Massoud Hassani, an Afghan-Dutch designer, has come up with an unusual contraption to clear landmines. The Mine Kafon Air is a drone-based device that detects landmines and eliminates them.
There are about 110 million landmines in the world. According to estimates, it could take a staggering 1,100 years to clear all of them. “We will need at least $30 billion [Dh110 billion] for that,” Hassani says. “Or we could do that in 10 years with another technology — totally radical, totally different and the cost will be less. It is safer, and it is faster.”
I meet Hassani at the USINE café in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. It is early evening and there are few customers around. The waitress takes the order. The café is located where the Philips Light Tower once was — Eindhoven is where the famous Dutch technology company was founded.
The word “kafon” is derived from the Dari Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. “Kafon is the shorter version of kafandan, which means explosion,” says Hassani.
Mine Kafon Air has a three-step mine detection and removal system. “The first step of this drone is mapping. It is equipped with a camera. It flies around and maps the whole area. It draws a pattern indicating safe and dangerous routes on the ground. The second part is detection of mines. The drone flies really low over the ground to detect the mines. The third part is removal of the mines. It has a robotic arm, which places a small detonator on top of a mine and detonates it.”
The Mine Kafon Air is not the first landmine removal device designed by Hassani. He first attracted the attention of the international media a few years ago when he created a low-cost, wind-powered device to clear landmines. That device, called Mine Kafon, was very different and had less practical applicability.
Hassani’s interest in the elimination of landmines goes back to his childhood. Born in 1983, he spent his early childhood in Afghanistan. First, there were Russian troops and then the mujahideen. Although he left the war-torn country in 1994, memories of the suffering he witnessed due to landmines have stayed with him. “The war was going on when I was growing up in Kabul. You could hear and see explosions every other day. I lived in that neighbourhood for five years and saw a friend of mine get hurt by a landmine. Luckily he didn’t die. Another kid lost his leg.”
Over a cup of mint tea I listen to Hassani talk about those dark chapters from his childhood. Despite the dangers from landmines, Hassani and his friends still went outside to play. “As children, you don’t really care about them. We would secretly sneak out so my mum wouldn’t notice. There was a partially constructed building. It became a playground for a lot of us kids. There was portions of wall that you could walk on.”
The foreign troops left behind a lot of ammunition. “They come there just to train with their weapons. Since Afghanistan has always had poor politics, the country becomes a bit [of a] playground for a lot of nations. They play around with their inventions, new types of explosives, there. The bad thing is that when they returned, they left a lot of things behind. So those became our toys.”
The children did not always understand the dangers that lurked in the fields. “My mother and parents of other kids were always arguing and telling us to not go out there,” he says, “but nobody listened.”
Hassani witnessed precious young lives being lost due to landmines. “A group of kids, mainly my brothers’ friends, all got killed because of an explosive they were playing with. They were hitting it with something, trying to open it. Those things happened frequently. When you live there, it becomes pretty normal because as kids you don’t understand, you don’t know any better.”
One day tragedy struck. Hassani’s father was killed in a bombardment while on his way to work. “That was the main reason to just leave Afghanistan.”
His mother had planned to leave sooner but they couldn’t. So they went to Mazar-i-Sharif and stayed for a while before moving to Pakistan.
In Islamabad, Hassani attended an Afghan school and learnt to speak English. He has fond memories of the neighbourhood he lived in, where he would play football. They lived in Pakistan for two years and then moved to Uzbekistan. He lived there for two years and learnt Russian. “It was beautiful. We were living in Tashkent, the capital.” Then at the age of 14 he arrived in the Netherlands.
He learnt Dutch and attended school. As his studies progressed, he began exploring what field of higher education to pursue. One of the jobs Hassani did was in security. “I had a lot of free time at that job. At that time, I was drawing a lot.” His colleagues suggested that he should study design. After visiting the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Hassani decided it was the line he wanted to pursue.
Crafting stuff was a skill Hassani had grown up with. “Design and making things is probably in my nature. So the decision was made. I had to deliver a portfolio to the school, which has really tough selection criteria. I was refused twice. But then I kept improving, and the third time they let me in.”
It was at the Design Academy that Hassani created the original Mine Kafon while working on his thesis. The device was inspired by the toys he played with in Afghanistan. “It is never meant to be really used in a field. It is to visualise the idea.”
The process of building the device took about three months. His first presentation of the device was in Milan. “Every year, my school goes to Milan during the design week. They select a few works by students to present there. When the Mine Kafon was presented, it got a lot of international media attention.
That was just the beginning. “That was when we made the second prototype, which is on video, rolling and exploding. Then I had another presentation during a graduation at the school. There was a lot of media. It was in national news in the Netherlands. Even the Dutch defence personnel took a look at it. We then made a short film about it.” The film was produced by Callum Cooper and received 2 million views on Vimeo in just two weeks.
The unique metal-and-bamboo Mine Kafon has been discussed by experts in various fields. “Like philosophers, they want to talk about its culture, its aesthetics. There was a huge discussion in the design circles about what this is — is it art, is it design, or just a prototype or working model? They didn’t know where to place it. There was a lot of political news, on channels such as CNN and BBC. They talked about it because there’s a political side to it, besides the humanitarian and artistic aspects.”
Unlike the original, the Mine Kafon Air which Hassani has worked on for the past two years, has more potential for practical application. A recent study found that about 3,678 people died due to landmine explosions in 2014, which was an increase over the previous year. That makes an average of 10 victims per day. At the moment, an estimated 900 million people in the world are at risk from landmines.
“The worst are the people who make this kind of a thing. They are the ones responsible,” says Hassani. “When a Mercedes gets damaged, the company takes responsibility for it. But nobody takes responsibility for these [landmines] kinds of things, which are now a huge global problem.”
Hassani is collaborating with a company for the device. “They have customised one of its detectors to our drone platform. Now we can follow the drone around in a pattern. Every detection will be tracked with GPS. It also has a paint brush which makes a pattern on the on the ground. We are now developing all these electronics. The last part is getting rid of the mines. The same drone follows the pattern drawn before and puts a small detonator on top of the mines. We can trigger these detonators from a distance and nobody needs to go into the landmine riddled area.”
Hassani shows me a demo of the Mine Kafon Air on his laptop. The product has attracted the attention of some leading technology firms. “We have been in touch with Google, who are quite interested as they are also into robotics and similar things.”
Hassani presented the prototype in San Francisco a few months ago. “Somebody from Facebook said they were interested in such solutions because Facebook is working on something for mapping purposes. With this, you can map dangerous things around the world. So there is a huge potential to do something good with this project.”
What Hassani needs now is financial support. “We really need funding or donations,” he says. One idea is to auction sculptures of the original Mine Kafon to raise funds. “Maybe we can approach people who are interested in art, or collectors. There are many such people in the Middle East. So that would be interesting.”
For now, Hassani is settled into his life in the Netherlands. Several of his family members are there. “If we count everybody, probably more than 100 people, or 150 people. We have big families.”
He is not sure if he will return to Afghanistan. “Maybe after a few years I will go to Afghanistan. Or live in another country. To me a country doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean a lot. This world is just a round ball and I travel a lot. Wherever I go, I feel at home.”
Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.
