The Tragedy of Land Mines

One morning in late July, while working at the hospital-based clinic, I received a radio call that a land mine had exploded under a bus and there were many severely injured. I had recently developed an ER disaster plan with Franz, and we began the process of implementing it, a process that felt both familiar and comfortable to me. If there was anything that I could manage, it was exactly this type of incident.

We cleared all of the patients out of the clinic area, discharged hospital patients who could safely go home, and started setting up equipment and assigning roles to Afghan staff. We planned to use the MSF health education tent as an initial triage area, and we cleared that area, too, and set up necessary equipment. We set up our ER as a minor treatment room for suturing and wound care and expected about twenty-five badly injured victims, based on the initial radio call.

We heard conflicting reports—the severely injured would be arriving by helicopter and I needed to find a helicopter landing site. If a helicopter was flying the victims, I assumed my soldier friends would be managing the transport. I didn’t know anyone else who had access to helicopters in the region. Franz and I hurriedly chose a suitable landing site in a dried-up irrigation field across from the hospital. Then we sat and waited, and in this land without phones, computers, or easy communication, we were at the mercy of the terrible road conditions and unreliable communication.

Finally, at 2:00 P.M., some four and a half hours after the initial reports of an explosion, the first patients arrived in the back of a car. There were no life-threatening injuries, but there were patients to triage, wounds to clean and sew, and tears to dry. Hours later, the last of the injured arrived. I went to the back of the car and evaluated people as they came out. A boy of about ten got out, cradling a tiny, frightened boy in his arms. The bigger boy was uninjured, but the smaller boy was covered in soot from the explosion, so I took them into the tent for a better look. The poor little thing was terrified, but luckily, once we got a closer look, he, too, was without injury. I got him dressed and, assuming their parents were somewhere in the tent, I asked the older boy where they were. He looked up at me with large, trusting eyes. “They are coming in the next car.”

My heart stopped. The only car en route to us now was the one that we had sent to collect the eleven dead. To be sure, I checked the patient roster for their parents’ names; they weren’t there. My stomach churned, my eyes filled up, and I shepherded the boys to a room in OPD. I plied them with cookies and juice we’d purchased from the bazaar as I tried to figure out what to do. I had trouble looking at their exquisitely trusting faces, knowing what I knew. Finally, an uncle who had heard about the accident showed up and I took him outside to share the information we had. The uncle remained stoic and only nodded at the news. He went in, gathered the boys into his arms, and took them away, their pockets stuffed with cookies, their mouths draped with crumbs.

Their bus, I learned, had been returning its passengers from Bandi-Amir, a vacation spot here in Bamiyan. Bandi-Amir held snowcapped mountains, a glassy-surfaced lake, lush landscape, and some of the most beautiful views in all of Afghanistan. The passengers on the doomed bus were families from one small village who had spent two days and one night there, a trip they had long planned to escape the devastation that marked their lives. They had slept under the stars, fished for their dinner, frolicked in the cool waters. For two magical days, they’d left their sadness behind. The ride home was filled with laughter, traditional songs, and gaiety. For those last moments, they had no cares, no burdens, just the joy of being together.

And then, in the midst of songs and laughter, the bliss was over as the bus rolled over an antitank mine dug into the road. It can tear apart a tank, but it can obliterate a bus. In a millisecond, the bus was blown in half and passengers were trapped underneath the debris, screaming in pain, many dying as helpless family members looked on.

One passenger was chosen to go for help, and after a long trek along the hazardous road, he was able to get word to a village, which passed on the information to us and sent people back to help. But it was too late for the poor souls who lay bleeding and crushed under the twisted metal. That mine tore apart not just a bus that day but the lives and hopes of its passengers, including the small boys and their family. Their parents had three sons, the oldest a teenager who was newly married and not able to make the pleasure trip to Bandi-Amir. The excursion had been a treat for the two youngest, and they had possibly the best two days of their young lives; they had unknowingly created memories that would have to last a lifetime.

I’d always felt safe here, despite the soldiers’ warnings and even the bus explosion. I’d long since discarded that wariness which keeps you on edge and keeps you safe. And it is then—when you let your guard down—that anything can happen. I was well aware that the roads to Garganatu, Shaidan, and Acrobad were littered with land mines and unexploded cluster bombs. The Afghan drivers made light of stepping on the gas as they navigated perilously close to the still dangerous remnants of war. The too-close calls and risk to all our lives made me angry as hell, but it never deterred them, and there was little I could do aside from passing the information and locations of the unexploded ordnance (UXOs) along to the soldiers so that they could clear them out.

There were many dangers here, not just from the UXOs but from either terrorists or bandits, or just criminals, who were now targeting aid workers. It was common knowledge that we carried no weapons, that we were “soft” targets. To attack an aid vehicle meant acquiring radios and money and sometimes even the vehicle, and all of it without a fight. It was hard to say who the perpetrators were, Taliban maybe, who wanted all foreign influence out of their country, or maybe bandits who just wanted easy money, or perhaps even Al-Qaeda regrouping and attacking as a way of creating chaos and fear and letting the villagers, the soldiers, and the world know they were back.

Either way, as the war seemed to wind down, the attacks seemed to pick up. After an MSF vehicle departed Bamiyan heading to another aid program to our north, that car was ambushed and robbed, a gun held to the head of a staff member. He left Afghanistan shortly after that incident. The others in the car were visitors from Paris, and they, too, left soon thereafter. Another time, an MSF car that was carrying money for staff payroll was robbed as it left Kabul; luckily the Afghan driver survived the gunshot wound he suffered. The dangers to aid workers grew each day, prompting MSF to issue a curfew and tell us to tighten security. In Bamiyan, we were already not allowed out at all after dark, no exceptions.

Another NGO’s vehicle was ambushed at night; the men were beaten, robbed, and tied. The lone female, an American, was dragged away and brutally beaten and raped by several men. She survived, barely. An IRC car was ambushed, shot at, and robbed just outside of Mazar-I-Sharif, a city northwest of Bamiyan. All of these worrying incidents happened within days and weeks of each other. We had little access to outside news and events—the news trickled in slowly, often from the UN office or the ICRC staff. We had only one satellite phone, and it was often down. We communicated via radio, which was often unreliable. The MSF office in Kabul checked in once, sometimes twice a day, but when they couldn’t reach us, they never panicked, they just tried again later.

Despite the MSF curfew, we were allowed to go off alone during the day. The reality was that daylight could be just as treacherous as the dark of night. Most villagers either carried weapons openly or had quick and easy access to them. It was how they had always protected themselves, and it was a mainstay of their tradition and culture. For us, it sometimes made it all the more difficult to tell the good guys from the bad.

In August, the soldiers told me that there was an upsurge in violence just north of us in Qumard, an area that had earlier harbored Taliban elements. Fighting broke out there between Taliban insurgents and locals who wanted them out. A school was burned there, reportedly by the Taliban, to remind the citizens that education, at least according to them, posed evil ideas and thoughts and was a threat to Islam. Unrest was simmering and gathering strength just beneath the surface throughout the countryside.

Even though there were weapons and likely terrorists still lurking about, I never really felt unsafe here. I rationalized the incidents and assaults on aid workers and told myself that if the victims had only traveled before dark and stayed on main roads, the clashes might not have happened. At least not to me. But isn’t that how we all react to crime? Not me. Not ever. It wasn’t that I felt immune or somehow smarter than the others who’d met a tragic fate, but I had the advantage of having come to know so many villagers throughout this region, and I felt sure that I would be protected if problems developed. I also knew that the soldiers were silently watching out for me, and as long as they were around, I would be safe.

The women of Afghanistan were not as lucky.