Sue Wixley, advocacy and communications officer for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), recently attended a meeting in Nicaragua of states signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty in Nicaragua and other key actors. She recalls that Afghanistan was already one of the most heavily mined countries in the world before the United States launched its bombing campaign.

To those of us who work from the ICBL office in London and have never set foot in Afghanistan, the country should seem a million miles away. Yet daily reports in the media about the country’s landmine situation and e-mails from our Afghan colleagues (now based in Pakistan) keep narrowing this geographical gap.

As everyone who has followed the news in recent weeks probably knows, Afghanistan is the most heavily mined country in the world. Last year, mines and unexploded ordnance injured or killed two or three people every day. Now that toll is rising.

Casualty figures cannot be confirmed, although there are estimated to be about 15 landmine victims per day. Difficulties with communication and the fact that mine action programmes in Afghanistan were suspended from mid-September mean that precise numbers are not yet available.

One of the biggest factors causing the increase in casualties is the massive displacement of the population out of the cities and into unfamiliar and possibly mined areas.

Civilians fleeing towards the border or venturing from temporary settlements to collect firewood ahead of wintry weather could easily find themselves in one of Afghanistan’s many unmarked minefields. Even collecting food packages could pose a danger if there are mines nearby.

Most civilians are fleeing through provinces bordering on Iran and Pakistan and these are amongst the most heavily mined. In fact all but two of Afghanistan’s 29 provinces are contaminated by mines and almost everyone who has taken up arms in the country in the past few decades has used landmines.

And the depressing situation gets worse (or maybe it just hits home more when it involves colleagues). Staff working for a demining organisation in Kabul were among the first reported civilian casualties just after the bombing began.

Then a demining organisation in Mazar-e-Sharif fell victim to an attack by armed personnel of the Taliban authorities who assaulted staff and looted their office, leaving nothing behind.

When (or if) mine clearance operations in Afghanistan are resumed, our colleagues will have the added burden of clearing cluster bombs, the current weapons of choice of the United States.

Of the hundreds of bomblets released by each cluster bomb shell, a large percentage will fail to explode and will remain, often half-buried, as a long-term threat to civilians and an additional challenge to mine clearers.

ICBL members and other NGOs have called for a suspension in the use of the weapons and the United Nations and others involved in demining are talking about sending their staff for re-training on clearing them.

So far, clusters are reported to have killed nine civilians near Herat, trapped villagers in their houses and forced others to evacuate their homes.

It is also possible that the brightly coloured bomblets will be confused with the yellow ration packs the Americans are dropping, prompting the U.S. to broadcast radio messages warning villagers to approach yellow objects with caution.

While use of cluster bombs has been confirmed, nobody knows whether the United States will also use landmines. So far they do not seem to have done so, although the Pentagon has not heeded calls by the ICBL and others to confirm this, nor has it said that it does not intend to use these weapons in its military campaign.

And nobody knows how long the war in Afghanistan will continue. However, it is clear that we will be hearing about the disastrous consequences of landmines, and other weapons with similar effects, for years to come and that they will continue to hit civilians and combatants alike, which is why anti-personnel mines are banned by more than half the world’s governments.

Let's hope that the governments that rushed to support U.S. military action in Afghanistan will be as quick to help with the clean-up and rehabilitation afterwards, since mopping up the mess may take much longer than even a protracted military campaign.

• See the ICBL’s website for background on the landmine situation in Afghanistan.

The ICBL’s "Landmine Monitor Report 2001", which includes information on Afghanistan, is also available online.