In Zimbabwe, a thin stretch of land thousands of kilometres long is filled with landmines. Schools, houses, and farms, all lie close by, often with simple amenities like water on the other side of the danger zone.
听These minefields are some of the densest in the world, and clearing them is a laborious, manual task involving handheld metal detectors and local people digging on their hands and knees. But this approach is about to get an update. Soon on its way to Zimbabwe is a massive mine muncher that can sift through tonnes of soil every hour, exploding any landmines it comes across.
The rig is made by UK-based machinery company MMD, and looks like a large truck with a funnel and some conveyor belts. A heavily armoured digger initially gathers the soil which is loaded into the rig and fed through two 鈥榮izers鈥�, essentially pairs of rotating steel teeth that break up the soil and rocks into smaller and smaller chunks.
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As part of this process, any mines contained in the soil are broken up which either renders them completely useless or causes them to detonate. The rig can withstand these explosions, and either way the result is a patch of land that can now be declared mine-free.
Using this approach, the team estimate that a single rig could destroy 100,000 mines by 2025.
鈥淲e think it鈥檚 going to be a game changer in Zimbabwe. The sooner we can clear the areas the sooner those communities will thrive,鈥� says Simon Conway, at the HALO Trust, a UK-based charity.
A deadly legacy
The landmines in Zimbabwe were laid along its borders with Mozambique and Zambia during the Liberation War of the 1960s and 1970s. Its estimated that in this region there are currently around 5500 unexploded landmines per kilometre.
Though it is a long time since the end of the Zimbabwean conflict, mines are still causing serious issues. People have lost limbs and it is estimated that around 120,000 cattle have been lost to mines since 1980.
Currently, to clear the area of mines, local people slowly and cautiously sweep the land until they can declare that it is safe. They use metal detectors to spot potential mines, which they then cordon off, before digging a trench from one side to get a closer look. If they find a mine this is then detonated by setting off an explosive next to it.
However, this process is labour intensive and can take anywhere between a few minutes to three quarters of an hour before a mine sweeper can be sure if they鈥檝e found a mine or just a piece of scrap metal. 鈥淲e have to treat every single metal sound as if it were a mine,鈥� says Susanna Smale, at the HALO Trust.
Over one hundred local minesweepers work for 6 to 7 hours a day, but progress is simply not quick enough. In 2014, over 150 countries, including Zimbabwe, agreed to the goal of clearing the world of landmines by 2025. However, at the current speed of progress, Zimbabwe is not going to make it.
鈥淲e won鈥檛 know if the new technology will be enough to get us over the line until we get it out there and test it, but we鈥檙e optimistic,鈥� says Conway. After final tests, the new听machine will be taken to Zimbabwe in the next few months.
Unfortunately, in parts of the world mines are still being laid. In Syria, for example, Islamic State has laid landmines 鈥� often improvised explosive devices 鈥� in places where it has been forced out. In Raqqa alone, hundreds of civilians including more than 150 children have been in the last year.
In the future, other technology may also be able to play a role in clearing minefields. Defence company Cobham has been experimenting with automating finding mines by attaching metal detectors to both robots and drones.
鈥淥ne idea would be for a swarm of drones to mark all of the mines in an area, completely taking people out of harm鈥檚 way,鈥� says Robert Pearson at Cobham. Though this system is up and running, it has yet to be deployed in the field.
