Hair-raising Adventures Loosely Organised: Early Years of The HALO Trust and Humanitarian Mine Action in Afghanistan, 1988–92

Abstract

The HALO Trust was founded in 1988 to alleviate suffering among civilians living in hazardous areas. Today, it is the largest humanitarian de-mining charity in the world. Its earliest operations were in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet withdrawal, HALO moved into Kabul where it established a clinic for casualties of war, developed mine risk education and gradually rolled out an innovative mine clearance programme. These interventions helped to transform mine clearance from being a military legacy into a humanitarian priority. Much of the early strategic foresight for HALO extended from the military experience of the former Scottish foot soldier Colonel Colin Campbell Mitchell of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Based on semi-structured interviews with key participants and access to private papers and diaries, this article provides a narrative framework for understanding the emergence of humanitarian mine clearance or ‘mine action’, as it is now termed. Through sometimes fractious dialectical relationships with various United Nations agencies and discreet dealings with Afghanistan’s communist government and regional warlords, HALO became a vital implementing partner in the work of refugee resettlement and rehabilitation assistance. Retrieving its history contributes to a clearer identification of the intersections between military expertise, development, humanitarianism and the post-Cold War world.