Day: July 1, 2025

This week, a Swiss humanitarian group with a leading role in the disposal of unexploded ordnance in Tajikistan is commemorating the deaths of five of its Tajik workers in a 2016 vehicle accident in the Central Asian country.

“On this day, we take a moment to honour their memory,” the Geneva-based FSD group said on X on Monday.

The five members of FSD’s demining team in Tajikistan – deminers Abdurozik Kurbonov, Gulmurod Choriev and Ilkhomjon Safarov, as well as medic Mashraf Abdurahmonov and driver Ghafor Soliev – died on June 30, 2016 were killed in the accident while on their way to a minefield. The vehicle they were in plunged into the torrents of the River Panj, which forms part of the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Two people in the vehicle survived.

The acronym FSD stands for Fondation Suisse de Déminage, or Swiss Federation for Mine Clearance. It has worked to clear landmines and other unexploded ordnance in Tajikistan, where a civil war in the 1990s killed several tens of thousands of people, according to a number of estimates, and displaced many more from their homes.

The demining group says much of the explosive material that must be cleared was left behind after the civil war, and that landmines laid by Russian forces along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border as well as by Uzbek forces along the Tajikistan-Uzbekistan border in the early 2000s has posed concerns for the security of civilians.

FSD, which first got involved in Tajikistan in the early 2000s, has also worked to rehabilitate areas affected by Soviet-era pesticides that have caused pollution and health problems.

“While the Tajik government is aware of the risks of such substances on health, the environment and the economy, it lacks the legal, financial and institutional resources to solve the problem,” said FSD, which was founded in 1997. The group has received private and public funding.

The humanitarian organization had 60 staff members in Tajikistan at the beginning of 2025. Its teams are working to working to clear the remaining 12.5 square kilometers of hazardous land in the country.

In a step toward self-sufficiency in demining, 14 officers from Tajikistan’s Ministry of Defense and Border Troops agency completed a two-week training in explosive ordnance disposal in Gharm, Tajikistan in March this year. The training was conducted by Dushanbe-based officers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and defense ministry specialists.

Following that course, OSCE said expert instructors from Tajikistan led an OSCE-funded regional course in disposal of unexploded ordnance in April and May, “marking a significant step in enhancing Central Asia’s capabilities in mitigating explosive threats.”