On Ms Rix’s return in 2017, glimmers of hope were beginning to show when the government declared victory over ISIS. As she made her way back to Mosul, the former ISIS stronghold laid waste in the battle for control, she saw first-hand the tragedy and danger of a postwar city for its inhabitants. She describes the mine belt “stretching on and on across the hills,” as her team cleared unexploded improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to allow the repair of power cables. Iraq is one of the countries most heavily contaminated by unexploded ordnance on earth. Explosive remnants of war affect more than 3,200 square kilometres of land – twice the area of London, according to the latest report in October by Handicap International, an international NGO that assists victims of wars and refugees worldwide. The explosive remnants in the northern governorate of Nineveh, home to the cities of Mosul, Sinjar, and Tel Afar, claimed the lives of 700 people and between 2018-20. A staggering 8.5 million Iraqis live amid these deadly waste-products of the war endured by Iraq against ISIS from 2014 to 2017, while up to 700,000 Iraqis have been internally displaced. In September, a trap killed an Iraqi soldier, south of Mosul. He was from the 16th Infantry Division. “We’re often talking about bombs triggered by tripwires in hallways, aerial bombs that never exploded resting metres below ground and surrounded by rubble, and children’s toys packed with explosives,” says Alma Al Osta, Handicap’s Disarmament and Protection of Civilians Advocacy Manager. UN delegates who paid visits to the mangled city of Mosul after the war described it as “hell on earth”.
Photo-Source: thenationalnews.com
Photo: Harriet Rix started this year working with an Iraqi charity based in Erbil to plant thousands of oak trees across Iraq Kurdistan and northern areas in Iraq.
Biography of a Bomb
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