Landmine threat haunts Karabakh

Nine years after the Nagorny Karabakh war ended, landmines continue to destroy lives.

Stepanakert, May 23, 2003

by Ashot Beglarian

“I can still feel my wrist and every single finger,” said Arsen Khachaturian, stretching out his stump and making imaginary movements with his missing hand. "I exercise like this several times a day.”

The armoured personnel carrier, APC, in which Arsen was travelling hit an anti-tank mine during the 1991-94 war over Nagorny Karabakh. “The blast was so powerful it sent our APC flying like a feather. Fortunately, the hatches were open, otherwise we would have been plastered against the walls of that armoured coffin and surely died. Only my hand was left behind in that death-trap,” he recalled.

Arsen’s story is a graphic illustration of the damage done by mines bothduring and since the war in Nagorny Karabakh. Up to a thousand people have been killed or injured by landmines since 1993.

Mines remain the deadliest legacy of the conflict more than nine years after the ceasefire. The International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, estimates that at least 50,000 anti-personnel mines were laid during the war. To this must be added thousands of unexploded shells.

More than 15,000 hectares of land were mined. By the standards of other conflict zones this is not a huge area, but for a region the size of Nagorny Karabakh it is a catastrophe. Some analysts think there are enough mines and shells lying in the ground to blow up every single local inhabitant. Per head of population, that puts Karabakh on a par with Afghanistan.

Many people were killed or injured in the first couple of years after the war, but casualties have fallen since then. Now it hardly makes the news any more when a person or animal is blown up by a mine.

Children and teenagers are the most vulnerable. The statistics show that one-third of mine victims are injured while playing games, and that the highest casualty rates are suffered by the 14-to-19 age group.

Apart from death and injury, landmines also carry a high economic cost. An agriculture ministry official has stated that around 30 per cent of Karabakh’s arable land lies within the danger zone. To make matters worse these include the most fertile areas in the lowlands and foothills. The lost use of this land costs the mainly agrarian republic some $10 million a year.