Remember the cries from the Obama administration about protecting the children from violence after Sandy Hook??? Not when they are Afghani children. Where's the outrage???

A rising number of children are dying from U.S. explosives littering Afghan land

by kristalklear

As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is leaving behind a deadly legacy: about 800 square miles of land littered with undetonated grenades, rockets and mortar shells.

The military has vacated scores of firing ranges pocked with the explosives. Dozens of children have been killed or wounded as they have stumbled upon the ordnance at the sites, which are often poorly marked. Casualties are likely to increase sharply; the U.S. military has removed the munitions from only 3 percent of the territory covered by its sprawling ranges, officials said.
Clearing the rest of the contaminated land — which in total is twice as big as New York City — could take two to five years. U.S. military officials say they intend to clean up the ranges. But because of a lack of planning, officials say, funding has not yet been approved for the monumental effort, which is expected to cost $250 million.“Unfortunately, the thinking was: ‘We’re at war and we don’t have time for this,’ ” said Maj. Michael Fuller, the head of the U.S. Army’s Mine Action Center at Bagram Airfield, referring to the planning.

There are a growing number of tragedies at these high-explosives ranges.

Mohammad Yusef, 13, and Sayed Jawad, 14, grew up 100 yards from a firing range used by U.S. and Polish troops in Ghazni province. The boys’ families were accustomed to the thundering explosions from military training exercises, which sometimes shattered windows in their village.

But as those blasts became less common — a function of the U.S. and NATO withdrawal — the boys started wandering onto the range to collect scrap metal to sell. They did not know that some U.S. explosives do not detonate on impact but can still blow up when someone touches them.

Last month, Jawad’s father, Sayed Sadeq, heard a boom and ran onto the range. He spotted his son’s bloodied torso.

“The left side of his body was torn up. I could see his heart. His legs were missing,” the father said.

One of the boys, it appeared, had stepped on a 40mm grenade, designed to kill anyone within five yards. Both teens died.

“If the Americans believe in human rights, how can they let this happen?” Sadeq said.

Since 2012, the United Nations’ Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan has recorded 70 casualties in and around U.S. or NATO firing ranges or bases, and the pace of the incidents has been quickening. But the statistics do not paint a complete picture; The Washington Post found 14 casualties not included in the U.N. data, Yusef and Jawad among them.

Most of the victims were taking their animals to graze, collecting firewood or searching for scrap metal. Of the casualties recorded by the United Nations, 88 percent were children.

“We are anxious that the problem has arisen just as ISAF is leaving,” said Abigail Hartley, director of the U.N. mine center, referring to the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force. “It would have been much better to have had it addressed during the last eight years.”

Costly, time-consuming task

Top U.S. military officials say they intend to remove the explosives from the firing ranges.

“It will take time and expense to complete this work, but it’s critical to the safety of the Afghan people and it is the right thing to do,” said Edward Thomas, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But even if Congress approves the hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs, it will be extremely complicated to remove the munitions.

The U.S. military shuttered more than half of its 880 bases in Afghanistan and withdrew the bulk of its troops before crafting a plan for removal of the unexploded ordnance, said one American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. Some of the ranges that are peppered with explosives were closed as long ago as 2004. Now there are fewer service members to help conduct surveys. And in some areas, there are no U.S. troops to provide security.

“There are less people to identify sites,” the U.S. official said. “And then if you decide you want to do the right thing and get them out there, how do you do it? Who protects them?”

Link:
http://theinternetpost.net/2014/04/11/a-rising-number-of-children-are-dying-from-u-s-explosives-littering-afghan-land/