Afghan women clear out village's bombs by hand

By Carlotta Gall
The New York Times

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HAJI BAI NAZAR, Afghanistan — Two women in this poor farming village have emerged as heroines after they witnessed the horror of two small boys being killed as they played with little cluster bombs from a U.S. jet. The two cleared dozens of the bombs with their bare hands and detonated them, protecting the village.

Mine removers learned of their feat when surveying the area for cluster bomb strikes a few weeks later. "We told them they were crazy, that they could have been killed," said Dr. Nasiri, who like many Afghans uses only one name, is with the Halo Trust, a nonprofit British organization that specializes in removing mines.

The women, Khairulnisah, 50, and Nasreen, 40, started to gather the dangerously volatile yellow canisters after the bombing in 2001 and after they had witnessed the explosion that killed the two boys and badly injured another child as they played with the 2-pound bombs that littered the village.

Over several days, the two women cleared 60 or 70 of these cluster bombs from the immediate area and detonated them in a hollow at night, according to the villagers' accounts. The women are practical and hard-working, with rough hands and calm voices. Both said they had decided to clear the bombs out of concern for their children.

"I was afraid my sons would get injured," said Nasreen, who was the first to pick one up.

"They were all over the street, and there were 10 in our yard," said Khairulnisah, her neighbor. "We were stepping around the bombs for five days and we were not touching them. We knew they were dangerous. But after the children were killed I decided to do something."

She added: "The men could not go close. They were not brave enough to pick them up and they were running back into the house. I was not afraid, I was just trusting in God."

The cluster bombs were dropped during the U.S. operation against Taliban forces occupying the village in October 2001. They are armor-piercing missiles that scatter in the air from a larger bomb and can shred both humans and tanks.

Up to a third of the bombs do not explode on impact, but lie on or just below the surface of the ground, and detonate with the slightest vibration or increase in heat, mine removers at the Halo Trust said.
 
The women said they felt endangered by handling the bombs. "Sometimes they made a noise, sometimes something turned inside, and that would press on my heart, and I would carefully lay them back down," Khairulnisah said. "Those ones I would pick up with a shovel."

Khairulnisah has "always been like that," said Muhammad Jan, her husband. "When the bombing was going on, she would go up onto the roof, saying, 'Only God can take my life.' "

Nasreen reportedly collected 34 over three days, putting straw around them each time and setting fire to small groups of them, causing a big explosion, as she hid behind a wall.

When she began collecting them, she did not tell anyone what she was doing. But the explosions frightened the villagers, so she owned up.

Her husband and son tried to stop her. "I will not pick up your body and I will say you committed suicide," her husband said. But she ignored them.

The men said the women just did not understand the dangers of the bombs. "We see the incidents and repercussions of warfare, but the women don't know," said Abdullah, 18, Nasreen's son.

But his mother dismissed that idea. "That's not true," she said. "I saw the dead bodies of those children. I knew exactly the consequences but I thought we should clean the village of them and protect our children."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company