Defusing Isis legacy will take decades
To my fatally untutored eye, it looked just like an ordinary cooking pot, brimming with rice. But the moment I lifted it from the hob, an ominous alarm sounded. Once again, I’d blown both myself and the building around me to kingdom come.
Welcome to the House of Horrors, a training school in Iraq for those who must defuse the vast number of booby traps left by Isis in its former strongholds. Here, death lurks under the carpet, behind the bathroom sink, in a bedroom cupboard — and, yes, in what looked like a pot of risotto.
Closer inspection revealed the pot had a pressure switch underneath, which would have been wired to 4kg of explosives hidden under the rice inside. “Cooking pots are an Isis favourite, but basically any container that can hold explosives can be used as a booby trap,” says Karl Greenwood, an bomb disposal expert from the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine clearance charity.
The charity faces a daunting task in Iraq: there are thousands of booby traps and IEDs planted in houses, public buildings, roadsides and fields. From 2017 to 2019 alone, such devices killed at least 231 people and injured 199, according to the Landmine Monitor database. Many victims were civilians who had fled Isis rule and were returning home.
The threat is all the greater following a decision last month by the Iraqi Government to shut dozens of camps for those made homeless during the conflict. There were fears the camps were becoming Isis recruiting grounds, but closing them means thousands of civilians may be tempted to return to homes that are wired to explode.
The Mines Advisory Group has 750 mostly local staff working in Iraq. Some clear booby traps, others are still clearing “legacy” landmines from the Iran-Iraq war nearly 40 years ago.
Among them is Pshtiwan Abdulrahman, 48, undertaking a clearance operation in Chamakor, a village outside Mosul. His brother Farman, a soldier in the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, was killed by an Isis booby trap in 2015.
“I don’t want the pain of what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” he said. “His death is a motivation for me.”
In a line of work where one may not get the chance to learn from one’s mistakes, the simulated hazards in the House of Horrors offer vital training.
I learn that light sensors, fridge timers and all manner of other home improvement gear can be used in bombs — as can TV remotes and PlayStation joysticks.
Booby traps may also have been planted in a wall or hidden under tiles — so trainees are taught to look for signs of recent plastering or grouting. Another giveaway are Duracell battery packs — an Isis favourite.
Clearance teams inspect what lies inside using mirrors and cameras. A single building can take days to clear.
Iraq is the worst-affected country in the world for mines and IEDs, with nearly 1865 sq km contaminated. It could take a century before all are made safe.