Emergency teams tackle new contamination in Chad

Unexploded ordnance left as recently as March last year in the capital and border areas of Chad is creating new havoc in a country already suffering with extensive landmine contamination. Steve Pritchard, Project Manager overseeing two MineTech disposal teams working on a contract to provide emergency demining capacity for the UN, reported back from the region.

Life across the region involves a daily threat from unexploded ordnance. MineTech teams have found many mortars and anti-tank shells with their aluminium tailfins unscrewed.

MineTech EOD specialists worked with local teams in an emergency capacity to tackle the problem. Our brief was to oversee operations and conduct demolitions of UXO, but also to develop local knowledge and skills by working with our counterparts at all levels. As such the challenge for the MineTech team was three-fold.

First and foremost it was influencing the culture and practices of the local team who, despite their experience, originally showed an extremely unhealthy disrespect for the explosives they were dealing with. Working together saw results and meant that it was less likely to find someone bouncing an RPG 7 rocket on a fuse or using the nose of a live rocket to dig a hole. Continued technical training is a key part of the process, sharing knowledge and talking things through with the team when we came across an unusual or rare UXO. The senior personnel did not do all the technical work, a process which ensured everyone was up-to-date with their core skills.

The second focus was deciding whether an item was safe to move and then extracting the fuse to render it harmless. Where it wasn't safe, it was destroyed in situ. The UXO threat in the region includes mortar rounds (60, 81, 82 mm), RPG 7 rockets, OG 7 rockets, Law 66 mm rockets, 40 mm grenades and 106 mm shells, some of which have been laying around for decades.

But most importantly while MineTech continues to make a valuable contribution on the surface, the real solution to Chad's UXO disaster lies much deeper. It's in the hearts and minds of a community where people are still prepared to risk life and limb tampering with live explosives.

Before arriving in N'Djamena, MTI worked for about four months in the east of Chad in battle areas and villages. As well as clearing UXO, the team conducted Mine Risk Education amongst the local population distributing thousands of leaflets in and around Abeche. On their first reconnaissance around Biltine in late July, Steve Pritchard and his team were tasked to investigate an accident. They found a father resting under a tree. He took them to the site of the accident and the graves of his three sons, 50 metres away.

Recounts Steve, "The accident site was nothing more than a small, barely discernible crater in the blinding white, hot, hard desert floor. There was no metal or any other remains to suggest what had happened. The children had been playing with a rocket. Maybe they were unscrewing the fuse when it exploded; maybe they were throwing stones at it. With merciful irony, the young sole survivor cannot remember."

Their resting places were simple affairs; no pits, the bodies buried with enough sand and thorn bush strewn on top to prevent scavengers. When they arrived at the scene the MTI team held their hands in the upwards position of prayer, in the Muslim fashion and talked about the accident. Although just three weeks had passed, there were no tears and no emotions. At the end of our clearance operations just one month later, the family, who were nomads, had moved on.

Within just six months of operation in Chad, MineTech had organised the removal and destruction of just under 50,000 items including 34,000 rounds of small calibre ammunition as well as BM 21 rockets, Saggers and a SA 7 missile which together totalled almost 40 tonnes.

As our project finished we hope that the knowledge shared by our technical advisors on clearance, demolition, MRE and all areas of operations to support the development of an ongoing clearance process, will continue to improve quality of life for the people of Chad beyond the scope of this emergency phase.