Beyond Bombs with JJ Chalmers

Exactly 50 years since the bombing stopped in Laos HALO is still clearing up unexploded bombs in the landlocked South East Asian country. JJ Chalmers talks to Sera Koulabdara, CEO of the charity Legacies of War and to William Hunter, who runs HALO's Laos programme.

JJ Chalmers speaks to HALO's Syria programme manager Damian O'Brien, who was travelling back from Syria when the Turkish-Syria earthquake struck in February. His tale of survival is remarkable. Meanwhile Svitlana, delivers risk education classes for HALO in Ukraine. She was woken up by missiles on the first day of Russia's attack on her country.

Somaliland cannot be found on an official map or atlas, yet has all the characteristics of a functioning state. HALO has demined hundreds of miles of roads and has been its second largest employer. We hear from Chris Pym and Aislinn Redbond on how we're now dealing with a new threat to life: the climate emergency.

In 1997, nobody had heard of the HALO Trust. Few people cared about landmines. Then the most famous woman in the world walked through a minefield being cleared by HALO in Angola. We talk to Paul Heslop, the man charged with escorting Princess Diana and keeping her safe. A walk that highlighted the landmine problem to billions of people around the world.

Chris Moon was clearing landmines for HALO in Cambodia in 1993 when he was taken captive by the Khmer Rouge. He is one of the few westerners who survived - and even became friends with one of his captors. He then went to clear mines in Mozambique - only to inadvertently set off a mine in supposedly safe land. He lost an arm and a leg - but then devoted himself to running ultramarathons.

We hear from explosive ordnance education instructor Yulia Chykolba and HALO Ukraine's Imogen Churchill on how HALO relocated from the Donbas to clear landmines laid around Kyiv and Kharkiv during the last year and the importance of educating people of the risks of handling unknown shiny objects in fields and forests.

The Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty meant a sharp decline in the use of factory-made landmines, but an unfortunate side effect has been the increase in homemade devices, otherwise known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). HALO specialist Pete Smith explains why these are still landmines, while colleague Andy Duncan explains how a new landmine specifically designed to penetrate body armour and sense human presence has been used by Russia in Ukraine. Meanwhile Fiona Kilpatrick talks about the challenges in destroying very large explosive items - in this case a 750lb aircraft bomb buried in a remote Laos village for over 50 years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ukraine has been called the TikTok War. In this episode JJ explores how HALO uses social media, geographic information systems and unmanned arial vehicles to plot battles and bombs to help locate and prioritise clearance. Our Libyan colleague Hasam talks about how he pioneered the use of Facebook to map mine contamination in his home country, using ‘landmine’ and ‘projectile’ as keywords and zooming in on satellite images to geolocate dangerous remnants of war. Capability officer Andro Mathewson then explains how he developed Hasam’s idea in the early days of Putin’s invasion to create a map of Ukraine that shows contamination based on Twitter and Telegram posts and is updated daily by a team of social media 'detectives'. Meanwhile, drones specialist Katherine James joins from Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, where her use of drones on minefields also identifies watering holes for wildlife... as well as capturing a group of suspicious young men with elephant tusks in a canoe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HALO has always employed women from war-torn countries to clear their own communities. But how do bombs and conflict affect women differently? And how does a job as a deminer empower women in some of the traditional societies where HALO works?   JJ talks to campaigner Camilla Thurlow about ​her experience working alongside HALO female deminers in Cambodia and Zimbabwe, as well as her time with another organisation in Afghanistan, while  Noku Masiyanise from HALO Zimbabwe ​talks about the challenges faced by rural women in her country and how HALO is providing unique opportunities for them - and how baby boxes and childcare have a role ​in helping women play a role in making their country safe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

JJ Chalmers talks about the human and economic cost of clearing up after the Ukraine war with military historian Professor Sir Hew Strachan of St Andrew's University, Major General James Cowan, HALO's CEO, and Emma Sky, Director of Yale University's International Leadership Centre. How does it compare with the costs of clearing the war-flattened cities of the Middle East or a country like Mozambique? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

JJ Chalmers used to be a Royal Marine commando but since competing in the Invictus Games has been presenting the Olympic and Paralympic Games and appearing on Strictly Come Dancing. Today he welcomes you to Beyond Bombs, a new podcast brought to you by The HALO Trust, the world-leading charity that clears weapons from war zones so that people can rebuild their lives after conflict.  The shelling of Ukrainian cities has shown the world the horror of conflict in densely populated urban centres. For those of us tasked with clearing unexploded ordnance, the collapsed or ‘pancaked’ concrete buildings that have been reduced to rubble by air or rocket propelled munitions presents an enormous challenge. In this episode, JJ speaks to Farid Houmayon, Programme Manager of HALO Afghanistan about the urban clearance of Kabul in the 1990s, Simon Conway on lessons learnt from Jaffna to Fallujah and how their experiences will inform HALO Ukraine manager Mairi Cunningham and her team in Kharkiv and the suburbs of Kyiv. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

JJ Chalmers used to be a Royal Marine commando but since competing in the Invictus Games has been presenting the Olympic and Paralympic Games and appearing on Strictly Come Dancing. Today he welcomes you to Beyond Bombs, a new podcast brought to you by The HALO Trust, the world-leading charity that clears weapons from war zones so that people can rebuild their lives after conflict.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The continuation of a special two-part series finds JJ Chalmers on the ground in Ukraine, joined by HALO’s Mike Newton, Mohammad “Qaissy” Abufarda, and Sophia Badalian. This episode brings JJ and the team to the resilient village of Hrakove, where they meet de-facto village administrator Anatolii organizing aid for the community. As the team journeys back to the HALO Ukraine HQ in Brovary, JJ speaks to interpreter Ivan Yermilov, who recounts his personal experience living through the siege of Mariupol. JJ concludes the series with reflections on the insights and stories shared by everyone along the way, and what lays ahead for Ukraine.

Join JJ Chalmers in a special two-part series as he sets foot on the ground in Ukraine. Along with HALO’s Mike Newton, Mohammad “Qaissy” Abufarda, and Sophia Badalian, JJ and the team visit demining and survey operations in the eastern region of Kharkiv. In this episode, Senior Supervisor Bohdan Hreshko leads the team to the town of Chkalovkse, where a football pitch now lays ridden with anti-personnel mines, and an agricultural field in Mykolaivka that is sown with anti-personnel mines instead of crops. JJ speaks to farmers Natalia and Vyacheslav, whose fields are contaminated with mines and tripwires, and home was destroyed by an ammunition explosion.