Minefield Maps for Karabakh — ticking region
In December 2005, the General Assembly of UN declared that on April 4th of each year the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action will be observed.
In the 1990’s the Armenian occupying forces gruesomely expelled 700,000 Azerbaijanis from Karabakh and the seven surrounding districts, which were largely populated by Azerbaijanis. Prior to that around 200,000 Azerbaijanis were forcibly expelled from Armenia, in their efforts of ethnic cleansing.
Four UN resolutions reaffirmed the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and demanded immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Armenia has been ignoring these resolutions for 30
years. Following the most recent counteroffensive operation Azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity, singing a peace deal on the 10th of November 2020 with Armenia and Russia. Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in the Karabakh region to act as a mediating force, maintaining the ceasefire agreement.
Unfortunately, there are still challenges and difficulties in implementing all clauses of the November deal. The transit of Armenian armed forces and weapons through the Lachin corridor to Karabakh, as well as the Armenian armed forces’ withdrawal from Azerbaijani territories, are among the worrying signals. Armenia secretly brings military to Karabakh under the guise of technical cargo. Patrick Lancaster’s interviews with the parents of Armenian servicemen revealed this fact.
Everyone with whom Lancaster spoke, asserts the same thing: ‘We don’t want our children to be sent to Azerbaijan as building materials.” “We were told that they would not return to Karabakh, and now they want to smuggle soldiers there. Our children are not building materials!”
This problem is closely connected with the status of the sixty-two Armenian soldiers that Azerbaijani military forces captured in mid-December, a month after the signing of the peace deal. Those soldiers refused to accept the peace deal, continued military operations against the Azerbaijani army, and killed three servicemen and one civilian. In this regard, Baku accuses these soldiers of terrorism and, unlike the POWs who were returned home, has refused to hand them back to Armenia.
However, Azerbaijan recently released a Lebanese citizen, Maral Najaryan, who was previously detained in Karabakh. She entered Azerbaijani territory illegally, thereby violating Azerbaijan law.
Azerbaijani Internally Displaced refugees are eager to return to their homes. However, this is both a dangerous and unattainable journey at this stage. Large areas of liberated territories of Karabakh are inaccessible due to landmine contamination. The Armenian occupational forces planted their mines not only along and across the main directions of potential offensives of the Azerbaijani Army, but also all-over civilian territories, including cemeteries and the houses to which Azerbaijani refugees are supposed to return to.
The landmine contamination in the Karabakh region has been named as the ‘largest mine contamination problem in the post-Soviet space’, and it is extremely difficult to safely remove mines without maps of the minefields. The demining process is crucial to establishing infrastructure, economic progress and the return of Azerbaijani Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to the region.
According to Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office 14 Azerbaijanis including 5 Azerbaijani soldiers, have been killed because of the landmines. Around 52 soldiers and eight civilians have sustained serious injuries as a result of the mine explosions. The most recent report from April claims that the number of deaths has climbed to 20 people.
Without the landmine maps, experts have estimated that it may take up to 15 years to clear the liberated territories, optimistic assumptions narrow it down to a minimum of 5 years. International organisations, such as the UN has provided $2 million to support the emergency humanitarian response in the affected areas of Azerbaijan, with $1 million being especially allocated to the landmine project ANAMA (Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action) to clear mines from the region.
Mine clearance would be greatly accelerated and would not cause the risk to human life, if the Armenian government provided maps of the minefields. The military planting of the mines (Armenian in our case) record the location of those traps by mapping minefields and drawing up a minefield logbook. Armenia has access to these maps, but they simply do not give them up, upholding their belief that the war is not over and that they should keep inflicting damage and loss to their enemy. This is a serious breach of International Humanitarian law. Such actions, also grossly violate the upholding of the peace agreement, creating a volatile relationship between the two governments. The Armenian refusal to give up maps, festers the deep wound endured by both nations throughout the three decade conflict, maintaining an atmosphere of animosity to one another.
There are rumours circulating that the landmine maps do not exist, as they were created hastily. These claims are absurd and non-factual. If we examine the facts, we know that the Khankendi region, which is an area that has not been liberated, is being de-mined by Russian soldiers. The official website of the RF Ministry of Defence, proudly announced that more than 25,000 explosives have already been defused, compared to only ‘4500 anti-personnel mines and 2000 anti-tank mines’ being defused by the Azerbaijani side. This a strong indication that the landmine maps do in fact EXIST, as the Armenian side has managed to defuse so many in such a short time and without any casualties.
It is the Azerbaijanis hope around the world that Armenia will provide these landmine maps to prevent the loss of civilian life, and maintain peace in the Karabakh region. It is the Azerbaijani community of Australia’s hope that Australian officials will have awareness of this matter and pursue to persuade Armenia to give up their landmine maps, as this will prevent hundreds of deaths and ensure the peaceful return of Azerbaijani IDPs to their homes. It is our hope that Australia upholds and supports the ‘Anti-Personnel Mines Convention Act 1998’ in countries that are devastated by landmines.
