ASIA CONFLICT WATCH

On 10 July, a farmer in the rural township of Kutkai, in Myanmar’s northern Shan state, was working in his paddy field when a landmine concealed beneath vegetation exploded, inflicting severe injuries. The victim – a 39-year-old father of three children – was rushed to hospital with shrapnel wounds to his left leg, hand and stomach, but fortunately survived. The area where the blast took place is home to multiple armed groups, who have fought the military – known as the Tatmadaw – for generations.

The story is sadly a familiar one in volatile remote border regions around Myanmar’s long perimeter, which are heavily contaminated with landmines as a result of unrelenting violence since the mid-20^th Century. The 2015 election victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), after initial reforms introduced by the former ruling military junta in 2011, brought hope that insurgencies would die out and pave the way for landmine removal. Four years on, de-mining has still not started.

Since then, peace talks have stalled while hostilities in Shan state in the northeast, and Rakhine state in the west, have only worsened and made international headlines. Reports of indiscriminate killings, torture, ethnic cleansing and mass displacement have emerged, drawing frequent coverage in global media. Yet landmines have inflicted carnage under the radar. More often linked to former war zones elsewhere in Southeast Asia, mines are also a deadly hidden side-effect of Myanmar’s internal strife.

Myanmar’s landmine problem

Insurgencies have been waged by ethnic armies in Myanmar’s borderlands since the nation secured independence from Britain at the end of the colonial period in 1948. Landmines have been adopted as a vital tool of guerrilla warfare by rebels who have battled Naypyidaw for autonomy and resource rights in the remote, densely-forested and mountainous border regions of the northeast. Landmines are unsophisticated weapons; cheap to produce and easy to conceal along isolated roads and jungle paths, where they are planted to inflict casualties on the military without the risk of incurring losses.

Mines are regularly used by ethnic armies in rural ambushes against the Tatmadaw, and also for the defence of pockets of rebel-controlled territory in the countryside. Myanmar has not acceded to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, and government forces also regularly plant landmines during their offensives. The devices are allegedly used by the army to stoke fear and contain the spread of insurgent groups.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) has recorded at least 4,193 casualties due to landmines in Myanmar since data collection began in 1999, with 537 killed and 3,538 injured. As a result of media restrictions and lack of access to conflict zones in Myanmar, the true figure is likely higher, with one humanitarian group estimating as many as 40,000 victims since the late-1940s. In terms of annual casualties – 202 in 2017 and 276 in 2018 – Myanmar comes first in Southeast Asia and ranks as the third-worst mine-affected nation globally, behind only Colombia and Afghanistan.

Myanmar’s most heavily-contaminated regions are along borders with China, India and Bangladesh, in the active conflict zones of Shan, Kachin, Sagaing, Chin and Rakhine. Further south in Bago, Kayah and Kayin – where conflicts have receded in recent years – areas along the border with Thailand are also heavily minded. In all, nine of Myanmar’s fifteen states and administrative regions are affected.

A disproportionate number of landmine victims are ethnic minority civilians living in rural townships. Villagers and farmers often sustain injuries when tending crops, venturing into the forest in search of food or tending animals; while children are often struck after inadvertently triggering a mine while playing outside. The impact on livelihoods and economic development in the countryside is huge – many blast survivors are blinded or require the amputation of a limb, leaving them unable to work.

Political transition marred by violence

The November 2015 election win for the NLD coincided with the signing of a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) the previous month, between the government and eight armed groups. The NCA included a pledge to co-operate on removing mines and boosted hopes that de-mining work would start in areas controlled by the signatories. Yet the ongoing peace process with the NCA parties has since stalled, and hostilities have since reignited in the north and west, where non-signatory groups are based. As yet, no mines have been cleared and fresh mine use has been reported on both sides.

During the Rohingya crackdown of 2017, the Tatmadaw allegedly laid mines in the path of refugees fleeing northern Rakhine for Bangladesh. Human Rights Watch said soldiers planted anti-personnel mines along roads and at border crossing points, citing witness accounts and video footage. Ethnic armed groups including the Arakan Army (AA), Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have also continued to use mines in ambushes against Tatmadaw troops.

Just last month, the AA detonated a mine next to a military patrol in Mrauk-U on 23 July. The next day, KIA rebels ambushed an army convoy with landmines in Muse, killing two Tatmadaw soldiers.

What is preventing landmine clearance?

The halting of further landmine use, and the clearance of existing mines, is closely dependent upon the NCA-centred peace process. Since two more non-state armed groups signed the accord in early-2018, dialogue has broken down amid disagreement over constitutional changes, and rebel groups have split into a network of fractured alliances. A growing coalition of national humanitarian NGOs and international de-mining groups, ready to start work, have had to place clearance plans on hold.

To survey land and clear mines requires the permission of both the government and ethnic armies, which control territory in many contaminated areas. Yet with the peace process stalled, both sides are reluctant to de-mine. There remains a distinct lack-of-trust and hostility between the opposing parties, solidified by seven decades of fighting. Landmines have long been used by ethnic insurgent groups for defensive purposes; and in the absence of access to powerful conventional weapons to match the Tatmadaw’s firepower, landmines are deeply entrenched in local-level conflict dynamics.

Without the green light to start clearance work, efforts by humanitarian groups so-far have focused on victim assistance and risk education. A limited national-level infrastructure has been put in place to co-ordinate these programmes, with the Mine Risks Working Group (MRWG) being established in 2012. The MRWG is co-chaired by UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Welfare, and comprises several other ministries and around 40 humanitarian groups. Despite the initiative raising public awareness, the ICBL found in its most recent report that there is ‘no systematic effort’ underway to clear mines.

The administration in Naypyidaw has still not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, as 164 other nations have done, and shows little sign of committing in the near future. And despite nominally-civilian NLD leader and Myanmar’s de-facto ruler Aung San Suu Kyi calling for an end to mine use in the past, the Tatmadaw remains in control of defence and security issues and is unlikely to relinquish its ability to use the weapon. Given Suu Kyi’s failure to restrain the army, even her past words are now tarnished.

Civilians living in fear

Mine clearance on any major scale cannot begin until the nationwide peace process is finalized and a stable security environment prevails in Myanmar’s long-contested border regions. Given the current deadlock in talks and the resurgence of violence in 2019, such a scenario appears a remote prospect.

In the absence of unhindered access for international de-mining operators and the resulting lack of a detailed contamination survey, the full extent of the problem and priority areas for clearance remain unknown. Such work can make a difference: on the former battlefields of Vietnam and Laos, detailed surveys have vastly reduced annual fatalities since the mid-1990s despite much ordnance remaining.

Yet unlike in its neighbours, where the guns fell silent decades ago, Myanmar’s internal conflicts are still raging. For as long as the violence continues and for decades after a final peace accord is signed, civilians who have for so long lived in fear of violence between Tatmadaw soldiers and ethnic rebels must also face the explosive legacy of Myanmar’s intractable conflicts buried deep beneath the soil.

A version of this article is also published on Geopolitical Monitor.