Pete Muller Photography

Mine Action

Minefields are eerily serine. Singing birds and rustling grass often undermine their incidious nature. In northern Uganda, minefields rest among the fertile vistas and dramatic mountain ranges that form the border with South Sudan. The land is prime for resident farmers but these hidden sentries, the number of which has yet to be fully confirmed, keeps most at bay.

The brutal, 22-year conflict that prompted the placement of mines has reached an uncertain lull. With the Lord’s Resistance Army taking refuge in neighboring Congo, many of Uganda’s Internally Displaced Persons have left overcrowded camps for the comfort of their native lands. Upon return, however, many find their homelands littered with the Explosive Remnants of War (ERW), a broad term used to describe unexploded armaments and landmines. The traditional agricultural lifestyle in northern Uganda generates increased risk of ERW accidents as many formerly abandoned farmlands are contaminated with hazardous items. Disrupting them with a garden hoe could trigger a lethal blast.

In Uganda’s far north, along the border with South Sudan, the Uganda Mine Action Center (UMAC) works tirelessly to clear hazardous items and educate the local population on defensive measures to avoid accidents. UMAC, which receives support from the Danish Demining Group and the United Nations Development Program, deploys teams on daily Explosive Ordinance Disposal and Mine Risk Education missions. At present, UMAC concentrates heavily on mine clearance efforts in Ngomoromo and Agoro, where the existence of five minefields was confirmed in fall 2008.

The work is grueling. Under a blistering sun, deminers in cumbersome protective gear spend hours on their hands and knees clipping dense vegetation with small hand shears. The ground must be cleared of growth and checked for tripwires before technicians can employ highly sensitive metal detectors to search for potentially hazardous items. Any metal reading, hazardous or not, must be treated with extreme caution. To ensure safety, deminers sometimes spend one hour removing a buried piece of barbwire or an empty bullet casing. Treating any metal reading carelessly could render a technician seriously injured, or worse. In ideal conditions, each deminer can safely clear ten square meters per day.

Despite the difficult and dangerous nature of the work, UMAC team leaders are optimistic about their progress thus far. At a clearance site in Ngomoromo, six kilometers south of the Sudan border, Leftenant Labu Dennis boasts that his team has cleared some 430 square meters in less than one month. "We are working hard," he says. "Maintaining safety is our number one priority and I am proud of the amount we’ve cleared while adhering to our safety standards." He and his demining team face nearly ten thousand square meters of hazardous ground ahead, all of which will need to be examined before people can safely return.

DDG and UMAC clearance teams begin each day before dawn. The roads leading to most mine and UXO affected areas are unpaved and badly damaged by seasonal rains.
  
Locals play an important role in UMAC landmine clearance efforts along the Uganda-Sudan border. Locals workers aid in the procurement portage of goods to remote clearance base camps in the mountains. Here, men unload cases of water and other supplies that arrive weekly from Kitgum town.
  
During the course of conflict in northern Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army constructed large base camps across the border in South Sudan. From these remote camps, mobile units of LRA fighters staged cross-border assaults on Ugandan communities. In a bid to impede LRA movement, UPDF forces laid mine belts along swaths of the northern border. Gaining access to these minefields requires hours of hiking into extremely rugged terrain.
     
  
Gaining access to mines and unexploded ordinance often requires teams to trek long distances through unforgiving terrain. Here, two UMAC technicians cut through dense vegetation in search of a 250kg air-dropped bomb.
  
Captain Tom Bahinda oversees the excavation of a Russian-made, FAM 250 air dropped munition in Pader District. The bomb is designed to destroy concrete bunkers, of which none exist in rural Pader. It was likely part of an out-of-date stockpile and therefore "gifted" to Uganda for use in the war against the LRA. Weapons "gifting" from more advanced states is a prominent dynamic in African conflict.
  
A UMAC technician excavates a Russian FAM 250 during a disposal operation in Pader. In African states where clearance budgets are low, technicians work with the most basic of tools. While he dons a protective vest and visor, it offers him little safety from a weapon of this size.
     
  
Captain Tom Bahinda places an explosive charge over a cluster munition in Pader District. The disparate nature of cluster munitions makes them particularly dangerous to clear.
  
The Danish Demining Group deploys technical advisors who provide training and assistance to Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) teams. Many of these advisors spent careers in western militaries and relish the opportunity to continue working in a quasi-military environment. Mick Trant spent much of his life in the Irish Army a served multiple tours in Beirut as a UN peacekeeper. "I love this job," he says. "After serving in the military all those years, some fucking office job just wasn't for me."
  
Technicians take hard cover behind a tree as they destroy a cluster munition.
     
  
Two EOD technicians leave the scene after destroying more than 800 pieces of stockpiled ordinance. The blast could be heard for miles.
  
A mine clearance team convenes for a daily briefing in Ngomoromo, on the Sudan-Uganda border. Teams work tirelessly in this area to clear large mine belts from the border.
  
A female mine clearance technician at Ngomoromo breaks during the afternoon heat. She is the only female member of the clearance team and lives in close quarters with her male colleagues. She makes frequent jokes at their expense and does not tolerate any snide remarks.
     
  
Mine affected terrain in Ngomoromo. As depicted, mine clearance teams cut “lanes” into contaminated ground. Each deminer is assigned a one meter lane, which they are expected to clear at the rate of ten square meters per day. The cleared lanes in this image took more than thirty days of steady work.
  
Mine clearance teams use highly sensitive metal detectors to search for buried mines. Prior employing detectors, deminers must first hand clip dense vegetation and examine ground for tripwires and other hazards. In order to maintain safety standards, the pace of work is glacial.
  
While adhering to international mine action safety standards, each deminer is expected to clear approximately ten square meters per day. In northern Uganda, mine clearance teams face dozens of kilometers of fields in unforgiving terrain. Extreme heat and intense rains create additional impediments to swift clearance. Conservative estimates of full clearance are approximately three years.