Humanitarian demining is not a crime: The ‘deliberate’ targeting of demining personnel
Between Autumn 2021 and Spring 2022, humanitarian landmine clearance project Masam’s deminers witnessed a rise in the targeting of demining activities.
In short, Yemen’s Houthi militia — who are designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the internationally-recognised Yemeni government-in-exile and the United Nations — were reportedly fitting landmines with something called anti-handling mechanisms that means that if a deminer were to attempt to render a landmine safe, it would explode in his face.
While the Houthis have allegedly committed war crimes for their indiscriminate use of banned anti-personnel landmines, their apparent targeting of deminers may also constitute a war crime. Here’s why.
Targeted tactics
Project Masam’s deminers have been confronted with a number of tactics that may have been used to specifically target demining personnel.
“We differentiate these methods from attacks against civilians because a civilian is very unlikely to be defuzing and removing landmines from the ground (although its not unheard of in Yemen),” one of Project Masam’s Technical Advisors said from Masam’s Marib headquarters.
The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) specialist, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, explained that attacks against civilians usually involve landmines and IEDs that have been laid in and around villages, homes, water wells and farmland, etc, and that will cause civilian casualties after these areas are liberated from Houthi control.
But since 2021, a number of new Houthi tactics apparently targeting demining activities have emerged. These include:
1. Using secondary methods of initiation concealed in or under a landmine (anti-tamper circuits, anti-lift or pressure release devices), that specifically target the actions that a deminer might take, such as the removal of the landmine’s screw-cap and the removal of the mines from the ground, respectively.
2. Targeting deminers by positioning lower metal content anti-personnel mines alongside high metal content threats, such as anti-vehicle mines. This masks the metal signature of the smaller anti-personnel threat, in the hope that a deminer will inadvertently trigger the anti-personnel mine whilst rendering safe the anti-tank (also known as anti-vehicle) mine.
A single Houthi minefield can contain all of the above threats in one area and, to make it more complex, there is no discernible pattern to the deployment of the mines and devices making it an extremely complex and time-consuming task to clear.
These mixed-threat mine and IED “belts” (or minefields) are arguably some of the most complex areas deminers have ever cleared in the world.
3. Using ‘come-ons’ designed to attract the deminers towards a hidden device. These typically involve a bait item, such as a piece of unexploded ordnance, or a pile of seemingly unfuzed mines, in the hope that a deminer will go to investigate and trigger a victim-operated IED that has been placed on the route to, or attached to, the bait item.
These mechanisms and tactics are specific to the Houthis in Yemen: the manufactured anti-lift mechanisms are incorporated into the underside of their mass-produced improvised landmines.
And Masam teams are continually encountering booby-trapped these so-called Yemeni Large mines — between 85 and 90 per cent of all landlines cleared by Masam in Yemen to date.
An ever-present threat
According to the Technical Advisor, a distinction must be made between deliberately targeting humanitarian clearance and the targeting of demining activities.
“The latter includes the military deminers and all of the different anti-handling devices that we have seen are more than likely targeting their activities, not ours.
“Obviously what the military miss, we will find and that puts us (and other humanitarian agencies) at greater risk.”
He added: “Pressure-release mechanisms and booby traps, such as hand-grenades placed under landmines, pre-date the start of Project Masam. They represent a small but ever-present threat.”
There has not yet been a significant evolution in these methods apart from the use of ‘come-on’ tactics, which increased in prevalence within the areas liberated from Houthi control between autumn 2021 and spring 2022, the Technical Advisor said.
The pressure-release mechanisms are widely used and have been found in most if not all of the seven governorates in which Project Masam has been operating, he explained.
“These devices are manufactured centrally, probably in the same factories where the Houthis mass-produce their improvised landmines, and its design has not evolved at all.”
Simple anti-tamper IEDs concealed within modified landmines and utilising electrical circuits were first encountered by the military in early 2021 but these have so far only been found in one governorate.
“Anti-lift devices hidden under landmines which use a pull-fuze mechanism were also first encountered in early 2021 by Masam deminers, but similarly only found in one governorate, which suggests that local cells of Houthi militants have been trying out different methods, but as yet these tactics do not appear to have been adopted by the wider Houthi terror group.”
There are a few potential reasons for this.
Most deminers use hook-and-line techniques to move the landmines and so it is not worth the time and effort the Houthis would need to expend to lay these more complex devices.
The IED specialist explained: “It is more hazardous to emplace these secondary threats and therefore extra training is required; additional time is also required to emplace these devices and given the huge scale of Houthi mine laying operations, the highest priority to the Houthis is clearly the quantity of mines as opposed to the complexity of what they are emplacing.”
Finding solutions
To mitigate the risk to deminers, Project Masam has created specialist training and developed counter methods to safely deal with these modified mines.
All details of new or emerging tactics, such as the range of ‘come-ons’ encountered during the recent liberation of hundreds of kilometres of frontline territory, are taught to the teams by the Project’s technical advisors who then practically train and test the deminers to ensure high levels of safety are maintained.
“Training includes hook-and-line techniques to ensure that our deminers can perform all targetable actions from a safe distance, for example, since the emergence of the threat of anti-tamper devices, these hook-and-line techniques were expanded to include the remote unfastening and removal of landmine screw-caps, through the use of new tools devised for that specific purpose,” the Technical Advisor said.
In line with the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) standards, Masam have created a solution to ensure the safe render of booby-trapped landmines, by manufacturing a clamp that fits round the dust cap.
The deminer can turn the dust cover from a safe distance: if booby-trapped, the landmine will detonate, with the deminer out of range.
While the Technical Advisor explained that the occurrence of modified landmines (with anti-handling mechanism) is “probably in the low three-figure range”, it represents about 1 per cent of the 100,000 Houthi improvised anti-vehicle landmines/IEDs cleared by Project Masam since mid-2018.
“Although only a slight prospect, it is a threat that we cannot ignore,” he said.
None of Project Masam’s personnel have been killed by any of the anti-handling devices, however, the advisor highlighted that two deminers were killed by a ‘come-on’ in Hays District in February 2021.
A war crime?
The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty bans anti-personnel landmines — mines “designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons”.
The large-scale indiscriminate use of landmines, which intentionally targets the civilian population not taking part in hostilities, is also a flagrant violation of the laws of armed conflict because it wilfully causes great suffering, or serious injury to body or health and causes extensive destruction of property. In simple terms, it could constitute a war crime.
By depriving Yemeni civilians of objects indispensable to their survival (foodstuffs, agricultural areas, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works), Houthis are also committing potential war crimes under the Article 3 common to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions relating to a non-international armed conflict.
Prime Minister Abdulmalik Saeed previously said that parties opposing pro-government forces, including Houthi militias, who have been indiscriminately planting internationally banned anti-personnel landmines and who have indiscriminately used booby-trapped anti-vehicle mines in violation of the laws of war, “must be held accountable for the crimes they perpetrate against humanity and that these crimes that will not fall under a statute of limitations”.
Questions remain, meanwhile, as to whether Houthis’ apparent targeting of humanitarian demining teams could also represent a war crime.
Whether the alleged targeting is solely directed at Yemeni military deminers, it increases the threat to impartial humanitarian demining personnel such as Masam’s, leading to additional techniques and procedures needing to be trained and implemented.
“The additional techniques add time to the clearance operations and additional training takes our demining teams out of the field,” the Technical Advisor explained.
This is time that humanitarian demining teams could have been spending clearing minefields and protecting civilians.
“There is still a case to be made that these tactics could be considered as a war crime, because they undoubtedly hinder the clearance, therefore the process is longer and it exposes more civilians to mines or devices that would have otherwise been removed.”
By targeting humanitarian demining - a form of humanitarian assistance under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols - Houthis are prohibiting deminers from carrying out their mission (protecting civilians from landmines’ indiscriminate effect, facilitating the return to ordinary civilian life, and, where applicable, ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid).
The Article 12 of Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996 (Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby Traps, and Other Devices) also stipulates that any humanitarian mission of an impartial humanitarian organisation (including any impartial humanitarian demining mission) carried out with the consent of the State concerned must enjoy special protection from the effects of minefields, mined areas, mines, booby traps, and other devices by State Parties.
“This byproduct of the targeting of military deminers could be considered a war crime if the Houthis were a legitimate government,” the IED specialist said.
It remains to be seen whether the Houthis, a designated terror group and not recognised as a “legitimate government”, could be prosecuted for these “war crimes”, or whether their methods of warfare could be overlooked if solely treated as terrorist offences in the future.
By Elsa Buchanan
