Region | Iraq
Landmines hamper recovery
Iraq's plans to reconstruct its war-battered economy are being hampered by a legacy of millions of landmines littering its farms, railways and even its prized oil fields, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
- Reuters
- Published: 22:48 July 2, 2009
Baghdad: Iraq's plans to reconstruct its war-battered economy are being hampered by a legacy of millions of landmines littering its farms, railways and even its prized oil fields, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Iraq is peppered with an estimated 25 million landmines, the Environment Ministry says, most of them left over from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war that killed a million people.
The border between the two countries is particularly mine-infested. Mines claimed 14,000 victims in Iraq between 1991-2007, the UN Development Programme says. Unexploded cluster bombs claimed 5,000-8,000 victims in the same period.
But while the humanitarian cost of mines is evident, UN officials said they were also exacting a huge economic cost.
"Mined oilfields and farmlands lie undeveloped& electricity lines are disrupted and the fundamental work of recovery is undermined," a UN report said on Wednesday.
"Iraq cannot afford to bear this cost in the future, if it wishes to restore its full socio-economic potential."
Perhaps most worrying of all for Iraq's economy, almost all of its oil fields, the world's third biggest, are mined.
"Most oil fields have a potential threat from landmines," said Kent Paulusson, a UN adviser on mines, a day after global oil executives jetted into Baghdad to bid for contracts to develop those fields.
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