The Invisible Enemy
Coming Soon..
Myanmar has the world’s highest number of annual casualties of landmines and explosive remnants of war, with over a thousand civilian victims in 2024 alone. Among them, 29 percent are children. As a humanitarian mine action expert who has traversed the globe addressing the devastation left by conflict, Bekim Shala finds himself drawn into this unfolding tragedy in Myanmar. For years, he has dedicated his life to the painstaking work of clearing explosive ordnance and reducing the harms to civilians.
Shala’s journey into this specialized, often heartbreaking, field began not in a classroom, but at his home in Kosovo. The breakup of Yugoslavia left his town, like much of the region, heavily contaminated with landmines, unexploded ordnance, and booby traps. He initially stepped in on a temporary basis, driven by the immediate need to help people returning to their homes in the aftermath of conflict. His team was investigating incidents, trying to understand how and where they happened, and gathering information to identify contaminated areas. “By being exposed to people who have been injured, really quickly it became clear to you how important this work is,” he recalls, highlighting the toll on civilians.
From Kosovo, his work took him to other complex settings: Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Lebanon (where cluster munitions were a major concern), Vietnam, and South Sudan, where landmines posed a threat to returning refugees. Shala’s proximity to Myanmar during his time in Vietnam, and his close monitoring of the situation there, eventually led him to the country in 2016, working as the Country Director for the Mine Advisory Group. In his current role with Community Safety Partnerships, he focuses on advocacy to reduce the number of landmines laid in Myanmar and on open dialogue aboutfuture de-mining, all while trying to create spaces for change through engagement with conflict actors and communities.
Upon his arrival in Myanmar in 2016, landmine contamination was concentrated in four main areas: the Southeast, Kachin, northern Rakhine, and Shan. Incidents were fewer, and the political climate, with the NLD government newly in power, seemed more conducive to engagement. Shala’s team began with explosive ordnance risk education (EORE), raising awareness about the dangers, and gradually secured permissions to conduct surveys. They were engaged in discussions with Naypyidaw, pushing towards actual clearance. These early steps were promising; had COVID-19 not struck and the military takeover not unfolded, Shala believes they “would have been clearing landmines in Myanmar by now.”
A consistent aim has been to show that landmines are a global issue, not just Myanmar’s burden; this is a lesson learned from past, successful clearance efforts in places such as Bosnia and Cambodia. However, the situation in Myanmar has dramatically deteriorated. The conflict has exploded in scale, spreading across wider territories, and landmine contamination has permeated every state and region in Myanmar. An alarming shift has been the use of these deadly devices outside previous conflict zones, often in remote areas, now seeing contamination in residential areas, cities, and villages. This proximity to highly populated areas translates into a much larger number of incidents, Shala says. The increase in the number of active parties to the conflict, many of whom are less experienced in the strategic deployment of landmines, has introduced “nuisance mining”, a term in humanitarian mine action used to refer to indiscriminate mining without any pattern, which, Shala says, makes future clearance efforts more challenging.
Shala goes on to point out that the majority of landmines are produced in factories by the Myanmar military, who have a long history and sophistication in their manufacture. Improvised explosive devices are also created by ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), often from scavenged explosives or captured ordnance. The reality is that without survey activities, there is a limited understanding of the scope of contamination – how and where these devices are made, specific patterns of deployment, and exact boundaries of affected areas.
Given the conflict and prohibition of mine clearance, the approach in Myanmar is strategic and incremental. Myanmar is not a signatory to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (known as the Ottawa Treaty), a landmark international achievement signed by over 160 countries that prohibits the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. Shala’s strategy centers on engaging all parties to the conflict in dialogue, even if they continue to use landmines. The primary message, although difficult in the midst of active fighting, is to encourage the military and other conflict actors to reduce the use of landmines and refrain from mining near residential areas, schools, health clinics, or other places heavily used by civilians.
Until de-mining is possible, incremental gains could include marking hazardous areas, which would provide visual warnings for returning populations. Shala and colleagues are also pushing for more in-depth, non-technical surveys to at least record sightings and incident locations, helping to identify the scope of contamination. During the NLD government’s tenure, relevant actors convened as the Mine Risk Working Group under the Ministry of Social Services, creating a pathway for dialogue between international organizations, government, and the military on EORE and related issues. Humanitarian actors advocated for a National Mine Action Authority as a step in the right direction, although negotiations were often challenging and entangled in the broader peace process.
Since the outbreak of nationwide conflict, however, “it just feels like we’re back to square one, and probably even worse than that,” Shala says. “However, we are a resilient sector. We’re trying to engage as much as possible with all the parties to conflict.” Ad hoc attempts at de-mining, while driven by desperate need, are extremely dangerous and not done in accordance to international mine action standards, Shala says, adding that supposedly cleared areas still need to be evaluated as contaminated.
Beyond the immediate traumatic injuries, the human cost of landmines is devastatingly pervasive for civilians. The fear explosive ordnance instills is a significant psychological burden, limiting mobility and access to livelihoods. People displaced from their homes, hoping to return, find their aspirations crushed by an invisible threat lurking in their former villages. “Having landmines we have seen in previous contexts can really delay the return of IDPs into an area,” Shala says. Natural disasters add another layer of danger. Flooding can cause landmines to migrate to previously uncontaminated areas, with the lack of clearly defined contaminated areas, due to the inability to conduct comprehensive surveys, exacerbates this risk. As floodwaters recede, landmines can contaminate the rubble, leading to new incidents as people attempt to clear debris and rebuild their lives.
Children, with their inherent curiosity, are at extremely high risk. As mentioned, they account for a disproportionate number of victims, potentially wandering into danger as they play. Higher risk also extends to other groups, such as IDPs and other people on the move, hunters, herders, agricultural workers, and people gathering scrap or natural resources.
Despite the challenges, significant strides are being made in awareness and prevention. Humanitarian actors have become “really good at disseminated EORE messages or awareness campaign, reaching half a million people in Myanmar on an annual basis,” Shala says, crediting the resilience and innovation of local organizations who navigate access challenges at great personal risk.
While EORE is essential, the broader needs of survivors – encompassing rehabilitation, psychological support, social reintegration, and more – require investment as a key part of the humanitarian mine action strategy for 2025-6. The international community’s support for EORE is growing, but the sector in Myanmar “can definitely absorb more funding and be able to respond to areas that feel are neglected,” Shala says. There are signs of hope and strategic avenues for progress despite the conflict. “We can bring the number of incidents low pretty quickly with really strong campaigns of EORE and with activities such as marking of hazardous areas and clearing areas which are really close to residential areas or that are high priority.”
The complexities of engaging with parties to the conflict, including the military, are immense. “When our predecessors arrived in Myanmar, there was this huge denial about landmines or contamination being an issue. It’s just the sheer number of incidents that have started taking place and have been recorded,” Shala says. “Parties in the conflict were no longer able to deny the issue, but really started doing something about it. We can use engagement with them, the issue of awareness, and really discuss with them and bring this evidence into play – the suffering [caused by] landmine incidents – that really has helped those discussions evolve.”