Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) pose growing challenges during or after internal conflicts and regional wars. The explosive devices are used to weaken enemy capabilities by killing or causing serious injuries to enemy personnel and combatants. Designed to explode on impact or when triggered by the proximity of individuals or vehicles, landmines are used by regular armed forces, militias and terrorist organizations to kill, or inflict severe injury on both civilians and military personnel to cause permanent disability such as amputation of limbs and loss of sight, as is the case in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and South Sudan.
However, there are several challenges facing United Nations agencies, NGOs and academic institutions involved in mine clearance in the Middle East. In particular, clearing mines laid in conflict zones becomes more difficult due to a lack of adequate maps of minefields, weak national mine action capabilities, inadequate awareness of dangers, tactics used by terrorist organizations against regular armies, conflict between government institutions as well as militias’ control of power and a multiplicity of ongoing conflicts and combat areas.
Mine Action
According to the United Nations, mine action involves clearing landmines, explosive remnants of war (ERW), including explosive munitions left behind by militias and terrorist organizations after conflicts end. The action involves technical work including surveys, mapping and marking to identify mined and demined areas.
Work after mine clearance involves raising awareness of mine hazards, providing medical aid and rehabilitation services, training and jobs to the injured. Moreover, the UN encourages states to join international treaties aimed at putting an end to producing, stockpiling, selling, transporting and using mines, while also supporting disabled people who need prosthetics and replacements.
Children are the most common victims of landmine and UXO blasts, in areas such as deserts, agricultural lands and around oilfields. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), communities in mine-contaminated areas suffer from severe food insecurity as well as decreased access to power and education.
United Nations agencies, programs and funds, as well as regional NGOs and local organizations ability to clear and defuse mines in the Middle East continues to face the following challenges.
Lack of Maps
1- Lack of Full Knowledge of Mine-Contaminated Areas. This is due to varying terrain and areas of minefields, where a large number of specialized technical teams have to be deployed to identify a starting point for mine clearance before proceeding. Today, this is a major issue in the Arab region, especially after conflicts end.
In other words, the lack of detailed maps identifying the exact location of minefields and placement of mines continues to pose a major challenge to clearance efforts. Mapping minefields helps develop better plans and budgets, identify the number of required deminers and timings for each targeted areas.
According to the Libyan Mine Action Center, no survey has been conducted across the country contaminated with mines but no survey has been conducted to determine the extent of contamination in areas such as Benghazi, Misrata, Zawiya, Sirte, Zliten, Brega and Jabal al-Gharbi. The failure to provide minefield mapping blocks efforts to counter this “silent killer”. In Yemen too, the biggest problem is that the terrain of several provinces is riddled with a huge number of mines laid without any maps.
Financial Obstacle
2- Limited Funds for Demining Operations. Funds represent one determinant of scheduled mine clearance and reconstruction of affected areas. The efforts require large funds depending on the economic situation in relevant countries.
In Kuwait, the government was able to reduce the danger of mines over two decades after the Iraqi invasion. Official data show that specialized teams cleared 1.7 million mines out of a total of two million laid by the Iraqi forces, leaving 300,000 concealed mines strewn in scattered areas.
Said Ayman Sorour, Director of Protection Against Armaments and their Consequences, a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, in statement made on November 23, 2016 to announce the Landmine Monitor Report, said that Kuwait had conducted the world's largest mine clearance operation spending US$50 million after the Iraqi invasion. He noted that mines are discovered from time to time in the country’s desert.
In February, United Nations launched a $511 million international appeal for humanitarian mine action in conflict and post-conflict settings for 2017, a 50 per cent increase from last year's $347 million consolidated appeal.
According to the Portfolio of Mine Action Projects 2017, which covers over 200 projects and presents a consolidated picture of the needs and strategies of 22 countries and territories contaminated with landmines and other explosive hazards, needs are the greatest in active conflict zones, with Afghanistan requiring $124 million; Iraq $75 million; Syria $52 million; and Yemen $17 million.
3- Weak National Technical Mine Action Capabilities. In many Middle East countries, this problem blocks rehabilitation of cleared areas, where governments are preoccupied with the interests of their parties and give little or no attention to the unseen threats facing their countries.
Very often, military engineering teams undertake mine action using minesweepers to clear a path for technical teams to survey cleared areas using metal and explosive detectors. The process is highly dangerous because in some cases mines are buried in stacks of two or three with the bottom concealed mine fuzed to explode once the top mine goes off.
4- Lack of Community Awareness to Mine Hazards. People returning to their home areas after conflicts are in need to be educated about how to identify mines and other hazardous objects and report their locations to authorities and cooperate with mine clearance teams. Large-scale awareness campaigns in the media and at schools are required to increase effectiveness. In some countries, UN campaigns seek to teach children how to avoid strange objects they come across on roads and in residential areas.
Geography
5- Terrorist Tactics against Regular Armies during Wars. In armed conflicts zones, terrorist extremist organizations plant a large number of mines and other explosive devices in their territory, including residential areas, before they withdraw. To date in Raqqa, Syria, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continues to clear mines laid by ISIS. A spokesman for the SDF, on 24 October, noted that clearing so many and so diverse mines and booby-traps left behind by ISIS militants will take time and require assistance from foreign organizations.
In Somalia, al-Shabaab Movement used the same tactic to target roads, markets, government departments and hotels. Most recently on October 14, 2017, 358 people were killed and 228 others injured when the movement detonated an explosives-laden truck using a roadside landmine on the road between Lower Shabelle Region and Middle Shebelle Region. This is the country’s deadliest attack.
Al-Shabaab set roadside mines in Lower Shabelle Region to attack the military vehicles of the government and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). On October 25, the movement carried out an attack near Afgooye town, northwest of Mogadishu, killing 10 AMISOM troops and injuring 16 others.
In Libya, landmines will be among the most serious challenges facing the country when stability is restored. During armed confrontations with the Libyan National Army in several areas, terrorist groups fortified their positions using landmines to inflict maximum casualties on the army and block its advances. On July 24, 2017, the commander of the military engineering platoon noted that detecting and clearing mines in al-Saberi and al-Houn, previously the strongholds of the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries and the Ansar al-Sharia group, and other areas around Benghazi was difficult because 80% of the terrain was contaminated.
Moreover, in late October, estimates by the eastern-based Libyan Interim Government showed an increase in smuggling mines and other explosives in Musaid town, on the border with Egypt. Authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle 200 bags of explosives to Ajdabiya and sell them to terrorist organizations. This was not the first attempt to be foiled. Due to the large number of mines dismantled after terror organizations were forced out, Sirte was called “the city of snipers and mines”. The same goes for Yemen, where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) plants mines in some areas to attack the national army backing the country’s legitimate government.
Multiple Authorities
6- Conflict between Government Institutions. In Libya for instance, the ministries of defense, interior and foreign affairs are disputing over who should be in charge of demining operations and ammunition. Parties involved in the process include the Libyan Mine Action Center, an affiliate of the ministry of defense, the army, the air-force, the ministries of education and interior. The role of international NGOs also cause conflict between missions and jurisdictions.
On September 15, the mayor of Benghazi, Abdelrahman Elabbar, and members of ِAhyaha, an organization involved in demining and clearing explosive remnants of war, discussed the possibility of combining the efforts of relevant bodies through the municipality’s emergency operations room. They also discussed plans for raising students’ awareness of mine hazards in liberated areas.
Mine-Laying Policies
7- Armed Militia taking over Power. In Yemen, the Houthi militias which seized power laid mines in several areas to attack the army. On October 20, the Yemeni minister of information, Muammar al-Aryani, told the Yemeni News Agency, that the UN gave $14 million to the Houthis in support of mine clearance efforts. The UN’s contradictory roles is due to its reliance on the Houthis as its source of information as well as its refusal to relocate its offices to Aden, the country’s temporary capital.
Al-Aryani said that the UN’s direct support to the Houthis, under the pretext of supporting mine clearance efforts although the militia has laid tens of thousands of mines, illustrates that the international organization is being misled, and that it is biased in its approach to the humanitarian disaster caused by this militia. He added that this support in fact rewards the militia for murdering civilians and embolden it to continue laying more mines that kill innocents in Yemeni cities and villages.
Flash Points
8- Multiplicity of Ongoing Fighting and Conflict Zones. Several Middle East states suffer from mines, posing challenges to Western governments and international organizations funneling their technical and financial support to these states’ to clear mines and UXO. What exacerbates the problem is that the world powers have different priorities in supporting post-conflict states.
Negative Repercussions
Mines and other UXO in the Middle East block the use of large areas of land and exploitation of natural resources, including oil, natural gas and minerals, and prevent the return of displaced people to their home areas, make it more difficult to carry out reconstruction in post-war countries as well as reduce effective humanitarian aid.
Another War
To conclude, the problem of mines and UXO worsened in recent years in the Middle East and evolved into a major threat to civilians, post-conflict reconstruction efforts. In a sense, mine action in the Middle East is a continuation of war using different tools. No sustainable peace, stability or reconstruction is possible in this region before clearance of mines, described by the International Committee of the Red Cross as combatants with concealed weapons who never miss their targets and indiscriminately kill and injure victims.
