Page 5 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Hadeel M. Al Shukri, Abdelaziz Dammak, Hashim Al-Ali: Measurement of the

Explosive Ordnance Impact on the Iraqi Economy

INTRODUCTION
Many countries that experienced armed conflicts have suffered from tremendous
social and economic negative impacts, from the implanted explosives ordnance, and
Iraq is not an exception. The country has passed through three major armed
conflicts, during the past four decades, where the explosives ordnance was one of
the principal weapons used in these armed conflicts and has been laid down in
different locations and in vast areas in the country.

It is, de facto, well recognized that the damages and the dangers of these explosive
ordnances cannot be ended and halted when the armed conflicts ended, rather their
dander and potential harms would continue much longer after the conflict ended,
and it would be a high burden and costly function to the country and to the
international community to discover and then to be removed.

Accordingly, having these explosives ordnances undiscovered and the process of
discovering them as well as efforts of removing them in a safe and complete manner,
have an economic and development impact on the nation. This is besides the well-
known socio-economic development efforts and costs that have to be borne by the
nation to carry out and sustain post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization
programs. While essential programs to rehabilitate and rebuild the country’s damaged
infrastructure can be overwhelmingly capital intensive, required resources have to be
mobilized and their allocations have to be well prioritized in order to achieve the
objective of establishing the vital infrastructure sectoral activities, given the fact that
the latter is vital in all dimensions and aspects of macroeconomic and microeconomic
reconstruction processes and development efforts.

The main objective of this paper is to identify and measure the economic impact of
landmine ordnances and their clearance on the Iraqi economy. This has been done
with special emphasis on national, sub-national, and sectoral impact. This is done
together with shedding a light on the fact that such an efforts and programs have to
be integrated with the country’s adopted development planning programs.
However, it has to be pointed out that this is the first recent attempt made to
analyze and assess the impact of the explosive mine ordnance on multi-sectoral and
multi-spatial dimensions, in Iraq. Few studies have, previously, analyzed landmines
impact on population ] Handicap International Report, 2021[, and overall socio-
economic impact of landmines in ]Townsend, 2003[.

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