Cluster bombs still deadly 10 years after Tajik war

KHOST, Tajikistan, July 16 (Reuters) Every spring meltwater dislodges bomblets in the mountains and sends them down steep gulleys towards inhabited areas.

That is how 10-year-old Salim Saimuddinov, who was born after Tajikistan's civil war ended, became one of its victims.

A green-eyed boy wearing ripped tracksuit bottoms and an old denim jacket, he lives in a small village in the Pamir mountains of eastern Tajikistan, an impoverished Central Asian state bordering Afghanistan that fought a 1992-97 civil war.

Two years ago he went out with his brother Narzikul to collect firewood, a necessity in a village where the electricity rarely works. It was Narzikul who spotted the bomblet and, thinking it was a ball, picked it up and threw it.

"Suddenly something exploded. My leg and face were covered in bloo," Salim said, looking frightened. "My brother brought me home and then we went to the hospital." Shrapnel hit his right eye while his leg was pummelled by 160 small metal balls from the unexploded Russian-made ShOAB-0.5 bomblet, part of what is known as the RBK series of anti-personnel cluster bombs.

These bombs have been used in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Uganda and are still in service by the military in countries including Cuba, India, Syria and Ukraine, according to data compiled by Human Rights Watch.

Antipersonnel mine use may have declined after high-profile campaigns, but the process of clearing them is costly and needs to go on for years after the guns fall silent.

"I was very scared," Salim said as his eyes filled with tears.

"I do not want this to happen to me or anybody else again." SLOW PROGRESS Tajikistan's civil war, which pitched a Moscow-backed secular government against a coalition of Islamists and others, killed 150,000 people. The country has been gradually recovering ever since.

The United Nations Development Programme's Tajikistan Mine Action Centre (TMAC) says 10,000 mines and unexploded ordnance are scattered over 25 million square metres (10 square miles) of Tajikistan, a country that is 90 per cent mountains.

Cluster bombs explode to scatter bomblets over a wide area, each one effectively becoming a landmine that will often remain deadly for decades.

A peculiarity of the ShOAB bomblets that wounded Salim are that the six-centimetre diameter devices often roll downhill, and, like other cluster bombs, they arouse the curiosity of children.

"We need more deminers, we need more detectors," Andy Smith, chief technical adviser of TMAC, said. "We do not have enough funding. The bombs will be near the land and the houses soon." There have been 300 confirmed deaths and about the same number of injuries recorded from mines in Tajikistan since 1992, many of them women and children, and there are presumed to be many more unreported deaths and maimings.

Two more people join the list of casualties every month and there has been no downward trend.

Smith said funds for landmine clearance often flow to hotspots like neighbouring Afghanistan, while more peaceful countries like Tajikistan are overlooked.

"It will take a hundred years if this level of financing remains," he said.

Salim, whose local school teaches only Tajik and maths, said his wounds have made him want to learn medicine.

"I would like to become a doctor who treats eyes, to help others andto cure my own eye", Salim said.

Reuters SW VV0927