Landmines Of Afghanistan

Land mines were designed for two main uses — to create defensive tactical barriers (such as protecting a unit's flanks against infiltration tactics, channeling attacking forces into predetermined fire zones or slowing an invasion force's progress to allow reinforcements to arrive), and to act as passive area-denial weapons (in order to deny the enemy use of valuable terrain, resources or facilities when active defense of the area is not desirable or possible). The former purpose is the primary large-scale current use of land mines, and the reason for their widespread use in the demilitarized zones (DMZs) of likely flashpoints such as Cyprus, Afghanistan and Korea.
Some sources report that the 3rd-century Prime Minister Zhuge Liang of the Kingdom of Shu in China invented a land mine type device. This claim was made by Jiao Yu in his Huolongjing Quanzhi (Fire-drake Manual in One Complete Volume), his preface written in 1412 AD (although the book was originally published in the mid 14th century), and that Zhuge had used not only "fire weapons" but land mines in the Battle of Hulugu Valley against the forces of Sima Yi and his son Sima Zhao of the Wei Kingdom. However, this claim is dubious, considering that gunpowder warfare did not exist in China until the advent of the flamethrower (Pen Huo Qi) in the 10th century, while the land mine was not seen in China until the late 13th century.