Website of "The First Prayer of the 21st Century"

The HALO Trust, Sukhumi, Abkhazia
October 10, 2001

I am the Field Officer of Mechanical Team, Crusher section ? Ali Makhmatkhanov. I work for this organization since 1998. I worked for HALO Chechenya for more than 2 years. After the war had started in The Republic of Chechenya I moved to Abkhazia in May 2000 and work for that organization to this day. I like this work very much. I like Abkhazia as well, which is fine, as my Chechenya and which has so many problems as my country has. One of them is - MINES!

My team was formed not long ago and consists of very experienced deminers . They are Peter Shoua - Crusher operator, Khirbey Tskua ? operator assistant, Nodar Matua ? deminer-driver. They are all in good repute and found 25-50 mines during the work period. Nodar Matua has found and destroyed 55 anti-personal mines ? PMN and PMN2. He thinks that every mine is somebody’s life, which he’s saved and very proud of it. Peter Shoua is the high technical specialist. I asked him what does he think about the Crusher and he said ? in spite of fact that Crusher is a good stone crushing machine, it is also ideal for mine destroying. Recently we have found 120mm mortar and it was a great event for us because they will not ever injure anybody. We think that we are fighters against the harm, which is spreading on the Earth.

On Monday at 9:00 a.m. the horrible event took place. I gathered my team, went to the minefield and gave them the task. After that I had to go to the airport to meet our Manager Charlie Martell which was flying here from Tbilisi. I reached the airport at 8:40. At the same time several UNOMIG vehicles arrived there as well. They left vehicles and we greeted each other. One of them told me that the helicopter from Tbilisi will arrive in 20 minutes and our boss also.

Then they took out of bag the satellite phone, tuned it and made radiocheck. I saw how they fly away. In 15 minutes our Manager had arrived and we back to the office. A bit later I found out that the helicopter was shot down. It was the horrible event for me as I was the last person who saw them in last moments of their life.

Field Officer Ali Makhmatkhanov
HALO Abkhazia