"So..." I panted, as I scrambled up the steep slope behind Fkry, "why are we clearing this minefield and not the other 800 or so near here?"

Fkry paused and turned to face me, giving my aching legs a much-needed rest. "Have you seen what's at the bottom of the hill?" he asked.

I just shook my head, unwilling to devote any more precious oxygen to a verbal response. Wearing those long, anti-blast visors deters oxygen from entering one's lungs in sufficient quantities.

Fkry is a field operations manager for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) Iraq mine action programme. He is based in the village of Diana, in the northeast corner of the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq.

We were visiting the almost-vertical Qalat minefield, part of a minebelt that meanders for tens of miles across the harsh terrain of the Kurdish mountains.

Why, I wondered, did MAG choose to clear Qalat, instead of any of the countless other bits.

Fkry and I continued our inspection of the perimeter of the minefield, which was marked by a line of red-painted sticks, about 30cm (12 inches) high, running vertically up the hillside. A 2-metre (2.2 yards) wide path had been hacked out alongside them, to give the deminers access to their working lanes.

Just as importantly, the path allowed for casualty evacuation in the event of a mine accident. An ambulance stood waiting at the other side of the minefield and stretchers were dotted about in strategic locations. The highly trained medic tried to keep himself motivated, but it wasn't easy to sit around for seven hours a day hoping to have nothing to do.

Being a new minefield, the deminers hadn't yet found any mines, but they knew what they were looking for as they carefully cut away the vegetation to allow their metal detectors to sweep close to the ground.

Qalat minefield contains a type of mine called the Valmara 69. It is a particularly hardy design, and despite being planted more than 20 years ago and having the vegetation burned around it, a Valmara 69 will almost always function as designed.

Valmaras are bounding fragmentation mines, which means that they are operated by tripwires criss-crossing through the dense vegetation. Hitting a tripwire causes the Valmara to launch itself into the air and detonate at waist height, which sends out almost 2,000 shards of red-hot steel in all directions.

Don't worry if the tripwires have rusted away - standing on a mine will have the same result.

So, now I knew what we were clearing but I still didn't know why here.

Fkry led the way down the hill. It was much easier than going up but we had to be careful not to slip and fall into the minefield.

The thick mass of small trees - oak, I thought from the leaves - were very useful to hang on to as we carefully picked our way down. Suddenly we reached a narrow irrigation channel with sparkling mountain water bubbling along it.

"This waters all of the fields below," Fkry told me. We stepped over the irrigation channel and pushed our way through the undergrowth for another 10 metres.

Without any warning, we were standing in bright sunlight on a rough farm track. Green fields of maize and tomatoes and lots of other unidentified vegetables stretched away into the distance.

It was like we had stumbled into some magical garden.

We were now far enough away from the minefield to remove our helmets and anti-blast visors and undo the Velcro fastenings of our body armour. Fkry pointed the way to a village down the track and we set off towards it, to see what the villagers thought of having this minefield cleared.

A white MAG pick-up was parked beside the track and one of the guys was filling plastic jerrycans with water from a spring. Five brightly dressed little girls sat in the shade of a tree and watched the man work.

Seeing that I was a foreigner, they all started giggling. With my helmet and visor in my hand and my body armour hanging loosely around me, I probably looked pretty funny anyway.

I could go on and speak to the villagers to ask about the benefits of the mine clearance but I didn't need to. Sitting right in front of me were five - very cute - reasons to clear this minefield. I didn't need to speak to their parents to know that they didn't want their children growing up alongside the Valmaras - or any other mines for that matter.

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