The mammoth task of demining

Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan continues the arduous work of demining the
territories it regained in the 2020 Second Karabakh War,
accepting any international help offered. Questions remain,
though, about the timeline and effectiveness of the work.
Sep 11, 2023

The state demining agency employs about 1,800 people, who are
aided in their work by dogs, rats and robots (Anama.gov.az)

Tamam Jafarova was 21 years old when she stepped on a landmine in her
native village of Gosha (Qoşa) in Azerbaijan's northwestern Tovuz District in
1997 - about three years after the end of the First Karabakh War with
Armenia.

She was employed as a teacher in the nearby village school at the time and
spent her summers helping out with the family farm.

"The Armenians took all the cattle in my village. My family then bought one
cow, and that was the only cattle we had," she recalls. "I was going to the
field to bring back our cow with my little sister and my little brother. And
before I knew it, I stepped on a mine in the grazing field."

Jafarova lost her left leg above the knee, and her right arm bears deep scars
from the blast. The government provides her with a prosthesis, which gets
replaced every two years. After the accident, she never married, and she still
lives in the village with her brother.

But she isn't limiting herself to farmwork. Over the years, she has
participated in numerous conferences and trainings on the subject and taught
mine awareness to fellow citizens in various mine-affected areas.

Jafarova is one of hundreds of Azerbaijanis hurt or killed by landmines over

the past three decades. Her case is exceptional, though, in that it occurred
near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, in an area mined in brief incursions
during the first war (1991-94).

The vast majority of mines in Azerbaijan were laid in the areas around
Nagorno-Karabakh that were under Armenian occupation between the first
and second wars.

Accordingly, the number of Azerbaijanis hurt in mine blasts has skyrocketed

in the past three years, since Azerbaijan won the Second Karabakh War and
re-established control over most of the territory it lost in the first one.

Since the war there have been 180 mine explosions, mainly in the newly
retaken lands, that have wounded or killed 303 people, according to the state
demining agency, ANAMA. The victims include soldiers, deminers, and
civilians.
Only a tiny fraction of the more than 600,000 people displaced by the first
war in these territories have been able to go home. The pace of resettlement
has been glacial, largely due to the presence of as many as one million
landmines. So far only around 2,000 people have been resettled.

(The civilians who end up stepping on mines are mainly construction or

utility workers or those who illegally pass onto the territories. Other than
those already resettled, the only way to visit Karabakh is either bus tours or
government-sponsored events.)

According to Hafiz Safikhanov, chair of the Azerbaijan Campaign to Ban

Landmines, since the end of the war on November 10, 2020, until June this
year 82,848 hectares of land in Karabakh were cleared of mines, which he
said amounts to just above 7 percent of the total retaken lands.

"Oftentimes, in the context of rebuilding Karabakh, we say that we started

from zero - referring to all the works carried out in liberated areas after 30
years of Armenian occupation. But the truth is that we started below zero,
meaning there is work you have to do underground before you start building
houses," Safikhanov said, in an interview with Eurasianet.

In 2022, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev projected that clearing all the
landmines in the region would require 30 years and $25 billion.

Safikhanov says that that timeline could be accelerated if significantly more

resources were directed towards solving the problem.

"Each year nearly 100 million manats [about $59 million] are allocated from
the state budget for mine clearance alone. That includes training of more
demining personnel and the purchase of modern technologies – remote-
controlled mine-searching robots – and dogs. In June, even mine-searching
rats were purchased and brought to the country," he said.

On top of that, Azerbaijan receives aid for mine clearance from countries like
the UK, the U.S., Canada, Israel and Hungary. In August, the UK ambassador
to Azerbaijan announced that his country would provide 500,000 pounds
(about $630,000) to support mine action in Azerbaijan, totaling 1,500,000
pounds for the same cause since 2020. In July, the U.S. embassy in
Baku disclosed that the country has allocated $2.5 million to Azerbaijan's
cause since November 2021. In April, the European Council's representative
in Azerbaijan Peter Michalko tweeted that the EU member states had
provided 8 million euros in total for mine clearance.

Safikhanov said that, generous as these sums are, they are not enough. It's
like "trying to empty the ocean with a bucket," he said. "There is a statistic
that planting one mine can cost as cheap as $3, but removing and neutralizing
can cost up to $1,000."

Deminers generally draw on two sources of information in locating mines, he

explained. One is the people living near mined areas who have stories of
family members or livestock stepping on mines. But this is only useful along
the periphery of the retaken territory.

The other is Armenian maps giving the coordinates of mined areas. This issue
has been one of many fields of political battle between the two countries in
the post-2020 war era.

After the first few post-war mine casualties, Azerbaijan began using
Armenian prisoners of war as leverage to get hold of these maps. In June
2021, a deal was struck - Azerbaijan released 15 POWs in return for maps of
97,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in the retaken city of Aghdam.

There have been two further deals on the transfer of mine maps, purportedly
covering a total of 400,000 mines. But President Aliyev complained this July
that Armenia still refuses to provide maps for 600,000 mines and that the
maps it has provided are only "25 percent accurate."

"Not providing mine maps is a continuation of Armenian terror against us,"

he said.

(In October Armenia's prime minister said Yerevan had given all its mine
maps to Baku and does not have any "better or more accurate" ones.)

A few months before blockading the remaining Armenian-controlled part of

Nagorno Karabakh but closing the only road connecting the region with
Armenia, Baku alleged that the road was still being used to transfer mines to
the region.
The Mine Action Agency of Azerbaijan, ANAMA, currently employs over
1,800 personnel (compared to around 500 before the Second Karabakh War).
It uses 58 remote-controlled robots and 113 dogs; it has recently started
using African giant-pouched rats as well.

Some deminers are trained by British specialists with the Mines Advisory
Group.

HALO Trust, another UK-based mine-clearing organization, has been

working inside Armenian-administered Nagorno-Karbakh since the first war.
Azerbaijan has long objected to its presence there because the charity never
sought its permission.

Safikhanov said countries should band together to fight the common scourge
of landmines.

"It would be in their best interests if Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan

grouped up and brought their efforts together to clear mines in the region. We
should not leave this disease to the next generation. Mines don't
discriminate."
 Clearing Armenian-planted mines
will take 30 years, Aliyev says
BY DAILY SABAH
ANKARA OCT 13, 2022 - 9:42 AM GMT+3

The members of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States pose for a family photo in Astana,
Kazakhstan, Oct.12, 2022. (AA Photo)

Clearing mines that have been planted by Armenia on occupied Azerbaijani

territories will take nearly 30 years and cost $25 billion, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev said on Thursday.

“Azerbaijan is among the countries most contaminated with landmines in the world.
According to preliminary estimates, Armenia planted more than one million
landmines in Azerbaijan,” Aliyev told regional leaders in the Kazakh capital Astana,
where the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia
(CICA) summit is being held.

“In parallel with demining, now Azerbaijan is also carrying out large-scale
construction works at the expense of its own resources in the territories freed from
occupation,” the president said.

“During the nearly 30-year occupation by Armenia, our cities and villages, cultural
and religious monuments, mosques were purposefully destroyed, insulted and looted.
Even mosques were used as stables for keeping animals,” Aliyev said.

Saying that Armenia systematically committed war crimes against the civilian
population and soldiers of Azerbaijan, Aliyev pointed out that since the first
Karabakh war, about 3,900 Azerbaijani citizens are considered missing. “Most of
them were tortured, killed and buried in mass graves. We discovered mass graves
this year in two liberated villages.”

“Those, who committed war crimes against Azerbaijan have been presented as
heroes in Armenian community,” he added.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been
tense since 1991 when the Armenian military illegally occupied Karabakh, a territory
internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Clashes erupted on Sept. 27, 2020, with the Armenian Army attacking civilians and
Azerbaijani forces, violating several humanitarian cease-fire agreements.

During the 44-day conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and around 300
settlements and villages that had been occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years.

The fighting ended with a Russian-brokered agreement on Nov. 10, 2020, which was
seen as a victory for Azerbaijan and a defeat for Armenia.

However, the cease-fire has been broken several times since then.

Provocative actions by Armenia cause serious damage to the normalization process

between Baku and Yerevan and aggravate the situation, Azerbaijan’s Foreign
Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth

of Independent States (CIS) in Astana, Bayramov commented on the situation
following the 44-day war with Armenia in 2020 and said that Yerevan’s
provocations damage international efforts for long-term peace and stability in the
South Caucasus.

According to a written statement by Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, Bayramov said

that Armenia has yet to fully implement the tripartite declarations signed following
the war and that Armenian soldiers have still not fully withdrawn from Azerbaijani
territories.

Azerbaijan also drew attention to the "recent military provocation" that started on
Sept. 13-14 with an attempt to lay mines along the security roads used by Azerbaijani
forces in the border zone and caused numerous casualties, the ministry said.

Last month, at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a U.S.-brokered
truce ended the worst clashes since 2020, when simmering tensions escalated into all-
out war.
Following the clashes, the European Council last week said Armenia and Azerbaijan
had agreed to a civilian European Union mission alongside the countries' border.

The agreement was reached after Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, French President Emmanuel Macron and European
Council President Charles Michel met in Prague on the margins of the first gathering
of the European Political Community.

The civilian European Union mission will start in October for a maximum of two
months.
Bayramov added that the end of the conflict created new opportunities to achieve
long-term peace and stability in the region “through the restoration of economic and
communication relations.”

“In particular, it was pointed out that the importance of the region will increase after
the opening of the Zangezur corridor, which will serve to increase transit
opportunities and strengthen the investment environment in general.”

Zangezur was part of Azerbaijan, but in the 1920s, the Soviets gave the region to
Armenia. After this move, Azerbaijan lost its link with Nakhchivan and some parts
of the railway between the two countries were destroyed.

Azerbaijan has focused on projects in the Zangezur corridor, which will include
highways and rail lines stretching across territories in Armenia's Syunik region.

Once those parts are repaired, Azerbaijan will be able to reach Iran, Armenia and
Nakhchivan uninterruptedly by train.
 Azerbaijan neutralized over 330
landmines in its liberated territories last
month
 01 May 2024 11:11



 AZERBAIJAN

The Azerbaijan Mine Action Agency (ANAMA) continues demining operations in

the country’s territories liberated from Armenia's occupation.
During the mine-clearing operations conducted in the liberated Azerbaijani territories
last month, 141 anti-personnel and 191 anti-tank landmines, as well as 2,502 units of
unexploded ordnance, were found and neutralized, ANAMA told News.Az.
As a result, more than 6,000 hectares have been cleared of mines and UXOs, the
agency added.
News.Az
 Azerbaijani President: The main obstacle in Karabakh is
landmines
 06.12.2023 [17:15]
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Baku, December 6, AZERTAC

“With respect to Karabakh reconstruction, actually, the main obstacle, of
course, is landmines apart from… and time. Apart from that, we don't have
any other obstacles with accumulated financial resources for that,” said
President Ilham Aliyev as he addressed the Forum titled "Karabakh: Back
Home After 30 Years. Accomplishments and Challenges" co-organized by
ADA University and the Center of Analysis of International Relations.
“Reconstruction of Karabakh will be the main part of our investment program.
Karabakh is a top priority, the area and most importantly, the people who are
waiting to go back home,” the head of state noted.