Landmine challenge and Azerbaijan’s Great Return Strategy High cost for sustainable development

The liberation of the Armenia-occupied territories of Azerbaijan in 2020 was a momentous occasion for Azerbaijanis, in particular for more than 700,000 internally-displaced people who had been expelled from their homelands in the early 1990s. As a result, after three decades, the indigenous people of Karabakh had the chance to return to their homeland, though with new challenges that overshadowed the process.

Armenian forces planted millions of landmines and explosive remnants in the war-torn Karabakh region during the long occupation period. The formerly-occupied territories make Azerbaijan one of the most contaminated countries with landmines and explosive remnants of war in the world.

According to the official data provided by the Azerbaijani authorities in the post-war period, Armenia had planted over 1.5 million mines across our lands throughout the occupation. Since the Second Karabakh War ended, 302 Azerbaijani citizens fell victim to the mine explosions, 57 of whom died, and 245 were severely injured. Since Armenia's launch of military aggression against Azerbaijan, nearly 3400 of our fellow citizens suffered from mines, with 587 losing their lives. 358 mine victims were children, and 30 were women.

As the main pre-condition of the peace with Armenia, Baku demanded Yerevan provide all maps of planted landmines in Karabakh to ease the de-mining process. In this vein, in 2022, Azerbaijan obtained from Armenia the minefield maps of the once-occupied Aghdam, Fuzuli, and Zangilan districts, which identified the coordinates of a total of 189,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Armenia also provided the Azerbaijani side with mine maps of other liberated territories of Azerbaijan.

Despite the ignorance of Armenia, Azerbaijan launched large-scale development work in liberated territories to ensure a voluntary, secure and dignified return of our fellow citizens expelled from their homes. Moreover, since the end of the war in 2020, official Baku has desperately campaigned to raise awareness regarding the landmine threat urging the world community to demonstrate solidarity with it.

As a result, numerous foreign donors like the United Nations and foreign countries, including Türkiye, the United Kingdom, the US, France, and Russia, provided assistance to Azerbaijan for de-mining action. For example, the United Kingdom has become the largest foreign donor to the mine clearance operations in Azerbaijan's Karabakh region since the activation of the de-mining campaign.

As of early February 2023, the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have been working to clear the liberated territories of mines and other explosive weapons, a total of 64,000 hectares. In 2022, ANAMA defused 8,780 anti-personnel and 4,133 anti-tank landmines, as well as 14,950 unexploded ordnances in the liberated Karabakh region.

The UK government also supplied an Aardvark minesweeper to the ANAMA, the country's key executor and coordinator of de-mining operations. The British de-mining equipment and a senior technician from the Aardvark Group Company had been deployed mainly in the territory of the Fuzuli International Airport. The aid project aimed to speedy clearance of the airport's territory from landmines and ensure the ANAMA personnel were fully trained and certified to operate the Aardvark minesweeper.

Türkiye, the main strategic ally of Azerbaijan, has sent more than twenty units of MEMATT mine clearance equipment to Karabakh in 2022 alongside three Slovak-made Bozena-4 and two Bozena-5 minesweepers, one Croatian-made MV-4 special-purpose mine-clearing machine. As the US, the State Department allocated $500 million in 2021 and an additional $2 million to the de-mining action in the South Caucasus region to promote regional security and bolster human security.

Nevertheless, nearly every month, Azerbaijani civilians residing in the former war zone suffer fatal injuries from explosions of undiscovered landmines. As such, in April, May and June 2023, several civilians, mostly employees of various companies in Karabakh, died due to the explosion.

Although three years passed since the second Karabakh War, Azerbaijan still faces the deadly challenge of planting landmines. It is estimated that the process of cleaning all landmines in the region will take in total ten years and a significant amount of money, which turns out to be wildly optimistic.

For years, Azerbaijan appears to have underestimated the challenge it would face upon regaining the lost territories. Therefore, the government now acknowledges that the landmine clearance could setback the mass return of former refugees to Karabakh. Nevertheless, Baku is intended to finalize the mine clearance process swiftly to ensure the smooth process of its flagship “great return” strategy.