Numbers matter

I’ve been a regular reader of the Monitor for over 30 years. I overlook the few very minor inaccuracies I read from time to time. The bigger picture is what’s important. However, the Monitor trivialized the “big picture” of work in Angola in a recent article.

You write, “Three decades of civil conflict between 1975 and 2002 left some 73 million square meters (18,000 acres) of Angola contaminated by land mines.” I served as the country representative in Angola during 2001-02 for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (now the Veterans of America). Our role was to provide prostheses for adult Angolans who had lost a leg (or both legs) from stepping on a land mine.

I can assure you that, along with my colleagues with the International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations working there, the area contaminated by land mines in Angola (a country the size of California and Texas combined) was far greater than 18,000 acres! A more accurate figure for the 10 million land mines deployed would be around 300,000 square miles – an area four times the size of New England.