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All diamonds are Blood Diamonds
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http://mingus.charlesmingus3art.com/all-diamonds-are-blood-diamonds-_160.html
Those who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson
1.Today I woke up thinking... All diamonds are Blood Diamonds.
2. I went to sleep thinking...8 out of 10 humans live on less than $1.00
a day that is western warfair state civilization for the last 2,000 years.
3. Even though I am actually an atheist I thank god for free speech, that
is conditioning.
4. I cant help feeling optimistic, that to is conditioning I suppose that it
is better than blind rage or sappy self pity.
Make tools not war
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All diamonds are Blood Diamonds.
All diamonds are Blood Diamonds
http://www.google.com/search?q=All+diamonds+are+Blood+Diamonds+
+&btnG=Search&num=10&hl=en&lr=&safe=off
sandiego.indymedia.org
ALL DIAMONDS ARE CONFLICT DIAMONDS
It wasn't until I saw the movie Blood Diamond starring Djimon Hounsou, ...
All diamond "values" are a hoax. The DeBeers family monopolizes diamond global ...
sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/124564.shtml - 20k - Cached - Similar pages
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Blood Diamond (2006)
Blood Diamond on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more... ...
Warlords, smugglers and the diamond syndicate all play
roles in a refugee exodus, and the killing ...
www.imdb.com/title/tt0450259/ - 55k - Jan 13, 2007 - Cached - Similar pages
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Conflict diamonds
In Angola and Sierra Leone, conflict diamonds continue to fund the rebel
... to their territory of all diamonds not controlled through the Certificate of ...
www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html
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All diamonds are Blood Diamonds.
http://www.ixquick.com/
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Blood Diamonds
Learn Facts About Blood Diamonds And What Is Being Done To Help.
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Lab-Created Diamonds
The Ethical Alternative to Blood Diamonds. Same Optical Properties.
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Psychological Operations 4 of 13 http://www.psywarrior.com/psyop.html
(8 of 8) [12/28/2006 6:10:23 AM]
Psychological Operations/Warfare by Major Ed Rouse (Ret)
"Capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow"
_____
_____
South African & german mercenaries Saddamcourt.jpg
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http://www.democracyforknoxville.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1985&highlight=&sid=0826b23453bf744ab615c16d1a9d0de1
The Bushes want Saddam very dead: the Iraqi ex-dictator knows too much about the chem-bio weapons supplied to Iraq by Reagan and Bush.
The essence of the offer passed to this editor via the British interlocutor was that Saddam, aware that George W. Bush was going to attack Iraq, ordered his intelligence service to gather up all incriminating evidence that would show the world that Iraq's past "weapons of mass destruction" were provided by the Reagan and Bush I administrations. This proof undoubtedly included tape recorded conversations between Saddam and his advisers and Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Iraq, Rumsfeld. Saddam hoped that the exposure of the Reagan-Bush administrations would embarrass Washington and derail its attack plans.
The offer from Baghdad was straightforward -- arrive in Baghdad overland from Jordan and the proof would be handed over. There was one slight hitch. Having such incriminating evidence -- documents and proof that the Reagan administration and that
of George W. Bush's father aided and abetted in Saddam's military's use of chem-bio weaponry against Iranians and his own people -- would have likely made any
"enterprising" Western journalist an inviting target for a number of bad actors the
moment that journalist crossed into Jordanian territory from Iraq.
Ironically, Saddam Hussein was more willing to provide the media with classified and sensitive information to expose the machinations of the United States than anyone in
the George W. Bush administration or that of his father. It is very clear why the Bush administration wants Saddam
dead and it has nothing to do with Saddam's alleged "crimes against humanity."
Romio & Julliett
Dec. 26-27, 2006 -- Why the Bush crime family wants Saddam to die.
Iraq's former dictator managed to avoid one of the world's most high-tech assassination efforts during the Iraq War campaign only to be allegedly discovered by U.S. forces
hiding in a hole in the ground near Tikrit. There is little doubt that the trial of Saddam Hussein by a U.S. puppet government in the Green Zone of Baghdad has been a charade and a miscarriage of justice. Saddam's death sentence decided by an Iraqi government-appointed and U.S.-approved judge on Dec. 26 was never in doubt, considering the knowledge the former Iraqi leader possesses of past crimes of the
Bush family and their coterie of friends and partners in providing Iraq with much
of the biological and chemical weaponry used against the Kurds, Shi'as, and Iranians.
Saddam Hussein's willingness to provide the Western media with documents and other evidence of the connivance of George H. W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci, and other Reagan-Bush administration principals was made apparent to this editor in the months preceding the March 2003 American attack on Iraq. A senior Iraqi official contacted a British colleague of this editor and passed on a personal offer from Saddam Hussein to provide an "enterprising" Western journalist with the proof of America's sanctioning of Saddam's use of U.S.-supplied chem-bio weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, including Iraq's attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. Also included in Saddam's "package" would
be top secret information regarding his role as a longtime asset for the CIA, dating from his student days in Cairo.
The Bushes want Saddam very dead: the Iraqi ex-dictator
knows too much about the chem-bio weapons supplied to
Iraq by Reagan and Bush.
The essence of the offer passed to this editor via the British interlocutor was
that Saddam, aware that George W. Bush was going to attack Iraq, ordered his intelligence service to gather up all incriminating evidence that would show the
world that Iraq's past "weapons of mass destruction" were provided by the Reagan and Bush I administrations.
This proof undoubtedly included tape recorded conversations between Saddam and his advisers
and Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Iraq,
Rumsfeld.
Saddam hoped that the exposure of the Reagan-Bush administrations would embarrass Washington and
derail its attack plans.
The offer from Baghdad was straightforward -- arrive in Baghdad overland from
Jordan and the proof would be handed over.
There was one slight hitch. Having such incriminating evidence -- documents and
proof that the Reagan administration and that of George W. Bush's father aided
and abetted in Saddam's military's use of chem-bio weaponry against Iranians and
his own people -- would have likely made any "enterprising" Western journalist an
inviting target for a number of bad actors the moment that journalist crossed into Jordanian territory from Iraq.
Ironically, Saddam Hussein was more willing to provide the media with classified
and sensitive information to expose the machinations of the United States than
anyone in the George W. Bush administration or that of his father. It is very clear
why the Bush administration wants Saddam dead and it has nothing to do with
Saddam's alleged "crimes against humanity."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
[As has been pointed out in various books down through the years, including
"The War on Truth" of 2004, by Nafeez Ahmed,
all of Saddam's activities were conducted with US government complicity during
the Regan-Bush years and dozens of special exemptions were granted to sell
banned items to Iraq in the process. It's a wonder to me the US government can
even keep finding despotic allies after what they did to such as good-buddies
Noriega and Hussein.
-- R-Gue]
_________________
Those who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never
will be. Thomas Jefferson
http://www.democracyforknoxville.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1985&hig
hlight=&sid=0826b23453bf744ab615c16d1a9d0de1
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
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Dear concerned Friends,
Unfortunately, this makes the most sense of any analysis to me. MBA Thinking Corporate Pirates at their most insidious.
It has most likely always been about "blood for oil" as was speculated in the beginning. My concern throughout much of the last six years has been what this patriarchal cabal has been up to on a daily basisabout which we know almost nothing.
We have all been watching the machinations of the real "evil doers" operating in plain sight and still most people are barely aware.
When will we ever learn? The Bush legacy will live on until we do ... to the great detriment of us all. Ike was absolutely right in warning us to beware the unwarranted influence of the military industrial complex.
McHuckinwinter
New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush
By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t UK Correspondent
Monday 08 January 2007
I. Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize
The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand.
It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.
At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law"
essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.
As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."
From those earliest days until now, throughout all the twists and turns, the blood and chaos of the occupation, the Bush administration has kept its eye on this prize. The new law offers the barrelling buccaneers of the West a juicy set of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that will maintain a fig leaf of Iraqi ownership of the nation's oil industry - while letting Bush's Big Oil buddies rake off up to 75 percent of all oil profits for an indefinite period up front, until they decide that their "infrastructure investments" have been repaid. Even then, the agreements will give the Western oil majors an unheard-of 20 percent of Iraq's oil profits - more than twice the average of standard PSAs, the Independent notes.
Of course, at the moment, the "security situation" - i.e., the living hell of death and suffering that Bush's "war of choice" has wrought in Iraq - prevents the Oil Barons from setting up shop in the looted fields. Hence Bush's overwhelming urge to "surge" despite the fierce opposition to his plans from Congress, the Pentagon and some members of his own party. Bush and his inner circle, including his chief adviser, old oilman Dick Cheney, believe that a bigger dose of blood and iron in Iraq will produce a sufficient level of stability to allow the oil majors to cash in the PSA chips that more than 3,000 American soldiers have purchased for them with their lives.
The American "surge" will be blended into the new draconian effort announced over the weekend by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: an all-out war by the government's Shiite militia-riddled "security forces" on Sunni enclaves in Baghdad, as the Washington Post reports. American troops will "support" the "pacification effort" with what Maliki says calls "house-to-house" sweeps of Sunni areas. There is of course another phrase for this kind of operation: "ethnic cleansing."
The "surged" troops - mostly long-serving, overstrained units dragooned into extended duty - are to be thrown into this maelstrom of urban warfare and ethnic murder, temporarily taking sides with one faction in Iraq's hydra-headed, multi-sided civil war. As the conflict goes on - and it will go on and on - the Bush administration will continue to side with whatever faction promises to uphold the "hydrocarbon law" and those profitable PSAs. If "Al Qaeda in Iraq" vowed to open the nation's oil spigots for Exxon, Fluor and Halliburton, they would suddenly find themselves transformed from "terrorists" into "moderates" - as indeed has Maliki and his violent, sectarian Dawa Party, which once killed Americans in terrorist actions but are now hailed as freedom's champions.
So Bush will surge with Maliki and his ethnic cleansing for now. If the effort flames out in a disastrous crash that makes the situation worse - as it almost certainly will - Bush will simply back another horse. What he seeks in Iraq is not freedom or democracy but "stability" - a government of any shape or form that will deliver the goods. As the Independent wryly noted in its Sunday story, Dick Cheney himself revealed the true goal of the war back in 1999, in a speech he gave when he was still CEO of Halliburton. "Where is the oil going to come from" to slake the world's ever-growing thirst, asked Cheney, who then answered his own question: "The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
And therein lies another hidden layer of the war. For Iraq not only has the world's second largest oil reserves; it also has the world's most easily retrievable oil. As the Independent succinctly notes: "The cost-per-barrel of extracting oil in Iraq is among the lowest in the world because the reserves are relatively close to the surface. This contrasts starkly with the expensive and risky lengths to which the oil industry must go to find new reserves elsewhere - witness the super-deep offshore drilling and cost-intensive techniques needed to extract oil form Canada's tar sands."
This is precisely what Cheney was getting at in his 1999 talk to the Institute of Petroleum. In a world of dwindling petroleum resources, those who control large reserves of cheaply-produced oil will reap unimaginable profits - and command the heights of the global economy. It's not just about profit, of course; control of such resources would offer tremendous strategic advantages to anyone who was interested in "full spectrum domination" of world affairs, which the Bush-Cheney faction and their outriders among the neo-cons and the "national greatness" fanatics have openly sought for years. With its twin engines of corporate greed and military empire, the war in Iraq is a marriage made in Valhalla.
II. The Win-Win Scenario
And this unholy union is what Bush is really talking about when he talks about "victory." This is the reason for so much of the drift and dithering and chaos and incompetence of the occupation: Bush and his cohorts don't really care what happens on the ground in Iraq - they care about what comes out of the ground. The end - profit and dominion - justifies any means. What happens to the human beings caught up in the war is of no ultimate importance; the game is worth any number of broken candles.
And in plain point of fact, the Bush-Cheney faction - and the elite interests they represent - has already won the war in Iraq. I've touched on this theme before elsewhere, but it is a reality of the war that is very often overlooked, and is worth examining again. This ultimate victory was clear as long ago as June 2004, when I first set down the original version of some of the updated observations below.
Put simply, the Bush Family and their allies and cronies represent the confluence of three long-established power factions in the American elite: oil, arms and investments. These groups equate their own interests, their own wealth and privilege, with the interests of the nation - indeed, the world - as a whole. And they pursue these interests with every weapon at their command, including war, torture, deceit and corruption. Democracy means nothing to them - not even in their own country, as we saw in the 2000 election. Laws are just whips to keep the common herd in line; they don't apply to the elite, as Bush's own lawyers and minions have openly asserted in the memos, signing statements, court cases and presidential decrees asserting the "inherent power" of the "unitary executive" to override any law he pleases.
The Iraq war has been immensely profitable for these Bush-linked power factions (and their tributary industries, such as construction); billions of dollars in public money have already poured into their coffers. Halliburton has been catapulted from the edge of bankruptcy to the heights of no-bid, open-ended, guaranteed profit. The Carlyle Group is gorging on war contracts. Individual Bush family members are making out like bandits from war-related investments, while dozens of Bush minions - like Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Joe Allbaugh - have cashed in their insider chips for blood money.
The aftermath of the war promises equal if not greater riches. Even if the new Iraqi government maintains nominal state control of its oil industry, there are still untold billions to be made in PSAs for drilling, refining, distributing, servicing and securing oilfields and pipelines. Likewise, the new Iraqi military and police forces will require billions more in weapons, equipment and training, bought from the US arms industry - and from the fast-expanding "private security" industry, the politically hard-wired mercenary forces that are the power elite's latest lucrative spin-off. And as with Saudi Arabia, oil money from the new Iraq will pump untold billions into American banks and investment houses.
But that's not all. For even in the worst-case scenario, if the Americans had to pull out tomorrow, abandoning everything - their bases, their contracts, their collaborators - the Bush power factions would still come out ahead. For not only has their already-incalculable wealth been vastly augmented (with any potential losses indemnified by US taxpayers), but their deeply-entrenched sway over American society has also increased by several magnitudes. No matter which party controls the government, the militarization of America is so far gone now it's impossible to imagine any major rollback in the gargantuan US war machine - 725 bases in 132 countries, annual military budgets topping $500 billion, a planned $1 trillion in new weapons systems already moving through the pipeline. Indeed, the Democratic "opposition" has promised to expand the military.
Nor will either party conceivably challenge the dominance of the energy behemoths - or stand against the American public's demand for cheap gas, big vehicles, and unlimited consumption of a vast disproportion of the world's oil. As for Wall Street - both parties have long been the eager courtesans of the investment elite, dispatching armies all over the world to protect their financial interests. The power factions whose influence has been so magnified by Bush's war will maintain their supremacy regardless of the electoral outcome.
[By the way, to think that all of this has happened because a small band of extremist ideologues - the neo-cons - somehow "hijacked" US foreign policy to push their radical dreams of "liberating" the Middle East by force and destroying Israel's enemies is absurd. The Bush power factions were already determined to pursue an aggressive foreign policy; they used the neo-cons and their bag of tricks - their inflated rhetoric, their conspiratorial zeal, their murky Middle East contacts, their ideology of brute force in the name of "higher" causes - as tools (and PR cover) to help bring about a long-planned war that had nothing to do with democracy or security or any coherent ideology whatsoever beyond the remorseless pursuit of wealth and power, the blind urge to be top dog.]
So Bush and his cohorts have won even if the surge fails and Iraq lapses into perpetual anarchy, or becomes an extremist religious state; they've won even if the whole region goes up in flames, and terrorism flares to unprecedented heights - because this will just mean more war-profiteering, more fear-profiteering. And yes, they've won even though they've lost their Congressional majority and could well lose the presidency in 2008, because war and fear will continue to fill their coffers, buying them continuing influence and power as they bide their time through another interregnum of a Democratic "centrist" - who will, at best, only nibble at the edges of the militarist state - until they are back in the saddle again. The only way they can lose the Iraq War is if they are actually arrested and imprisoned for their war crimes. And we all know that's not going to happen.
So Bush's confident strut, his incessant upbeat pronouncements about the war, his complacent smirks, his callous indifference to the unspeakable horror he has unleashed in Iraq - these are not the hallmarks of self-delusion, or willful ignorance, or a disassociation from reality. He and his accomplices know full well what the reality is - and they like it.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His weekly political column, "Global Eye," ran in the Moscow Times from 1996 to 2006. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Bergen Record and many others. His story on Pentagon plans to foment terrorism won a Project Censored award in 2003. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog.
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Scotsman.com Living - A halo of hope In a country riddled with landmines and crippled by poverty,
this woman has no ... Sniffer dogs have been tried but the
smell of mines can vary with soil ...
living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1897992006 -
Sat 23 Dec 2006
A halo of hope
BY LOUISE GRAY
I'M STANDING ON A DAM DESTROYED by the civil war in Angola, hands over my ears,
waiting for the blast. In the distance I can make out a de-miner in blue overalls walking
carefully away from the site where he has set the fuse to blow up five landmines. Below
me an old woman in a bright sarong carries a basket on her head over a rickety bridge
built from a few branches of wood. The crossing is precarious as it is and I shout out to
warn her.
Too late. Boom! The valley shakes. Children run screaming down the hill but the old
woman carries on without losing her perfect African posture. She reaches the other side
and laughs up at us. "Obrigada, thank you," she shouts, before turning to collect wood in
another minefield. In a country riddled with landmines and crippled by poverty, this woman
has no choice. Like millions of others across the world she must risk her life every day simply
by stepping on the soil she relies on for a livelihood.
Already three peasants around Camacupa dam have been killed farming the land and more
would have died or suffered horrific injuries had it not been for the HALO Trust, a humanitarian
de-mining organisation based in Dumfries. My man in blue overalls has just blown up five
bounding mines, designed to jump up to stomach
height and rip out the entrails of anyone unfortunate enough to stand on them - whether soldier
or small child. However, it is impossible to clear the other side of the dam until a proper bridge
is built.
The woman disappears across the bridge as the dust settles and soon I am surrounded by
curious villagers.
I want to ask why she risks her life to collect wood and am directed to the soba, or village
elder, identifiable by his rusty bike. Brushing off laughing children, Mateus Ndala, 57, shrugs.
He says the women know where most of the mines are because locals mark them with plaited
grass or stones. "The women have to collect wood and water," he says. "We can't watch children all the time." So, yes, every so often, accidents happen.
In Angola the 30-year civil war between UNITA (Uniao Nacional Para a Indepencia Total de
Angola), supported by the US, and the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertacao), backed by Communist powers, finally came to an end in 2002. But mines carry on killing long after a war
has ended. In this vast southern African country alone some 80,000 civilians are missing limbs
as a result of landmine accidents. Around the world it is estimated that 500 civilians are maimed
or killed by landmines every week.
I am following in the footsteps of Diana, Princess of Wales, in coming to Angola to see the
work HALO does. Although officially visiting disabled children with the International Red
Cross in 1997, the People's
Princess wanted to see how people gained these horrific injuries. Someone had the foresight
to slap a HALO sign on her vest and the rest is history - or the best publicity shot money
could not buy.
Almost ten years later, I visit the same minefield, San Antonio, outside the southern city of
Huambo and find it has been transformed into a children's playing field - albeit one with a
burnt-out tank for a climbing frame. It is a testament to the hard work of HALO, one of a few
charities that stayed in Angola during the war to carry on clearing mines. It has removed
30,000 anti-personnel mines and 3,000 anti-tank mines since 1994.
The charity was set up in 1988 by two Scottish military men: former Coldstream Guard, Guy Willoughby, and ex-Argyll and Sutherland Highlander and former MP for Aberdeenshire West, Colonel Colin "Mad Mitch"
Mitchell. The pair saw the misery caused by landmines while serving in Afghanistan and
set about helping the locals, with just a metal detector and a bicycle. Soon they had created the world's first humanitarian de-mining organisation or, as they preferred to put it, "a 20th-century version of a medieval order of chivalry" dedicated to removing this blight from the lives of innocent women and children.
Today the organisation clears more land of mines than any other charity. HALO has removed
more than six million mines and unexploded ordnances from the 82 landmine-affected countries around the world.
However, it remains a low-key charity based in the picturesque corner of Dumfries and Galloway where Willoughby still lives. At first sight the converted barn that houses the Hazardous Areas
Life-Support
Organisation evokes an upmarket management consultancy rather than a saver of lives. Go
inside, however, and you find a slick military-style operation with maps of minefields on the
walls and charts showing exactly how many square metres were cleared this month, as well
as how many people were educated about the risk of mines and how many tonnes of ammunition
or weapons were destroyed. More than 6,800 people work for the charity, of whom just 40 are expatriates. In Angola HALO employs 1,000 Angolans and a handful of expatriates, including a former opera singer, a former barman and my cousin, Helen Gray, 27, one of its few
women workers.
The farmer's daughter from East Lothian, who used to work as an environment interpreter at
the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, was recommended to HALO by a friend who
sells GPS systems to the charity. At first it was assumed such an "ideal candidate" would be
male, but with a background in conservation in Peru and as a former point-to-point jockey,
Helen clearly has more guts than most.
"HALO normally employs men because of the nature of the job and traditionally more guys were coming forward from the army, but it is changing now," she says. "They are employing more
people from different backgrounds, bringing in different experiences and skills. In certain ways
it is easier if you are a bloke but it does not stop you if you are a woman. It is not a problem for
me."
Her mother worries - whose wouldn't? - but Helen insists her job travelling around minefields
is as safe as working in a busy office if you stick to the safety procedures - and a damn sight
more interesting.
However, accidents do happen. Ally Batten, 29, a former IT analyst from Aberdeenshire, lost
the tip of his thumb and forefinger after handling a fuse from an anti-tank mine that was thought
free from explosives.
In the dusty headquarters of HALO in Kuito, a bullet-ridden city that saw much of the heavy
fighting, Batten gives me a safety briefing before we go into the field. Laid out on the table
like a battle buffet are empty shells for training. He picks up an anti-personnel mine which fits
snugly into the palm of his hand. It looks too small to kill anyone, a clue to its intent - to measure
out enough explosive to blow the leg off your enemy so he is screaming in agony, slowing down troops and damaging morale. Batten moves on to anti-tank mines the size of dinner plates, often boobytrapped to kill anyone trying to clear them. Then there are grenades, manufactured all over the world, including in Britain. Too often, these fail to go off until picked up by a child. "The more you get to know about mines, the more you hate them," says Batten.
Since 1998 40 countries have signed up to the Ottawa Convention, which bans the laying of
mines. However, Russia and China continue to manufacture the weapons, wars continue
without thought for the civilian population and HALO is busier than ever.
Batten adds: "It's very simple, what we do. It's not like tackling healthcare or education.
All we do is get mines out of the ground. It is a finite problem and in that way it has tangible benefits."
By the time I get to my first minefield I know a little more about landmines. I have read the
statistics showing 90 per cent of victims are civilians and a quarter of casualties are children;
and I've seen the photos of blackened bodies taken by HALO staff at the scene of a blast.
So it is with a sinking heart that we arrive in the tatty township of Kunje to find life doesn't
stop because of a minefield - it just gets a little riskier.
In the area before me families are busy building mud huts with zinc roofs, despite the skull and crossbone warning signs. Tome Sadombe, a HALO administrator, explains that the local authority has given this land over to some of the four million refugees returning from Zaire or the Congo, without clearing it first.
Already mines have been found in and around people's homes and four people have died. This makes it a high priority task for HALO, whose staff must work fast before more people are hurt.
But de-mining is a painstakingly slow process. Mechanical de-mining using armoured diggers
only works on flat land where there is little vegetation. Sniffer dogs have been tried but the smell
of mines can vary with soil temperature and moisture, so proved unreliable. Trials are ongoing,
with other charities using elephants, but so far the best de-miners are brave, careful humans.
BEFORE SETTING FOOT IN A MINE- field we must all don the safety equipment of a faceshield and bulletproof vest covering the groin to protect the vital organs. "Stick to the marked paths
which have been cleared," instructs Sadombe. "On no account leave my side and if there are
any unexpected bangs do not, whatever you do, run in any direction - into more mines. Stay
calm and follow the paths out of the minefield." At first I am tremendously nervous. However, the atmosphere on site is one of quiet industry rather than fear. War is indiscriminate and we visit minefields around schools, factories and roads. In each one the de-miners are spread out at 25-metre intervals so it is "one man, one risk", crawling forward to check for devices in the searing
heat. Workers are trained for just three weeks in the art of mine clearance, although there are
constant refresher courses.
In a heavily wooded area around a railway in Ukama, we stop to watch a de-miner, Benidito Chivangola, at
work. His job looks like a cross between gardening and archaeology - just a bit more dangerous. Kneeling,
he must first clear the area with a pair of garden shears. He then slowly checks the space at least three
times. If a mine is found the area is cleared of civilians and the site supervisor carries out a controlled
explosion, like the one I saw at the dam.
Thinking back to the "roll of honour" in Scotland commemorating the 43 people who have died working for
HALO, I ask Chivangola if he is ever afraid.
He grins. "For the first couple of days I was a little bit nervous," he says. "But now it is no problem. My
family think the job is a little bit dangerous but also know I am working so people can access their fields."
Travelling by road in Angola is a risk. More than one local bus has been blown up. And both the Red Cross
and Medecins Sans Frontieres have lost vehicles to such explosions. HALO is doing its best to clear the
roads mechanically but for now its workers must travel by armoured Land Rover. Even short journeys are not
particularly comfortable.
Drivers are advised to avoid the verges where "toe-poppers", designed to set off anti-tank mines in the
middle of the road, lurk. Desperate for a pee, I am forced to go in the middle of the road rather than risk
the verges. My fellow travellers are used to such indignities and politely look away. As we drive down the
bumpy roads, children run alongside and wave, though many have bellies distended by malnutrition. Angola
exports millions of dollars' worth of oil and diamonds every year but little money trickles down to the
people, most of whom live on less than £1 a day.
It is sunset as I visit my last minefield in Longonjo, a lush area around a village which has not yet been
cleared, and the red dust of the earth paints the horizon a bright orange. Women returning from the fields
carry their children on their backs and agricultural implements on their heads. They stop to smile at the
foreigners in their strange clothes. Through a translator we ask them if there are mines in this area. Yes,
they reply, a few months ago a man was killed and, what is almost worse for the community, a cow.
But what can they do?
This is good earth and they must feed their children.
Save the Children estimates that there are as many mines in the ground as children in Angola and HALO
reckons there are around one million yet to clear. Yet of all the ravages of war, mines are the easiest to
solve. "After the Second World War, Europe was cleared in five years. Why not the rest of the world?"
asks Guy Willoughby, the director of HALO.
The fact is, there is only a certain amount of money going into the de-mining of developing countries and
agencies such as the UN spend much of the allocation on extras such as conferences or academic studies.
By comparison, HALO, which receives £20 million a year from governments and private donors such as
Angelina Jolie, spends just seven per cent on extras. Its mission statement is "Getting Mines Out of the
Ground Now"
and it is a source of some frustration that more money is not being put into this relatively simple task.
As long as landmines don't reproduce, argues Willoughby, this is a problem the world can solve with
just a little more money and time. "The lucky thing is that landmines don't have sex!" he says.
"Once cleared, mines are gone, finito, termindao, khallas. So please everybody, let's get the problem
solved now."
To find out more go the HALO Trust website (www.halotrust.org). You can make a secure online donation
there or send a cheque to The HALO Trust, PO Box 7905, Thornhill, DG3 5WA.
This article: http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1897992006
Last updated: 23-Dec-06 00:10 GMT
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