Survey, marking and prioritisation

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Correct survey is vital for follow-on accurate, properly costed and effective mineclearance. Where HALO differs from most other mine action agencies is in our determination that HALO surveys should only be conducted by senior HALO staff with mineclearance experience, and that we should not rely on temporary staff brought in to conduct socio-economic questionnaires. The latter have a tendency to produce vague “Big Hand, Small Map” results that then prohibit or skew accurate clearance planning – and can only be rectified by yet more survey or other exercises in correcting the information. HALO believes accurate initial survey is far better.

While HALO will endeavour to “Mark” minefields, it is our experience that most marking material is removed by local people and then used for livestock fencing, patching up holes in roofs etc. Minefield “Marking” is far easier “said than done”.

Prioritisation for follow-on clearance, or “planning”, can vary from country to country, season to season. A wide variety of factors come into play – such as expected refugee movement, casualty reduction and prevention, agricultural planting and grazing seasons, vital access to water supplies or markets, national or local government infrastructure priorities, ground conditions and weather constraints. All senior staff in HALO are thoroughly trained in prioritisation skills.

Manual mineclearance

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HALO’s manual deminers provide the backbone of most clearance programmes. Humans are the most versatile of “assets” and are able to demine in virtually all ground conditions. While each individual deminer may only clear 10-50 square metres a day, the work will be very high quality and the overall productivity across mined farmland will be considerable if there is a sufficiently large number of deminers deployed. Many HALO clearance areas have hundreds of deminers – while it is not unknown to deploy over a thousand deminers (such as along the old Taliban/Northern Alliance front lines south of Bagram airbase in Afghanistan).

Most manual deminers are equipped with electronic detectors which alarm against even the smallest metal components in landmines. However in some areas the background ferrous soil, or depth of mines, makes detection very slow and it is quicker for deminers to simply “sap” their lanes with hand tools down to the required depth. The newest detectors used by HALO are able to differentiate between metal clutter / detritus, and actual landmines.

Mechanical mineclearance

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HALO deploys mechanical assets in areas where manual deminers are slowed down by thick vegetation, compacted rocky soil, collapsed building and trenches, or excessive metal contamination from fighting, or even household waste. Most HALO mechanical units are not specially built, but instead simply adapted and armoured civil engineering or agricultural machinery. HALO has trialled ground engaging flails, but finds the wear and tear on the components uneconomical, while the initial purchase price tends to be very high.

Explosive Ordnance Disposal/ Battle Area Clearance (EOD/BAC)

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HALO conducts EOD and BAC in all our areas of operations. In recent years this has become an increasingly urgent humanitarian priority, as the global rise in scrap metal prices has led many poor people to hunt down unexploded ordnance and strip out high value metal components for later sale. This scrap metal activity results in numerous lethal accidents.

Mine Risk Education (MRE)

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Mine Risk Education (previously known as Mine Awareness Training) involves HALO teams visiting schools or community centres to warn people, and particularly children, of the dangers of straying into minefields or tampering with unexploded ordnance. The effectiveness of MRE varies from country to country. Some external studies conducted in hospitals have shown that as high as 95% of mines and ordnance casualties had previously received MRE from HALO or other agencies such as UNICEF - yet the individuals had entered minefields through simple economic necessity – such as shepherding their flocks or cutting firewood. In these areas, future casualties will only be avoided by the deployment of actual HALO demining teams to remove the risk. In other countries, the combination of MRE, common sense and less pressure for land has meant that the number of human casualties has declined considerably. But the irony is that without “human casualties” many donors or agencies (such as the UN in Kosovo) consider mineclearance funding to be either unnecessary or of very low priority – resulting in large areas of farmland left uncultivated, frequent livestock casualties, and even access to water and markets denied. So in these situations a “successful” MRE programme can delay land being cleared of mines for many years.

Research & development

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HALO manages a range of R&D projects across its areas of operations – from the development of the latest dual sensor technology to new methods of mechanical clearance and to different types of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Mine Detection Dogs (MDD)

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HALO has stopped using dogs across all of its programmes following years of intense evaluation into whether “dogs can consistently find mines?”. It is our conclusion that dogs will consistently miss mines – not always due to the fault of the dog or handler, but more because the vital explosive vapour is sometimes simply not present for the dog to smell, however good the dog. With this known bogey factor, we cannot risk the lives of our staff, or the local community, in walking and driving in areas we suspect to have been mined and then searched by dogs. Some agencies deploy dogs to “area reduce” swathes of land that were not originally mined but fell under the big hand / small map survey. In these situations HALO considers it better simply to resurvey using trained survey staff, or consider other options far less expensive than deploying trained dogs – such as ploughing or rolling as a useful step towards agricultural rejuvenation.