Center for International Stabilization & Recovery

An RBK 250-275 cluster munitions dispenser that the Syrian Air...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:18:14 -0400

An RBK 250-275 cluster munitions dispenser that the Syrian Air Force did not manage to use. From Taftanaz Air Base, which was overrun by opposition fighters in January. By the author. Earlier this year.

Israeli soldier killed during land mine clearing near Syrian border

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:51:00 -0400

Israeli soldier killed during land mine clearing near Syrian border:

The IDF soldier was taking part in a standard advanced training course when an old land mine exploded.

Soldiers searching for remains of fellow soldier in minefield. Photo by Gil Eliyahu.

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed Tuesday afternoon during a training course while removing a land mine in the Golan Heights.

Private Roey Yisrael Alfi, 19, and his unit were undergoing a standard advanced training course near Moshav Yonatan when an old land mine exploded, causing his death. This was an anti-tank land mine expected to explode only as a result of a heavy vehicle, such as an APC or a tank, driving over it.

It is still unclear why the land mine exploded but initial evaluations point to a technical malfunction. An official involved in the investigation said such an accident has not occurred in several years.

Bees In Croatia Being Trained To Find Land Mines

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:51:00 -0400

Bees In Croatia Being Trained To Find Land Mines:

ZAGREB, Croatia — Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined.

Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees. Croatian researchers are training them to find unexploded mines littering their country and the rest of the Balkans.

When Croatia joins the European Union on July 1, in addition to the beauty of its aquamarine Adriatic sea, deep blue mountain lakes and lush green forests, it will also bring numerous un-cleared minefields to the bloc’s territory. About 750 square kilometers (466 square miles) are still suspected to be filled with mines from the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

RAINY SEASON is an intimate story about a family’s...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:40:00 -0400

RAINY SEASON is an intimate story about a family’s unexpected change of fate, set in the larger context of post-war Vietnam. A rubber tree-farming family in central Vietnam comes to grips with life after their youngest son finds a leftover American mortar while searching for grasshoppers. With unprecedented access and shot over five years, RAINY SEASON captures the land’s sumptuous beauty and reveals the far-reaching sorrow that it harbors.

India's 3,000 child soldiers:

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:08:00 -0400

India's 3,000 child soldiers::

“It has been reported that children of different age groups are trained and assigned different roles. The new entrants, aged from six to 12, are initially used as spies and couriers. They are also trained in basic drills and armed with .303 rifles. Children above 12 are used as fighters. They are trained to make and plant landmines and bombs, gather intelligence and for sentry duty. Young girls participate in the same drills as the boys. They are trained to lead operations from the front.”

The Humpty Dumpty Institute Trains Iraqi Filmmakers in Baghdad

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:27:00 -0400

The Humpty Dumpty Institute Trains Iraqi Filmmakers in Baghdad :

The Humpty Dumpty Institute in partnership with the Iraqi Independent Film Centre (IIFC) conducted a workshop for 13 young Iraqi filmmakers in Baghdad from May 1-10. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad funded the workshop with additional support coming from Iraq Al-Rafdin and Human Film UK/NL. The training was part of the International Film Exchange, a program of the Humpty Dumpty Institute that trains filmmakers with special promise from around the world and helps them use the power of film and television to highlight important social issues. In addition, the IFE raises awareness in the U.S. film industry about the struggles of promising filmmakers abroad when attempting to document those issues.

The theme of the Baghdad workshop was “Telling the Story”. It was designed to build upon a series of training activities conducted by IIFC beginning in January under the leadership of Iraqi’s most important filmmaker, Mohamed Al-Daradji (“Son of Babylon”). The workshop’s instructor, Bill Megalos, is a California-based filmmaker with more than 30 years experience producing and directing feature films and documentaries. Seven of the workshop participants are slated to travel to Los Angeles in June to take part in an intensive ten-day program at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. Participants in the UCLA program will receive a stipend allowing them to produce a short film of their own upon returning to Iraq.

Snake arms and crystal legs: Artificial limbs push boundaries of art

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:33:00 -0400

Snake arms and crystal legs: Artificial limbs push boundaries of art :

Mainstreaming disability with artistic artificial limbs

London (CNN) — With her flaming red hair, Marilyn Monroe figure, and lurid green snake casually coiled around the arm, Jo-Jo Cranfield looks like a real-life muse emerging from a Salvador Dali painting.

It’s impossible not to stare at the neon python on her left wrist. But take a closer look and you’ll discover that the reptile slithers in and out of the flesh like a psychedelic needle and thread.

Cranfield is an amputee. And her fantastical arm — described as everything from cool to creepy, and erotic — is the work of a London designer reinventing the way we see prosthetic limbs.

Sandia Offers Non-explosive Fertilizer Formula

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:13:00 -0400

Sandia Offers Non-explosive Fertilizer Formula:

A Sandia engineer who trained U.S. soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can’t detonate a bomb. It’s an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan.

Sandia has decided not to patent or license the formula, but to make it freely available in hopes of saving lives.

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is illegal in Afghanistan but legal in neighboring Pakistan, where a quarter of the gross domestic product and half the workforce depend on agriculture. When mixed with a fuel such as diesel, ammonium nitrate is highly explosive. It was used in about 65 percent of the 16,300 homemade bombs in Afghanistan in 2012, according to government reports. There were 9,300 IED events in the country in 2009.

South Africa company unveils new mine-protected products

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:08:00 -0400

South Africa company unveils new mine-protected products:

South Africa’s globally respected specialist mine protection and demining company, Denel Mechem, made two major announcements last month. The first was of the company’s development of a new-generation version of the renowned Casspir mine-protected vehicle, the Casspir NG 2000. The second was of the develop- ment of a new multipurpose truck fitted with a new mine-protected cab.

The Casspir first entered service in 1979 and since then has seen service around the world with the United Nations (UN), various police forces and private security companies, as well as with the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). “The basic, reliable features of the Casspir remain the same,” affirms Denel Mechem GM Ashley Williams. “It has always been the world leader in its class – providing unequalled protection against landmines, roadside bombs and automatic rifle fire. Now we have improved the hull protection by using a higher quality of steel, increased its power, improved the accessibility for passengers and mounted it on a more versatile and reliable vehicle platform.”

The Casspir NG 2000 can resist the blast of 14 kg of explosives – equivalent to more than two landmines – under each wheel. It comes in two versions. One uses a Mercedes-Benz drivetrain while the other, designated the NG 2000B, uses a Powerstar engine as its platform. The result is improved power and manoeuvrability.

Did NATO Kill These Afghans With Air-Burst Ordnance? Alissa...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:52:08 -0400

Did NATO Kill These Afghans With Air-Burst Ordnance?

Alissa Rubin (@alissanyt) examines the deaths of at least 17 women and children in Kunar Province; their bodies were discovered after a vicious firefight on April 5 and 6 in which a CIA officer was killed and his unit pinned down and nearly overrun. A glimpse at a failed joint CIA-Afghan operation, which went “catastrophically awry,” ending in blood, recrimination and sorrow.

NATO’s rules for airstrikes allow Western and Afghan forces to call for ordnance with air-burst fuzes, which convert a standard air-delivered bomb (a weapon that with guidance systems and delayed fuzing can be extraordinarily precise and reasonably discriminate) into a much more dangerous and often indiscriminate means of killing. But these weapons are almost never the first choice. They are typically used when a ground unit is desperate and wants many targets hit or suppressed at once. The downside is that ordnance configured in such fashion carries grave risks to any friendly units or civilian lives and property nearby.

To clear up the many lingering questions, NATO might release all of the weapons systems video from the airstrikes in this fight, and might explain which fuzes and fuze settings were used for each piece of ordnance. Thus far, its denials of responsibility — and its insistence that the Taliban may have smothered the victims (an allegation presented without evidence) — are unconvincing.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

By Meer Afzal/European Pressphoto Agency.

CISR Supports Expansion of Peer Support Activities to Burundi’s...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:45:00 -0400

Graduation: CEDAC supervisors course

Women participate in the balloon exercise for relieving emotional stress

Graduation: peer-support course for women with disabilities

Participants engage in a peer support role play

CISR Supports Expansion of Peer Support Activities to Burundi’s Capital

In April, CISR Peer Support Specialist Cameron Macauley returned to Burundi to assist in the training of new peer support workers for a program expansion into Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital. CISR’s Burundian partner since 2010, CEDAC (Center for the Education and Development for Ex-Combatants) operates a highly successful program for survivors of war-related violence in Muramvya, a community about 20 miles east of the capital. CEDAC’s peer-support workers provide counseling and psychosocial support to survivors who are recovering from traumatic experiences suffered during Burundi’s civil conflict, which ended in 2006.

With support from CISR, CEDAC implemented a new monitoring and evaluation system last June to assess the results of its work with 363 survivors. Preliminary data suggests that CEDAC’s services are overwhelmingly successful, with 99 percent of survivors reporting positive changes in their lives as a direct result of peer support.

With generous assistance from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based nongovernmental organization, CEDAC will begin providing services in Bujumbura, where thousands of war survivors still need assistance. This most recent training prepared 30 women with disabilities to offer peer support in the capital. CEDAC’s supervisors were also trained to respond to issues related to disability, such as discrimination, domestic violence, and lack of access to schools, clinics and government buildings. Participants also learned how to help survivors overcome low self-esteem and how to build self-confidence.

“With help from CISR and AOAV we hope to eventually become a national organization,” said Eric Niragira, CEDAC’s executive director. “We look forward to the day when all war survivors can participate fully in Burundian society.”

~ Cameron Macauley, CISR Peer Support and Trauma Rehabilitation Specialist

A “Nobel” Cause: Portraits of Peace by Nora D. Sheets [...

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:27:00 -0400

PSALM joined ICBL in the global Lend Your Leg campaign.

Students with painted portraits of campaigners who have inspired them

The Global Health Program at WVU hosted Dr. Ken Rutherford, 10/23/12

PSALM members painted a portrait of Princess Diana.

A “Nobel” Cause: Portraits of Peace

by Nora D. Sheets [ WVCBL/PSALM ]

Students from St. Francis de Sales Central Catholic School in Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S., created an art exhibit to recognize International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) advocates and landmine survivors.

Members of Proud Students Against Landmines and Cluster Bombs/West Virginia Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs (PSALM/WVCBL or PSALM for short) met in fall 2012 to discuss how to join the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and celebrate 20 years of campaigning for a world free of landmines. It seemed fitting that a youth campaign born from an art project would commemorate the event with artwork. Portraits highlighted ICBL campaigners and a timeline of photographs celebrated the 20th anniversary of ICBL winning the Nobel Peace Prize, along with PSALM’s work with the campaign. The exhibit, A “NOBEL” CAUSE: Portraits of Peace, opened at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S., on 11 January 2013.

PSALM students spent hours painting and preparing large-scale portraits of ICBL campaigners, mentors and role models, as well as landmine survivors who participated in the 2012 Paralympics in London. The subjects of the portraits are people who inspired PSALM students to use their talents and energy to make the world safer for children everywhere. These portraits represent a mere fraction of the many amazing people PSALM had the privilege of working with over the years. In addition to creating the artwork, PSALM students acted as gallery guides for visitors during the event.

ICBL, a global, civil movement, was born in 1992 to put an urgent stop to a humanitarian crisis. ICBL’s efforts were crucial to the development, negotiation, adoption and signing of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction and in the same year ICBL was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

As a teacher, I can attest to how often the student becomes the teacher and the teacher becomes the student. In 1999 I assigned a project to my eighth-grade art students: Design a piece of artwork that will educate the public about a global social-justice issue. The students chose landmines, and local veteran and ophthalmologist Dr. Larry Schwab encouraged my students to join the effort to rid the world of landmines. In 2000 PSALM students met with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams; Landmine Survivors Network co-founders Ken Rutherford and Jerry White; and Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines members including Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Tun Channareth, ICBL Youth Ambassador Song Kosal and Sister Denise Coghlan. All went out of their way to educate the students about the issue. The students were dedicated to the mission. PSALM co-founder Ryan Lynch stated, “I learned a lot from working with the campaigns, lobbying lawmakers, raising awareness and meeting with other inspiring advocates, but most of all it empowers and inspires students to create change in a real way. I learned that social-justice advocacy is a powerful tool that can be utilized by anyone with hope.”

Fourteen years later, PSALM is still committed to educating the public about the devastation caused by landmines and cluster munitions, and their indiscriminate nature that leads to loss of life, especially children’s lives, after wartime hostilities have ceased. Students and members work to raise awareness about survivor issues, prevent future casualties through service projects and contribute to the universal signature of the conventions banning landmines and cluster munitions. The service projects that PSALM students completed include collecting medical supplies for landmine victims in Nicaragua, providing a prosthetic device to a Bosnian landmine victim, raising funds in order to train mine detection dogs, as well as sponsoring three water wells in mine-affected regions of Cambodia. “We want a world where all children can walk to school, gather food or water, and play without the fear that each step may be their last,” said a PSALM student during the exhibit.

Biography

Nora D. Sheets has worked as an art teacher at St. Francis de Sales Central Catholic School in Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S., for 26 years. She is the coordinator for the student organization Proud Students Against Landmines and Cluster Bombs/West Virginia Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs (PSALM/WVCBL) Sheets has represented PSALM/WVCBL at International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition conferences in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Croatia, Jordan, Kenya, Laos and Norway.

Contact Information

Nora D. Sheets

Coordinator

PSALM/WVCBL

41 Guthrie Lane

Morgantown, WV 26508 / USA

Tel: + 1 304 291 5070

Email: noracat@yahoo.com, nsheets@stfrancismorgantown.com

Website: http://wvcbl.org

Senegal: MFDC gunmen abduct 12 mining-clearance experts

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:15:39 -0400

Senegal: MFDC gunmen abduct 12 mining-clearance experts:

Twelve mine-clearing experts, including three women, have been abducted in Casamance, Southern Senegal, by members of the Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), reliable sources told PANA here Monday.

Demba Keita, an official of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), said they noted Friday the disappearance of the 12-member team from the village of Kailou near the border with Guinea Bissau.

Keita said the abducted persons were taken towards the neighboring Guinea Bissau.

More photos from CISR Director Ken Rutherford’s Vietnam...

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:48:00 -0400

Partnership between JMU and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation

Mine-risk education materials for school children at ICRC meeting

Mine Action Visitor Center

CISR-Ken Rutherford, iMMAP-Ana Maria Arango & Project RENEW staff

CISR Director Dr. Ken Rutherford

More photos from CISR Director Ken Rutherford’s Vietnam trip as part of CISR’s conflict survivor survey mission to adapt information management system along the lines of the Convention on the Rights and Dignity of People with Disabilities.

Prime Tech launches the new PT-D:Mine series. PT-300 D:Mine e...

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:10:00 -0400

Prime Tech launches the new PT-D:Mine series.

PT-300 D:Mine e PT-400 D:Mine: the new tracked PrimeTech vehicles for demining

The PrimeTech brand was founded in 2005 within the Italian FAE Group from which it inherits 20 years of experience in the design and realization of professional mulching shredders for tractors, skid steer loaders, excavators and special vehicles (prime movers). Since then PrimeTech’s signature designs tracked carriers that, depending on the fitted FAE head are used, can be used for forestry applications and for the stabilization and the remediation of soil, also in depth.

After extensive research and development in the field of mine clearance, PrimeTech has recently adapted its two top vehicles, the PT-300 with 275 HP and the PT-400 to 415 HP, to the remediation of mined areas. Both have been reinforced with special steel and equipped with demining heads that hit the ground causing detonation of the mines due to milling. PT-300 D:Mine (category Medium Machine) is a tracked carrier with a remote control module that receives the signal up to a distance of 1000 m. It is equipped with the forestry tiller FAE 300/TD of which its working width is 2500 mm and is designed to clean up areas affected by dense vegetation and to withstand explosions of anti-tank and anti- personnel mines. The Hardox ® and Weldox ® steel makes tool and rotor wear-resistant while the Periflex system ® protects the head during the explosion. Depending on the type of ground on which it operates (which is made of earth, sand, or gravel) PT-300 D:Mine reaches a daily productivity up to 25000 m² and is able to work at depths of up to 250 mm. The ground pressure exerted by the vehicle is of only 0.26 kg/cm ², thanks to the oscillating undercarriage which is capable of maintaining excellent mobility both on land with steep slopes and in swampy areas which are made inaccessible due to mud and snow.PT-400 D:Mine belongs to the category Heavy Machine and is equipped with an armoured cab that is driven by the operator. The demining head is a FAE 500/TD, designed with the same technical characteristics of the FAE 300/TD but with a working width of 2750 mm and a working depth of up to 300 mm depending on the type of soil. The daily production of the PT-400 D:Mine, which is always subject to the conditions of the remediation area to be cleaned up, is around 35000 m², while the pressure that the vehicle exerts on the ground is just 0.35 kg/cm ².

Last week CISR Director Ken Rutherford visited Hanoi, Vietnam...

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:53:00 -0400

Last week CISR Director Ken Rutherford visited Hanoi, Vietnam and met with the International Committee of the Red Cross and MOLISA’s disability section.

The Limits of Detection

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:13:00 -0400

The Limits of Detection:

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, dogs seemed to pop up everywhere. Not just any canines, of course: highly trained detection dogs, at the side of police officers or federal agents. While it’s too early to say exactly what kind of permanent changes we might see as a result of the bombing, one good bet is that the presence of these kinds of dogs at almost any event at which a large number of people gathers in a relatively small amount of space will become a regular occurrence. Many people will feel reassured just seeing them. But the public has only a tenuous grasp on just what the dogs are capable of.

Walking through a busy international airport may lead you not only by explosive-detection dogs but also by dogs trained to detect bed bugs, drug-detection dogs, and dogs sniffing for illegal guava and other agricultural products being brought back into the U.S. by foreign travellers. But each is trained specifically on particular molecules or compounds, and pays other odors no mind at all. The guava dog will pass right over T.N.T. (For more on the training that dogs go through for work like this, see Burkhard Bilger’s February, 2012, article from the magazine on New York City’s canine units.)

Preparing a Shrine. This weekend will mark the 2013 E.O.D....

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:52:51 -0400

Preparing a Shrine.

This weekend will mark the 2013 E.O.D. Memorial Ceremony to honor techs killed in action in the past year.

Who are EOD techs? These are the men and women who, among many other things, find, identify, disable and gather evidence from makeshift bombs — weapons that have become the leading cause of injuries to American service members and that were used in the Boston Marathon terrorist attacks. It is hard to conceive of a profession that is both more essential and more dangerous than this one, and often, as the memorial above suggests, more selfless.

The ceremony is held each May at the E.O.D. Memorial, located directly across the street from the main building of the E.O.D. school on Eglin Air Force Base. The four plaques on the wall list techs killed in action — one plaque for each of the four American military services. The lower photograph, above, shows several Air Force techs killed in recent years.

For each name there was a life. Consider, for just one example from the center of the small section of the list shown above, Technical Sergeant Anthony L, Capra. Sergeant Capra was killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq in early 2009. He was the father of five. He was killed on his fourth combat tour.

More names will be added to the lists, and read aloud, on Saturday.

To support the EOD Memorial Foundation, go here.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Top, a working party cleans the memorial ahead of the ceremony. This morning. Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Bottom, detail of the Air Force list.

Egypt orders new mine-clearance equipment

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:46:00 -0400

Egypt orders new mine-clearance equipment:

The Egyptian Army will receive a second Armtrac 400 mine-clearance vehicle from the United Kingdom as it continues to clear up the millions of landmines left over from the Second World War.

The contract was signed during a ceremony on Wednesday and is worth $1.2 million, according to Egyptian news publication Ahram Online. Armtrac will also train four Egyptian military personnel to use the vehicle, which will be delivered in a month’s time, according to Armtrac.

The vehicle will be used to clear mines along Egypt’s northwestern coast. Egypt hopes to acquire another two of the vehicles for mince clearance, according to the Egypt State Information Service. The country successfully completed trials of the first Armtrac 400 in September 2010, in El Alamein.

KOSOVO. Town of Pristina. Funerals of a man killed by a landmine...

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:17:03 -0400

KOSOVO. Town of Pristina. Funerals of a man killed by a landmine after the war.

© Paolo Pellegrin