Policy

The Syrian Arab Republic has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Syria attended the Mine Ban Treaty’s Eighteenth Meeting of States Parties in November 2020 as an observer, and made a public statement.[1] It stated that “The Syrian Arab Republic participates as an observer in this meeting due to its interest in the issue of landmines, explosive ordinances [sic], and improvised explosive devices [IEDs] and considering their use by terrorist organizations, both created and obtained, in their terrorist operations on Syrian territories.”[2] Additionally, it stated that “The Syrian Arab Republic stresses that achieving global agreement and freeing the world of landmines requires addressing existing concerns and challenges. First and foremost, translating political commitments into financial resources to support the achievement of these goals.”[3]

Previously, Syria’s attendance at the Fourth Review Conference, held in Oslo in November 2019, marked the first time since 2006 that it had participated in a meeting of the treaty.[4] Most recently, Syria attended the Nineteenth Meeting of States Parties in November 2021 as an observer, but did not make a statement. Since 1996, Syria has abstained from voting on every annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution promoting the universalization and full implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, including UNGA Resolution 76/26, on 6 December 2021.[5]

Syria is not party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Use

The Monitor has not independently documented or confirmed any new use of antipersonnel mines by Syrian government forces or by Russian forces participating in joint military operations in Syria during the reporting period (November 2021–September 2022).[6]

In late 2011, the first reports emerged of Syrian government use of antipersonnel landmines in the country’s border areas.[7] A Syrian official acknowledged that the government had “undertaken many measures to control the borders, including planting mines.”[8]

Syria’s statement at the Eighteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November 2020 alleged that:

“The illegal foreign military presence on Syrian territories, the use of mines and improvised explosive devices by armed terrorist groups in these areas, and the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan where Syrian residents risk injury and death due to the landmines planted between their homes, fields, and villages by the occupation forces, all pose as obstacles to fully identifying and clearing the areas contaminated with landmines.

These organizations have randomly planted landmines and explosive ordinances [sic] in large tracts of lands without any map indicating their locations. The Syrian Arab Army has taken upon itself the task of securing, diffusing, and clearing the areas of landmines to ensure the safe return of Syrians to these areas and to restore normalcy in their daily lives.”[9]

Non-state armed groups (NSAGs) have used landmines in Syria in previous years, but a lack of access by independent sources to territory that remains under NSAG control made it impossible to confirm new use during the reporting period.[10]

In August 2022, Syrian media reported that Iranian militia groups in Syria were planting landmines around their military bases in the countryside east of Homs. It was also indicated that the previous month, Iraqi Hezbollah militia groups had planted more than 700 landmines around their base near the town of Khirbat Tiyas.[11]

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that tracks casualties in Syria, “[T]here is great difficulty in determining which party was responsible for planting landmines, due to the multiplicity of forces controlling the areas in which these explosions occur, and therefore we do not attribute the vast majority of deaths caused by landmines to a specific party. None of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria have revealed maps of the places where they planted landmines.”[12]

From September 2015 to January 2017, Mines Advisory Group (MAG) cleared 7,500 improvised antipersonnel landmines and other IEDs from Iraq and Syria.[13]

Prior to the current armed conflict, which began in 2011, Syria was last believed to have used landmines in 1982, during the conflict with Israel in Lebanon. Little was known about the extent of Syria’s landmine problem, but the most significantly mined areas were in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights, in the southwest of Syria, and along its borders.

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Syria is not known to have produced or exported antipersonnel landmines.

The size and origin of Syria’s landmine stockpile is not known, but it is believed to be significant and comprised mainly of Soviet/Russian-manufactured landmines including PMN-2, PMN-4, and OZM-72 antipersonnel mines, as well as TMN-46 and TM-62 antivehicle mines. Photographs and a video posted online by the Syrian Center for Demining Rehabilitation (SCDR) on 28 September 2015, allegedly filmed west of Daraa in southern Syria, showed up to 20 PMN-4 antipersonnel mines being removed from the ground.[14] This was the first evidence of use of PMN-4 mines during the Syrian Civil War, but it is unclear who laid them and when. Markings on the mines indicated that they were manufactured in Russia in 1995.

Antipersonnel landmines appear to have been systematically produced and emplaced in conflict-affected areas of Syria and Iraq by Islamic State-affiliated groups since 2014, but little information or detail regarding this activity has been made public. Images of antipersonnel mines produced by the Islamic State were taken in Syria near the village of Miqtaa, southwest of Manbij, in 2019.[15]