Those who place roadside bombs and other types of improvised explosives will go to hell for their deeds, High Peace Council member Sibghatullah Mojaddedi said Wednesday, drawing similarities between the makeshift bombs and suicide bombing.
Speaking at an event for the occasion of International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, Mojaddedi said that those who plant mines will go to hell in the afterlife the same as suicide bombers, adding that Afghanistan needs further international assistance in clear the mines.
"Those who commit suicide think that they will go to the Janat [paradise], but in fact they go to hell because committing suicide, when you harm others and destroy others, is not permitted in Islam," Mojadidi said at the Loya Jirga tent in Kabul.
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are said to be responsible for death of more people in Afghanistan than any other cause, with most of the devices being planted in south and east parts of the country.
As many as 80 percent of casualties among civilians are from roadside mines over the past few years, reports suggest.
The United Nations figures show that 21,000 farms, 2,200 villages, and 121 districts across Afghanistan have been cleared from mines thus far with 1.2 million mines and 16 million explosive devices destroyed by the mine action organisations.
However, there are still 4,900 areas across Afghanistan contain mines.
"Currently there are 12,000 Afghans delivering all aspects of mine action throughout the country. Most of them are employed by five Afghan NGOs and two intentional NGOs...These people have been working for 25 years clearing mines from Afghanistan," said Abigail Hartley, Program Manager of UN Mine Action Service (UMAS) in Kabul.
Expressing her respect for the work of the deminers, Hartley said: "The collective achievement of Afghan government ministries, Afghan NGOs, international NGOs, the UN, and donors to the programme is outstanding. You will never ever be in a room and hear more success than we are claiming here today."
"It is practically fitting today to acknowledge the considerable achievements of the mines action programme of Afghanistan supported by UNMAS which is already done so much to clear the country of mines and create an awareness of mines that will have saved lives of many thousands of people," said Mark Bowden, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The presence of mines in some parts of Afghanistan have held back implementation of development projects.
"The Afghan government should be as responsible as the donors [in removing the mines] because implementation of large and infrastructure projects will be hard without the mine action projects," said Mohammad Shahab Hakimi, an Afghan mine action official.
Despite many efforts to remove the mines, tens of Afghans lose their lives or are disabled every day as a result of IEDs or unexploded ordinances across Afghanistan.