5 brothers on mission to educate rural communities about threat of landmines in Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The loss of their father has motivated five brothers to embark on a mission to raise awareness among local communities in mountainous border areas in the Kurdistan Region of the danger they face from thousands of unexploded mines planted there during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Their effort, which they call "Be Aware To Be Safe," is covering more and more ground in their locality of Bradost, in northeastern Erbil province.

Through publishing and distributing educational leaflets on landmines and how to minimize the threat they pose, the five volunteers reach out to remote communities where the risk is greatest for villagers, including children and the elderly.

“Our main objective is raising awareness of landmines and explosives to the residents of our area,” Razwan Maghdid, one of the brothers, told Kurdistan 24 on Wednesday.

The group has so far covered some 30 villages, including schools, where they engage with locals about strategies for protecting themselves from the unexploded ordinance using workshops and seminars. 

Landmines in the area are the result of decades of bloody conflict between Iraq and Iraq between 1980 and 1988 as well as the former Baathist regime’s later attempts to control the movement of civilians or Kurdish Peshmerga throughout the mountainous border regions.

Bradost is located near the intersection of three countries: Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, all of which have laid extensive networks of mines along their border regions at one time or another that have long injured or killed civilians. 

According to the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Mine Action Agency, some 500 people in total have been killed by landmines in Bradost alone.

The office, working closely with the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), deploys teams to identify and demine areas within the Kurdish Region that are most affected, as reported by Kurdistan 24 in August.

Read More: Landmines don’t expire: the deadly legacy of war weapons in Kurdistan

Additional reporting by Tayfur Mohammad  
Editing by John J. Catherine