Zimbabwe

History of Minelaying

During the Liberation War of the 1970s Rhodesian forces laid an extensive series of minefields along the borders between Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and Zambia and Mozambique in an attempt to prevent insurgents from moving in and out of the country for training and re-supplies.

Initially anti-personnel mines were laid in very dense belts (reportedly 5,500 mines per kilometer of frontage) to form a “cordon sanitaire”. Over time the cordon sanitaire was breached or was subject to erosion and so, in many sections, a second belt of directional fragmentation mines guarded by anti-personnel mines were laid “inland” of the cordon sanitaire.

Anti-tank mines were used extensively by the insurgents but the majority were either detonated by vehicles or were cleared in the years immediately after the war.

The Solution

Zimbabwe is a signatory of the Ottawa Convention and, by January 2015, must produce a detailed plan of how it will achieve its Convention undertakings.

It is therefore imperative that both survey and clearance operations start as soon as possible. Survey teams will refine the information on the extent of the problem while demining teams will start addressing areas of the highest humanitarian priority. Sufficient information exists for demining teams to be able to deploy immediately.

HALO has been given initial responsibility for survey and clearance of the border minefields running from Musengeli in Mashonaland Central to Rwenya in Northern Manicaland, some 139km2 in total.

Zimbabwe is one of the world’s most highly mine impacted countries in the world and the time and resources required to deal with it will be correspondingly large. It will be possible to make more accurate estimations of time and cost once the next phase of survey has been completed and some clearance has been undertaken to establish mine density and corresponding clearance rates.

Requirement for continued clearance

In addition to the existing survey teams HALO is seeking to train and deploy 200+ deminers by the end of 2013 and aim to grow the programme to 1,500+ national staff by the end of 2015.

Program management - Senior staff

Tom Dibb

HALO Zimbabwe Program Manager

Tom has worked for HALO since 1996. He has managed mineclearance programs in Chechnya and Afghanistan before and after covering the desk officer role for Afghanistan and then Southeast Asia. He is now managing the start-up of HALO’s program in Zimbabwe. BA LLB.