EIGHT YEARS SINCE civil war broke out in Yemen, a series of fragile truces have seen war casualties from direct fighting decrease but deaths and injuries caused by landmines and unexploded bombs have risen in the impoverished Middle Eastern country.
With most aid agencies reducing their presence in Yemen, or even pulling out completely, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) weapons contamination team remains – with an aim to reduce the number of deaths by facilitating the training of Yemeni demining teams, as well as providing protective equipment and other supplies.
This week was Mine Action Week and the head of the ICRC weapons contamination unit Maya Ordaz, who is based in the capital Sana’a, spoke to The Journal about the work it has been doing in the war-torn nation.
What began as a civil war when Houthi rebels took control of the capital Sana’a in 2014 soon developed into a de facto proxy war between the regions two most prominent powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Before the war began, Yemen was already the poorest country in the Arab world.
There has been some optimism that a formal peace settlement may be more likely since the recent rapprochement between the two rival states but those hopes have not yet materialised.
The UN estimates that over 150,000 people have died as a direct result of the war between the Yemeni government, supported by Saudi Arabia, and the Houthi rebels, who have been backed by Iran. A further 227,000 Yemenis have died due to the famine and health crisis resulting from the war.
The UN says that about 80% of the 24 million population are in need of humanitarian assistance with 14 million in acute need. On top of this, over 3 million people have been internally displaced since 2015.
Much of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed by bombing conducted by the Saudi-led coalition, which was supported logistically and through arms sales by the United States and to a lesser extent, the UK.
To make matters worse, the amount of aid coming from foreign countries and international aid organisations has dried up for the most part, despite pledges of financial support.
Ordaz has also seen struggles in her own organisation which she puts down to increased costs resulting from economic circumstances, the withdrawal of funding pledges from donors and the focus of Western powers on the war in Ukraine.
“Last year we had high inflation rates, so our budgets were more expensive than we anticipated. Our activities became more expensive and now we have, on the other hand, donors who maybe last year pledged and this year say their pledges are not coming through as expected,” she said.
“And I mean, again, I think that’s the problem also with these protracted conflicts, that after eight years of war in Yemen, the appetite just decreases. And then everybody now is preoccupied with Ukraine.”
“When I talk about contamination, it means the littering of explosive devices, and this can be a range of devices. So you have landmines, which can be categorised into anti-personnel or vehicle mines,” Ordaz explains.
“These ones are normally planted strategically. They’re under the surface. They’re not so visible. They’re used as a military strategy.
“Then we have another category, which is something called UXOs (unexploded ordinances), which is everything that is fired but might not work. So those are your hand grenades, your mortars and potentially also your cluster munitions.
“And then there’s a third category, improvised explosive devices (IEDs). We’ve seen people become more familiar with them from Iraq, because ISIS used a lot of explosive components.
“In Yemen we also see that. They’re very cheap to make, hence they’re very popular in conflicts where the military is not so advanced when financial backing is not so strong. And that’s what we also see a lot in Yemen, these IEDs.”
Much of the heavy munitions that have fallen on the country have been dropped by the Saudi coalition, but identifying which side has planted which mines is more complicated as they often defuse and then reuse them.
One thing is clear though, according to Ordaz, “All sides are using them.”
According to Unicef, at least 74 children were among the 164 people killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance between July and September 2022 alone in Yemen.
Meanwhile, Yemeni Landmine Records, a group that documents landmine casualties, said 32 people were killed by landmines and other unexploded ordnance in January this year.
The primary mission for Ordaz’s team is to assist the local demining teams in their efforts to remove explosives from the Yemeni landscape. The main issue is that there are not enough teams and they are poorly equipped.
The assistance has taken a number of forms, including training, providing equipment and getting access to the north of the country, which is under Houthi control and has been been subject to sanctions.
That last accomplishment is a point of particular pride for ICRC, according to Ordaz.
“So what made Yemen very interesting for the ICRC is that in our core identity we’re not a bomb squad in theory. There are other INGOs that are much more specialised, such as the Halo trust, and from the UN side you have the United Mine Action Service (UNMAS).
“But in Yemen, what was special was that the north and the south split. Nobody had access to the north and the north has most of Yemen’s population. Two thirds of Yemen’s population live in the north.
“So the impacts of weapon contamination, or explosives, is of course much higher on these civilians living in the north. When I say that nobody was in the north, it’s also linked to the fact that these typical bomb squads are often ex-military, ex-police, very often with a British background, German background, American background and French background.
“And all of these were, of course, very suspicious to the northern territories. Hence, there were no visas, no access to the fields, anything that was related to seeing the ammunition, helping them to defuse, was always of course seen as military intelligence gathering.
So it was a file that was impossible for anybody to touch.”
But that presented an opportunity for the ICRC, which maintains a strict policy of neutrality when operating in conflict zones, says Ordaz.
“ICRC managed to unlock that in 2021,” she says. “And we were the first ones to come in and say the needs are so high and something has to be done. And we were the first ones to slowly partner with the National Mine Action Authority in the north to open the sector.
“We were the first ones to bring EODs (explosive ordnance specialists) to Yemen. We’ve managed to bring three so far. We obtained visas for them. They were the first ones I think since 2006 to visit the demining teams, and demining is a bit like surgery or like medical stuff.
“You need updated skill sets in order to work efficiently. So you have to picture in Yemen north for example, a bit like a medical room where you’re using medical equipment, that it dates back 40 years ago, and you use medical procedures that are completely outdated and don’t have any exposure to international training.
“At the moment, they have a group of 100 deminers and I think in 2022, they lost about 20,” she says.
“So we were one of the first ones to come with that know-how, to say to them, okay, let’s look at your procedures. How can we upgrade you? How can we help you with practical examples? So really training the deminers in the fields of how to work more efficiently and safer.”
The ICRC was also able to negotiate an exemption to fly people and supplies in using their own planes, something they had to work out with the Saudi government which controls the airspace over the country.
“That was huge,” says Ordaz because “there was no way for the National Authority which does humanitarian demining to get this equipment into the country, so that deminers were actually clearing with their bare hands, using equipment that’s 50 years old and they were having huge casualty rates”.
“And this showed a bit the ICRC’s ability to work in environments where everybody else is stepping back. The UN wasn’t able to move, INGOs weren’t able to move, the local authorities here weren’t able to resolve it,” she says with pride.
The effects that these explosive devices have on the civilian population can be devastating, not just for the individuals who are direct victims, but also for communities that depend on agriculture. Ordaz sees similarities between Yemen and Iraq in this regard.
“So, I came before from Iraq, where we had a lot of explosives from ISIS, it was quite vast. And what is comparable in both Yemen and Iraq is that you have societies that are very dependent on agricultural activities.
“So especially in the rural areas, most of the income comes from shepherding, from farming, also from khat production and so on, and all of these activities require land. And what the problem now becomes is that you have vast, vast areas, especially of rural land contaminated.
Khat is a plant grown widely in eastern and southern Africa, which contains a natural stimulant. People usually chew it to get an effect of increased energy and euphoria.
“So when we went, for example, to a district in the south which is called Mawza belonging to Taiz (the governorate where the most recent frontline is), we interviewed a group of people that were assessed by our ECOSEC (economic security) colleagues as food insecure.
“And they told us that that particular community had a very rich history in producing cheese and the whole district was famous for that.
“And then what happened was the frontline moved very close to their village and contaminated the areas around. So now the farmers have lost access to their farmland. And also were losing regularly their livestock.
“So out of this community 60 to 70% of the people interviewed mentioned that they had lost livestock. I think one guy said he lost 100 sheep at one time.
“So you had a community that was actually very knowledgeable of how to survive, how to make the income but were no longer able to because of the consequences of war.”
Children are also particularly vulnerable to UXOs, according to Ordaz because they are often mistaken for toys.
“So what happens a lot with the UXOs specifically is that these metal objects take a long time to deteriorate. So they can be left in the sand and in the sun for months and months and they will still be shiny, very attractive for children who of course have nothing really else to play with.
“So what happens often is that they pick them up, especially for example, a cluster, a little round silver ball shining in the sun, they pick it up, throw it to each other, play with it, and then the device gets activated.
“So, what you see often is a lot of impact on the upper body. So if the child survives, often the arms are gone, face, a lot of fragments to the upper chest. We’ve seen a lot of that.”
On 3 February 2023, the Associated Press reported the death of a 13-year-old boy as the latest in “in a string of similar landmine incidents in the war-torn country”.
It came a day after three children and one woman were critically injured in a landmine explosion, the news wire said.
The blast happened when a child began playing with a landmine.
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