Thirteen years after the ceasefire in the Karabakh war landmines in Armenia are still killing people.
The village of Aygehovit on Armenia’s north-eastern border with Azerbaijan is home to 3,400 people and blessed with wheat fields, green pastures and orchards. The trouble is that because of mines sowed in the Karabakh conflict that ended in 1994, many of them are inaccessible.
“People cannot till their land, they have no income, which is why they have to leave to work in Russia,” said Aharon Asilbekian, deputy head of the village administration.
During the hostilities, the lands and mountains between Aygehovit and an Azerbaijani village on the other side of the border were repeatedly mined. There are still mines on around 450 hectares of land, roughly half of the village’s plots and gardens.
Mined areas are to be found in five of Armenia’s ten regions bordering Azerbaijan. As a result, large tracts of otherwise fertile farming land are lying idle. Seven people have been blown up after accidentally triggering mines since 1994, four of whom died.
Nowadays Eganian works as a watchman for a salary of 3.50 dollars a month and receives just three more dollars in disability benefit. Twice a year he goes to Yerevan to get a new artificial limb and special shoes, free of charge.
Asilbekian said life was hard for the villagers, because they could not use the lands - but accepted that it was virtually impossible to have the area de-mined.
“We understand that so long as there’s a threat of war, we cannot have the landmines removed,” he said.
rarely drew maps with the coordinates of the explosives, which makes things much harder for local people.
A study carried out as part of the programme in 2005 revealed that there are around 300,000 square metres of mined territories in Armenia, which is nearly one per cent of the entire country. “This is quite a lot for such a small mountainous country as Armenia, especially if we consider that landmines are most often planted on roads, including those leading to water sources, and bridges,” said Grigorian.
Grigorian’s centre, which is supported by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, is working on a new strategic programme of action for the period up until 2010.
An estimated 69,000 residents in 60 villages in Armenia are afflicted by the problem.
The village had suffered from mine explosions every year.
In the summer of 2000, Andranik Harutyunian found a round object in a field and pulled on the ring attached to it. The explosion left the boy an invalid. He still has a mine splinter stuck in his thigh. His family’s monthly income is no more than 60 dollars, and they can barely afford visits to doctors in Yerevan, 280 kilometres away.
Since 1994, Armenia has recorded 398 cases of people blown up by mines. In about a third of them, people were killed, with 16 deaths recorded in the last two years.
“The number of victims has been going down with time, as people know where there may be landmines, though accidents are not totally avoidable,” said Grigorian.
“If a cow strays into a mine-laden field, the herder will follow it, thinking [mistakenly] that once the animal has not been blown up, he will be safe too,” said Jemma Asratian.
Gegham Vardanian is a correspondent with Internews Armenia in Yerevan.