Mine-hit members of Azerbaijani amputee football team eye World Cup participation

The Azerbaijani amputee football team is made up mainly of mine explosion victims and they hope to participate in the Amputee World Cup soon.

Caliber.Az reports, that the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration, Hikmet Hajiyev, wrote about this on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

"Azerbaijan is among the most contaminated countries in the world with landmines as a result of Armenia's 30 years-long occupation. By power football and within the sport for peace concept, Azerbaijan's Amputee Football Team will hopefully contribute to raising global awareness about the dangers of "seeds of death" - landmines!" Hajiyev wrote.

The Karabakh (Garabagh) and East Zangazur regions of Azerbaijan have been heavily mined by Armenia’s forces since the 1990s. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia launched a full-blown military assault against Azerbaijan. The bloody war continued until a ceasefire was signed in 1994, resulting in Armenia’s occupation of 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. During the war, over 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, and one million were forced to flee their homes in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by Armenia.

On September 27, 2020, the decades-old conflict between the two countries reignited after Armenia’s forces deployed in occupied Azerbaijani lands shelled military positions and civilian settlements of Azerbaijan. During the counter-attack operations that lasted 44 days, Azerbaijani forces liberated over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from the Armenian occupation. The war ended with the signing of a tripartite statement on November 10, 2020, by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, under which Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan.

Since the end of hostilities, the Azerbaijani government has been carrying out demining operations in the liberated territories to expedite the return of internally displaced Azerbaijanis to their homes.

Despite extensive efforts, demining operations faced many challenges due to Armenia’s refusal to hand over maps displaying the locations of the landmines. Azerbaijan obtained from Armenia the minefield maps of the once-occupied Aghdam, Fuzuli and Zangilan districts, which reportedly identify 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. In exchange for maps, Azerbaijan released dozens of Armenian saboteurs detained in Azerbaijani territory after the ceasefire. However, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said the accuracy of these maps did not exceed 25 per cent. Officials in Baku are convinced that the maps hidden by Armenia could help neutralize at least one million landmines planted in the once-occupied Azerbaijani lands.

Meanwhile, satellite images taken by Azerbaijan during the anti-terror operation in Karabakh on September 19-20 this year revealed that the dissolved separatist regime buried an additional half a million mines along the 480-kilometer “contact line”.

From November 2020 to July 2023, 18 per cent of Azerbaijan’s liberated territories in the Karabakh region, equaling 42,635 hectares, have been cleared of 61,163 landmines and unexploded ordnance. In 2021, approximately $40 million was allocated from the state budget for mine action. Over 40,000 hectares of land are scheduled for demining in 2023.

The ongoing extensive mine clearance campaign by Azerbaijan could not prevent the killings of Azerbaijanis by landmines after the 2020 war. Since the end of the 2020 Karabakh war, 331 Azerbaijanis have been affected by Armenian landmines, resulting in 64 deaths and 267 injuries, of which 49 and 103 are civilians, respectively. In June 2021, two Azerbaijani journalists were killed in mine a explosion. In September of this year, mine blasts claimed the lives of four members of the Azerbaijani police.