Yesterday at Camp Arena, the information campaign aimed at children in the Herat region ended, dedicated to the risks associated with the discovery of unexploded ordnance (UXO - Unexploded Ordinance) and improvised (Improvised Explosive Device - IED) conducted in recent months in schools in the west.
The initiative saw Afghan soldiers and policemen of the Afghan National Defense Forces (ANDSF), supported by the Italian military specialists of the cell Counter-Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED), explain to the little ones how to recognize, avoid and report these devices to the security forces, in order to avoid accidents. The soldiers of the ANDSF have been instructed and trained by the Italian advisors of the Train, Advise, Assist Command West (TAAC W).
The event was attended by the highest local civil and military authorities, women's associations and children from the primary schools of Herat as well as a large representation of school leaders who will continue the dissemination of the project in all public institutions in the province of Herat.
The participation of leading figures from the Afghan institutional world was very significant, including the deputy in the parliament of Kabul Naheed Farid who has always been involved in Women's Affairs in Afghanistan who during the presentation of the results achieved by the information campaign spent words of praise for the intuition had by TAAC-W in having entrusted for the first time an important role to the women of the ANDSF, also trained by the Italian advisors in recent months.
General Neekpay - deputy commander of the 207th body of the Afghan Army - thanking General Massimo Biagini - commander of the TAAC W - for the support provided, asked the Italian contingent to continue the training phase for the fight against improvised devices. The principle of "train the trainers" has in fact the purpose of creating new specialized skills and thus making the Afghan security forces more and more autonomous in the organization and development of courses, as well as in the production of adequate information material for children and teenagers. between 4 and 12 years, able to effectively represent the risks associated with the discovery of unexploded rockets, mines or improvised devices.
The information campaign involved schools and villages throughout the western region with the aim of limiting - and over time eliminating - the risks deriving from the explosion of improvised and unexploded devices. A series of leaflets and posters distributed in schools and villages showed Afghan children how to stay away from these dangers, which represent a major cause of death and disability among the population: in the months of July and August, such incidents there were about 200, of which about 20% involved children, while in the last month the data relating to the finds without explosion and defusing of IED by qualified ANDSF teams, in many cases warned of the presence of the bombs from the population.
The explosive artefacts found are managed and studied by Herat's forensic laboratory in which the Italian contingent inaugurated, on the same day, the triage room (reception and sorting), necessary to safely receive the newly discovered IEDs, catalog them and immediately extract the legal evidence for surveys and population of databases.
The prevention activity based on information campaigns is essential for the protection of the population, as well as the training, by the Italian advisors, of qualified teams who can adequately carry out training and awareness activities, especially in the villages of the rural area. Decisive in this sense was the role of ANDSF women - enabled by the Italian contingent in the fight against improvised devices - able to reach during the information campaign both the female classes in mixed schools and the Afghan women of rural villages, overcoming those cultural sensitivities in the full respect for local tradition, which in the past had partially limited information activities.
