In July 2002, Sue Wixley, advocacy and communications officer for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), visited Afghanistan, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. She wrote this column for AlertNet to mark Landmine Awareness Week.

Afghanistan has embraced a complete ban on anti-personnel mines and, with it, brought hope to everyone living and working in this mine-infested place.

It was on 11 September, 2002 that President Hamid Karzai deposited Afghanistan's instrument of accession to the Mine Ban Treaty at the United Nations, thus following through on a promise he made at a conference I attended in Kabul in July entitled "Building a Peaceful Future for Afghanistan: A Total Ban on Anti-Personnel Mines".

During this four-day meeting, Karzai's cabinet announced that Afghanistan intended to join the treaty, which prohibits all use, production, stockpiling and trade of these weapons. Then a few months later -- a year to the day since the World Trade Center attacks in New York -- Afghanistan formally took its place alongside 128 other states party to the 1997 convention.

It is an important step for a country that is almost synonymous with landmines and with the devastation of war.

It will mean that, eventually, ordinary people will not have to fear for life and limb as they go about their daily business. The vineyards on the Shomali plains will be irrigated once more, after the canals and fields have been demined. Kabul will have a recognised international airport again, when the minefield surrounding the runway is cleared. Lorries and taxis will resume services down roads that have been closed off for years.

Afghanistan is on its way to solving the mine problem that affects most of the country and inflicts up to 300 injuries and deaths each month. Mine action operations, well established in Afghanistan for more than 10 years, have resumed with vigour.

Accession to the treaty has made these programmes more appealing to donors, who had previously grown tired of supporting mine clearance in one area while mine laying was going on in another.

This is progress indeed. Especially considering that this time last year the offices of a mine clearance organisation had just been hit in the U.S.-led air strikes, other demining groups looted and harassed by the retreating Taliban, and mine clearance activities suspended after September 11.

However, building a mine-free Afghanistan will not be easy.

Mine clearance is painstaking and dangerous work. It is also expensive and time-consuming -- even more so when you are dealing with rocky terrain, extreme conditions, booby-trapped mines and unmapped minefields.

Even with sustained international support (and this is not guaranteed), it will take up to seven years to clear these priority areas.

While this is going on, mine risk education will be key to limiting the dangers posed to civilians by mines and other unexploded ordnance, as well as aid workers, peacekeepers and military personnel.

Through drama, school lessons, radio programmes and cartoons, educators provide guidance to local and returning communities. These days, girls also attend mine awareness classes.

Providing comprehensive victim assistance is another challenge, particularly for a country with such a devastated health care system.

There are no proper ambulance services in many mine-affected areas and roads are poor, or even non-existent. As a result, some mine casualties arrive on donkeys or pack mules but many do not make it at all.

An estimated 50 percent of mine victims die before reaching a medical facility, according to the ICBL publication "Landmine Monitor Report 2002: Toward a Mine-Free World".

Thus, one of the priorities for victim assistance is to establish and strengthen emergency health services with a broad enough geographical reach. Also needed are more facilities for rehabilitation and socio-economic integration of mine survivors.

The destruction of Afghanistan's stockpiled anti-personnel mines by 2007, as required by the treaty, will be another headache for the new administration. Stockpiles need to be located and destroyed, including those under the jurisdiction of local commanders. (No mean feat for a central government with a shaky hold on the provinces.)

When I was in there in July, I was struck by the energy with which Afghans were seizing their future. Everywhere I saw noisy, brightly painted trucks from Pakistan carrying returnees back to their farms and villages. In the mornings I woke to the sounds of Kabul being rebuilt. New businesses opened up, even a mobile phone company.

This determination and optimism was shared by those I met in the landmine action community, many of whom were busily hiring new staff and ordering additional equipment for their expanded and accelerated programmes.

The same goes for the physiotherapists I met at an ICRC clinic in Kabul. They were looking forward to a time when their expertise in rehabilitating landmine survivors would no longer be needed. And their patients shared these hopes.

Fourteen-year-old Mukhtar told me that he stepped on an anti-personnel mine when he was walking to his house on the outskirts of Kabul. It happened two days after the Taliban fled the city, in November 2001.

He struggled with his new prosthetic leg as he told me how much he was looking forward to going back to school. "I hate the people that did this to me", he said "but I hope that now others won't be hurt like this".

Like Afghanistan, Mukhtar has had a rough time of it. Hopefully the worst is over now.

• December 2002 marks the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty in Ottawa, Canada, and the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the ICBL and Jody Williams (coordinator at the time, now ICBL ambassador). Five years on, most countries have banned this indiscriminate weapon and much progress has been made in clearing mines, destroying stockpiled mines and assisting mine survivors. The treaty now has 129 party states and a further 16 signatory states. Still, 50 nations are outside the treaty, including the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt.