Landmines are the kind of weapon that keep killing long after the war has supposedly ended. Algeria and Azerbaijan — two countries far from each other, with different histories and political landscapes — today face a strikingly similar reality: the past is still detonating beneath their feet.
In early April 2025, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution underscoring a simple truth often lost in geopolitical debates: mine contamination is not just a security issue but a profound humanitarian crisis. The decision landed with particular resonance in Algiers and Baku, where the legacy of war remains embedded in soil, roads and fields.
For Algeria, the problem began decades ago. The trauma of the 1990s civil war has never fully receded, and the long shadow of extremist groups continues to shape the country’s security environment. AQIM and its splinter factions relied heavily on mines and improvised explosive devices, burying them along rural routes and mountain passes. Over the years, the threat has crept southward, entangling Algeria with the wider instability of the Sahel. Porous borders, disappearing state presence in remote areas and the resilience of jihadist networks mean that mines are not just relics of the past — they continue to be actively planted.
According to the 2025 Global Peace Index, Algeria remains among the least peaceful states in the Middle East and North Africa. The ranking hardly surprises analysts: the combination of militant activity, difficult terrain and economic pressure has slowed de-mining efforts. The government reports progress each year, yet large stretches of land remain unsafe. Farmers avoid entire valleys. Children grow up learning to identify suspicious metal fragments before they learn to read. And each explosion pulls the country back into the trauma it has tried so long to leave behind.
Azerbaijan’s burden is different in origin but similar in effect. Three decades of conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh left the region saturated with anti-personnel mines, anti-tank devices and unexploded shells. Even after major hostilities ceased, mines remained the most deadly legacy of the war. In villages recently reopened to resettlement, residents walk through their own streets with constant caution. Reconstruction teams must first clear the ground before laying a brick or planting a vineyard.
Yet Azerbaijan’s trajectory, at least statistically, has recently shifted. The 2025 Global Peace Index shows one of the country’s most notable improvements in years: conflict-related deaths, internal or external, registered at zero during the measured period, pushing Azerbaijan up the rankings. Baku has highlighted these numbers as evidence of a new post-conflict chapter. Still, beneath the optimism lies a sobering detail — mine contamination remains so extensive that full clearance could take decades.
What emerges from the experiences of both Algeria and Azerbaijan is a shared dilemma: peace does not erase the physical remnants of war. It merely changes the nature of the struggle. In Algeria, where militants still operate in parts of the Sahara and the Aurès mountains, mine-terrorism is a continuing tactic. In Azerbaijan, where the battlefield has fallen silent, mines act as silent saboteurs of reconstruction, agriculture and the return of displaced communities.
The international dimension is increasingly unavoidable. Global funding for mine action has stagnated despite rising needs, particularly in the Sahel, where extremist groups are expanding operations. Meanwhile, post-conflict states like Azerbaijan face their own competition for resources as conflicts elsewhere — from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine — draw global attention and donor budgets.
Both countries, in their own ways, are testing the limits of how states recover from long, exhausting conflicts. Algeria has had to balance counter-terror operations with the slow, dangerous work of clearing rural zones. Azerbaijan must rebuild entire districts while simultaneously combing them for hidden explosives. Their stories are reminders that the end of war is not a clean break; it is more like an uneven fade-out, with the cost measured in farmland left fallow, infrastructure delayed, and families displaced once again by an unseen threat.
And yet, there are glimmers of progress. In Algeria, coordinated border operations have reduced militant mobility in several regions. In Azerbaijan, large reclaimed territories have already been declared fully cleared and opened for resettlement. Each cleared hectare becomes a quiet victory — proof that even the most stubborn remnants of conflict can be undone with enough time, funding and human effort.
Still, the broader lesson remains unchanged: mines are the most patient weapons ever made. They do not negotiate. They do not obey ceasefire agreements. They wait. And as long as they remain buried, Algeria and Azerbaijan will continue to share a pain that transcends borders — a reminder that the aftermath of war can be as deadly as the war itself.
