 Mine display | |
 | |
| Location | Kabul, Afghanistan |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 34°33′35.50″N69°12′6.62″E / 34.5598611°N 69.2018389°E |
The OMAR Mine Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan, contains a collection of 51 types of land mines out of the 53 that have been used in that country. OMAR is an acronym for the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation.
The collection includes unexploded ordnance, cluster bombs and airdrop bombs used by the War in Afghanistan. The museum educates school groups to detect and avoid unexploded ordnance including landmines and cluster bomblets from historic and ongoing Afghan wars. The museum was seriously damaged in a July 1, 2019 attack. [1]
The museum also displays a variety of other military hardware from wars fought in Afghanistan over the recent decades, including artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and a collection of Soviet military aircraft.
For security reasons, the museum is not open for casual visitors. All appointments must be made through the main OMAR office.
A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines.
The HALO Trust is a humanitarian non-government organisation which primarily works to clear landmines and other explosive devices left behind by conflicts. With over 10,000 staff worldwide, HALO has operations in 28 countries. Its largest operation is in Afghanistan, where the organization continues to operate under the Taliban regime that took power in August 2021.
Unexploded ordnance, unexploded bombs (UXBs), and explosive remnants of war are explosive weapons that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, sometimes many decades after they were used or discarded. When unwanted munitions are found, they are sometimes destroyed in controlled explosions, but accidental detonation of even very old explosives also occurs, sometimes with fatal results. A dud is an unexploded projectile fired in anger against an enemy, but which has failed to explode. A projectile not fired in anger but which has failed to explode is called a 'blind'.
A clearance diver was originally a specialist naval diver who used explosives underwater to remove obstructions to make harbours and shipping channels safe to navigate, but the term "clearance diver" was later used to include other naval underwater work. Units of clearance divers were first formed during and after World War II to clear ports and harbours in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe of unexploded ordnance and shipwrecks and booby traps laid by the Germans.
United States Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians render safe all types of ordnance, including improvised, chemical, biological, and nuclear. They perform land and underwater location, identification, render-safe, and recovery of foreign and domestic ordnance. They conduct demolition of hazardous munitions, pyrotechnics, and retrograde explosives using detonation and burning techniques. They forward deploy and fully integrate with the various Combatant Commanders, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and various warfare units within the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Army. They are also called upon to support military and civilian law enforcement agencies, as well as the Secret Service.
The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, concluded at Geneva on October 10, 1980, and entered into force in December 1983, seeks to prohibit or restrict the use of certain conventional weapons which are considered excessively injurious or whose effects are indiscriminate. The full title is Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects. The convention covers land mines, booby traps, incendiary devices, blinding laser weapons and clearance of explosive remnants of war.
FSD is a Swiss non-governmental organisation specialising in mine action. Since its creation in 1997, FSD has carried out operations in some 30 countries on four continents. Its programmes include the following four components: humanitarian demining, explosive ordnance risk education, victim assistance, and stockpile destruction and management. In 26 years, more than 1.4 million items of explosive ordnance have been neutralised by FSD.
The Iceland Crisis Response Unit is an Icelandic para-military unit with a capacity roster of up to 200 people, of whom about 30 are active at any given time. It is operated by the Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is primarily designated for peacekeeping operations and was established in the 1990s to participate in operations and peacekeeping projects, including in support of NATO peacekeeping operations. That role later evolved into providing an appropriate forum for deploying personnel within other organizations such as with OSCE field missions as well as with UN DPKO, and organizations such as UNIFEM, UNRWA and UNICEF.
The Zeus-HLONS, also known as HMMWV, Laser Ordnance Neutralization System, is a solid-state laser weapon which is used by the U.S. military in order to neutralize surface land mines and unexploded ordnance. The Zeus-HLONS system was a co-operative effort between SPARTA, Inc. and Naval EOD Technology Division to demonstrate that a moderate-power commercial solid state laser (SSL) and beam control system could be integrated onto a Humvee and used to clear surface mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), or unexploded ordnance from supply routes and minefields.
A mine clearance organization, or demining organization, is an organization involved in the removal of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) for military, humanitarian, or commercial reasons. Demining includes mine clearance, as well as surveying, mapping and marking of hazardous areas.
A Mine Action Coordination Centre is an agency established in a region under the auspices of the United Nations to coordinate the clearing of the explosive remnants of war - including landmines and unexploded ordnance. The individual centres are commonly managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) whereas global policy is in the remit of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).
An anti-handling device is an attachment to or an integral part of a landmine or other munition such as some fuze types found in general-purpose air-dropped bombs, cluster bombs and sea mines. It is designed to prevent tampering or disabling, or to target bomb disposal personnel. When the protected device is disturbed, it detonates, killing or injuring anyone within the blast area. There is a strong functional overlap of booby traps and anti-handling devices.
Mine action is a combination of humanitarian aid and development studies that aims to remove landmines and reduce the social, economic and environmental impact of them and the explosive remnants of war (ERW).
The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is an international treaty that prohibits all use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, a type of explosive weapon which scatters submunitions ("bomblets") over an area. Additionally, the convention establishes a framework to support victim assistance, clearance of contaminated sites, risk reduction education, and stockpile destruction. The convention was adopted on 30 May 2008 in Dublin, and was opened for signature on 3 December 2008 in Oslo. It entered into force on 1 August 2010, six months after it was ratified by 30 states. As of December 2023, a total of 124 states are committed to the goal of the convention, with 112 states that have ratified it, and 12 states that have signed the convention but not yet ratified it.a
The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) is a non-governmental organization that assists people affected by landmines, unexploded ordnance, and small arms and light weapons.
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) is a service located within the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations that specializes in coordinating and implementing activities to limit the threat posed by mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices.
Golden West Humanitarian Foundation is an American Non-profit (501C3) organisation that develops technology to address the technical limitations of humanitarian mine clearance. The Golden West Humanitarian Foundation is based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.
Following the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel in 1973, an international agreement was reached in October 1973 to provide measures to reopen the Suez Canal after its closure for 8 years after the 1967 Six-Day War. The U.S.-led clearing effort undertaken in 1974 consisted of three operations: the sweeping of mines in the Suez Canal by naval units from the United States, the United Kingdom and France, the provision of training and advisory assistance for land and water explosive ordnance clearance for Egyptian forces and the removal and salvage of wrecks from the Canal.
Legacies of War, is a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy, Inc (NEO), dedicated to raising awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos and advocate for the clearance of unexploded bombs, (UXO) and survivor assistance, to provide space for healing the wounds of war, and to create greater hope for a future of peace.
VSM-1 is a Soviet helicopter-based remote mining system. It can be mounted on various variants of the Mil Mi-8 helicopter, particularly the Mi-8T and Mi-8MT. It is capable of deploying a range of high explosive and fragmentation mines.
Blog entries describing visits to the museum:
  | This article related to a museum in Afghanistan is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |