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Baku, Azerbaijan – One year after the fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the High Karabakh period, the territory is so full of pain and unexploded ordnance that it would take more than 10 years to fully clear.
In the past year, thousands of munitions have been removed but mining removal agencies say a lack of resources and insufficient information are complicating the cleanup operation.
The Halo Trust, a humanitarian group that helps countries recover after the conflict, is working with other groups to clean up areas under Armenian ethnic control, and the Azerbaijani operation is being carried out by the government-led National Agency for Mine Action in Azerbaijan (ANAMA).
The Halo Trust says the biggest challenge in the hands of Armenia is cluster munitions, which disperse submunitions or bombs over a wide area.
Since the end of the war in November last year, nearly 2,000 cluster munitions have been found and destroyed, but they suffer from a lack of funding. They have 150 employees compared to the required 250.
A survey conducted by the board found that 68% of the dwellings contained cluster munitions or evidence of use.
The group told Al Jazeera that cluster munitions are still being found on agricultural land and in areas where families often use them for picnics.
An Armenian has been killed since the end of the war, and 20 have suffered amputations or injuries.
The board estimates that more than 16 square miles (6 square miles) are contaminated, and the search is likely to continue for at least another four years.
“Cluster munitions have a high failure rate and can end up in war and cause long-term injuries and deaths,” said Miles Hawthorn, Halo Trust’s Nagorno-Karabakh program manager.
“The most common type found in Nagorno Karabakh has a distinctive pink ribbon, which makes it cruelly attractive to children.”
Discussion of mine maps
According to Human Rights Watch, Armenia and Azerbaijan used cluster munitions in last year’s war, which are severely banned under an international treaty.
They both refuse to use them, but accuse the other of doing so.
For ANAMA, the biggest and most time-consuming challenge is to locate land mines because they are not an effective record of their whereabouts.
Working with a group of more than 600 people, he says he has cleared nearly 18,000 pains against the person so far, more than 9,000 other types of pain and 23,000 unexploded ordnance, as well as more than 19,000 acres (47,000 acres). Earth.
As part of last year’s peace deal, Armenia handed over some maps to find the mines. However, according to ANAMA, they are incomplete and only 25 percent accurate.
“The biggest question is, are these all mine maps?” said Samir Poladov, vice chairman of the ANAMA board.
“What we received was inaccurate and incomplete. Many don’t even have information about the coordinates, they just have a general drawing of the area with some information and approximate locations, but it’s better not to have anything. “
Baku believes Yerevan may have more mining maps than those returned last year. However, Armenian analysts and commentators say it does not exist.
Historical conflict
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics, have been fighting Nagorno-Karabakh for six weeks since September last year in a conflict that killed more than 6,500 people – most of them soldiers.
In November 2020, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a ceasefire agreement, giving control of parts of the Azerbaijani Karabakh Era, as well as adjacent territories occupied by Armenians since the first Karabakh war in the 1990s.
In the first conflict, forces on both sides placed landmines across the area, making parts of the territory dangerous. In an assessment by the United Nations and the United States at the time, more than 100,000 land mines were placed.
Mining explosions killed and injured 507 people in the 1990s, according to estimates by ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh; they say it is the highest number of landmine accidents per capita in any region of the world.
The second war exacerbated the problem, but Azerbaijan wants to move the permits forward so that those who were displaced in the first war can return. They have been living in temporary accommodation for decades.
Poladov said some people, desperate to see their homeland for the first time since the 1990s, returned before securing the area. As a result, there have been 60 civilian accidents, including two deaths.
The blast injured five miners and killed two Azerbaijani journalists and a local government official.
Years before the cleaning effort
If government permission is still required to visit newly reclaimed land, ANAMA is conducting a mine risk education campaign in conjunction with the UNICEF children’s agency to raise awareness of the risks.
More than 600,000 Azerbaijanis fled Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding neighborhoods in the first war between 1988 and 1994; the country has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world.
As part of last year’s peace deal, Armenia handed over some maps to find the mines. However, according to ANAMA, they are incomplete and only 25 percent accurate [File: Aziz Karimov/Reuters]Although the government is planning several smart cities to help it return, Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov told Al Jazeera that it could take 10 to 12 years to completely clear the area of dangerous weapons.
It is believed that the first Azerbaijanis will be able to return to Nagorno-Karabakh by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
The use of anti-personnel mines is a violation of international law, but neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan has signed the 1997 Mine Ban Convention to abolish their use. They both say they are not ready to give up until the others do.
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