Clearing Lebanon's residue of war

By Katya Adler
BBC News, Nabitiyeh

It may not be quite what you expect - a team of Iraqi Kurds teaching explosives clearance techniques in the bombed-out villages of southern Lebanon - but here they are.

Sharing the knowledge - a munitions training session

The men have been flown out by the British charity Mines Awareness Group (MAG), the only non-commercial munitions clearance body in Lebanon, a country still littered with unexploded devices more than a month after the recent war with Israel.

"Hundreds of thousands of civilian lives are at risk," said Nick Guest, MAG's Technical Operations Manager.

"The important thing after this conflict, any conflict, is to get team leaders on the ground, as quickly as possible, to get rid of unexploded materials in homes and villages before people are killed.

Sense of speed

"All too often precious time is wasted selecting local volunteers, then painstakingly training them.

"We think it makes sense for locals we've trained in other conflict areas to share their know-how elsewhere. That way ordnance can begin to be cleared as soon as possible."

MAG first started this programme in Kosovo after the war.

They sent MAG-trained explosives experts from Cambodia to train Kosovars.

Now 19 Iraqis are in southern Lebanon. I met up with some of them in the lush orange fields of in Yohmour village.

"Iraq, Cambodia, Lebanon... whatever the conflict zone, civilians suffer in similar ways. That's why we're here now to help."

At risk

Salaam Muhammad, a moustached, 40-something Iraqi Kurd, was supervising a group of Lebanese volunteers, sifting through the leaves and earth, on the look-out for unexploded devices.

"We learned a lot during Iraq's war of 2003," Salaam told me.

People are keen to return home after a conflict but munitions remain

"How to react to emergencies. How to safely identify, remove and detonate unexploded ordnance. The situation here is very similar.

"Displaced people return to their homes after a conflict. They don't realise their lives are still at risk because of explosives left in their villages.

"My Iraqi team is now passing on their expertise to the Lebanese. Then they can take care of themselves."

MAG works alongside the United Nations and a Lebanese advisory body to decide where to best focus their work.

Cluster bomblets

No-one knows just how much unexploded ordnance there is in southern Lebanon.

Estimates range from tens to hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster bomblets and submunitions. The UN warns it may take two years to clear them.

The Israeli military says its aim was to hit Hezbollah hard, never to target civilians.

But Israel regards southern Lebanon as Hezbollah's heartland and bombed it accordingly.

Unexploded Israeli munitions now lie on the roadside, in the gardens and fields of the decimated villages here.

The devices tend to be small in size, so often remain undetected until it's too late.

For explosives clearance groups it is a race against time. The Lebanese are in a hurry to return to normal life.

Dilemma

Trees are laden with apples, oranges, olives and plums. Farmers face a terrible dilemma: life over livelihood.

Do they keep a safe distance from bomb-contaminated land, allowing produce to rot or should they risk their lives, salvaging their harvest?

An estimated 70% of families rely on agriculture in southern Lebanon.

They say the cost of the war, including the loss of livestock, crops and damage to equipment amounts to several hundred million dollars.

So, farmers are desperate to get back to their fields and families are anxious to send children safely to school.

I just wanted to keep my children safe - there are bombs all over our village still Radwan Ghandour Cluster bomb victim

Out of the 18 killed and more than 80 injured in explosions since the end of the war a quarter were children.

A young boy was killed a few days ago climbing a tree to grab an apple. While shaking the branches, he dislodged an unexploded bomblet. It detonated on his head.

We met Radwan Ghandour, a father of four, in Nabitiyeh's Ragheb Harab Hospital. He was covered in bandages and had lost an eye and the fingers of his left hand when he tried to get rid of a cluster bomblet from his garden.

"I just wanted to keep my children safe," he told us. "There are bombs all over our village still. It makes us hate the Israelis more and more each day."

Anger and prejudice continue to smoulder on both sides, though the war here has ended, for now.

Yet, as in so many conflict zones all over the world, even after the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, unexploded ordnance is a deadly legacy left for civilians - men, women and children - to carry.