HALO Submits Senate Testimony on IED Clearance in Afghanistan
On Monday, February 14th, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) submitted HALO’s outside witness testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism following the hearing, Afghanistan: The Humanitarian Crisis And U.S. Response.
HALO’s testimony details the massive extent to which landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) impact Afghanistan. It also calls for Congress to encourage the State Department to fund the clearance of IEDs in the country in addition to the clearance of Soviet-era landmines, given the enormous humanitarian impact.
The people of Afghanistan are currently threatened by the worst explosive contamination that HALO has seen since beginning operations in the country over 30 years ago. From July 2020 to June 2021, more than 1,500 civilian casualties were recorded because of explosives, and over 60% of these were from IEDs.
In the last five months alone, HALO has discovered an area more than three and a half times the size of Central Park that is contaminated with IEDs. A crisis of this magnitude requires the full support of the U.S. government, and HALO hopes to begin working with the State Department to clear these weapons of war before they can take any more lives.
