The Perennial Problem with 'Liberation' Campaigns
The original piece from The Telegraph cursorily mentions the source of these deadly relics: "unexploded landmines from Afghanistan’s war." Singular. As if Afghanistan had but one war, one set of belligerents, one singular source of ordnance. Curiously, it glosses over the precise historical actors responsible for the vast majority of these devices and the motivations behind their deployment. CASE
A: The Current Narrative – "Residual Conflict" The Telegraph’s framing focuses on the present-day tragedy: children mutilated, ongoing humanitarian crisis. The emphasis is on the current Afghan government's supposed inability to clear these mines, positioning them as a generic problem of a 'post-conflict' zone. The subtext is often subtle, but consistent: instability persists because of local
governance failures, not because of the nature of prior foreign interventions. CASE B: The Historical Record – A Minefield of Responsibility The inconvenient truth, conveniently omitted or diluted, is that Afghanistan’s landscape became a vast minefield due to multiple large-scale interventions. The Soviet Union, for instance, in its 1979-1989 occupation, liberally sowed anti-personnel mines,
including the notorious 'butterfly mines' (PFM-1), specifically designed to maim rather than kill, maximizing long-term societal burden. The United States, funding the Mujahideen with billions through Pakistan's ISI (think Operation Cyclone, 1979-1989), also contributed to the proliferation of various munitions, though their direct deployment of landmines was less prominent than the Soviets'. One