‘I Thought I’d Died.’ How Landmines Are Continuing to Claim Lives in Post-Assad Syria

Members of the ministry of defense clear landmines left behind by the Syrian army during the war, in agricultural land south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
Members of the ministry of defense clear landmines left behind by the Syrian army during the war, in agricultural land south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
TT

‘I Thought I’d Died.’ How Landmines Are Continuing to Claim Lives in Post-Assad Syria

Members of the ministry of defense clear landmines left behind by the Syrian army during the war, in agricultural land south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
Members of the ministry of defense clear landmines left behind by the Syrian army during the war, in agricultural land south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)

Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.

The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.

"I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded," Khalil told The Associated Press. "At first, I thought I'd died. I didn’t think I would survive this."

Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.

"There were days I didn’t want to live anymore," Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.

While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.

Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

‘It will take ages to clear them all’

Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.

"Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed," said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.

Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.

"We don’t even have an exact number," said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria's defense ministry. "It will take ages to clear them all."

Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.

"This one can take off a leg," he said. "We have to detonate it manually."

Psychological trauma and broader harm

Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. "Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers," he said.

Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.

"We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job," he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.

The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.

Syria's military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.

‘Every day someone is dying’

Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. "My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going," Salah said. "But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’"

Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.

He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated.

After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.

For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.

In a nearby village, Jalal al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.

He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, "but there’s nothing so far," he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. "As you can see, I can’t walk." The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.



What Would Lifting US Sanctions on Syria Mean to the War-Torn Country?

People walk past a billboard displaying Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and US President Donald Trump with a slogan thanking Saudi Arabia and the United States, in Damascus on May 14, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past a billboard displaying Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and US President Donald Trump with a slogan thanking Saudi Arabia and the United States, in Damascus on May 14, 2025. (AFP)
TT

What Would Lifting US Sanctions on Syria Mean to the War-Torn Country?

People walk past a billboard displaying Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and US President Donald Trump with a slogan thanking Saudi Arabia and the United States, in Damascus on May 14, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past a billboard displaying Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, and US President Donald Trump with a slogan thanking Saudi Arabia and the United States, in Damascus on May 14, 2025. (AFP)

President Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will ease sanctions on Syria could eventually facilitate the country’s recovery from years of civil war and transform the lives of everyday Syrians.

But experts say it will take time, and the process for lifting the sanctions — some of which were first introduced 47 years ago — is unclear.

“I think people view sanctions as a switch that you turn on and off,” said Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist who runs the consultancy firm Karam Shaar Advisory Limited. “Far from it.”

Still, the move could bring much-needed investment to the country, which is emerging from decades of autocratic rule by the Assad family as well as the war. It needs tens of billions of dollars to restore its battered infrastructure and pull an estimated 90% of the population out of poverty.

And Trump’s pledge has already had an effect: Syrians celebrated in streets across the country, and Arab leaders in neighboring nations that host millions of refugees who fled Syria’s war praised the announcement.

What are the US sanctions on Syria? Washington has imposed three sanctions programs on Syria. In 1979, the country was designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” because its military was involved in neighboring Lebanon's civil war and had backed armed groups there, and eventually developed strong ties with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act into law, as his administration faced off with Iran and Tehran-backed governments and groups in the Middle East. The legislation focused heavily on Syria's support of designated terror groups, its military presence in Lebanon, its alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, as well as oil smuggling and the backing of armed groups in Iraq after the US-led invasion.

In 2019, during Trump's first term, he signed the Caesar Act, sanctioning Syrian troops and others responsible for atrocities committed during the civil war.

Caesar is the code name for a Syrian photographer who took thousands of photographs of victims of torture and other abuses and smuggled them out of the country. The images, taken between 2011 and 2013, were turned over to human rights advocates, exposing the scale of the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown on political opponents and dissidents during countrywide protests.

What has been the impact of US sanctions on Syria? The sanctions — along with similar measures by other countries — have touched every part of the Syrian economy and everyday life in the country.

They have led to shortages of goods from fuel to medicine, and made it difficult for humanitarian agencies responding to receive funding and operate fully.

Companies around the world struggle to export to Syria, and Syrians struggle to import goods of any kind because nearly all financial transactions with the country are banned. That has led to a blossoming black market of smuggled goods.

Simple tasks like updating smartphones are difficult, if not impossible, and many people resort to virtual private networks, or VPNs, which mask online activity, to access the internet because many websites block users with Syrian IP addresses.

The impact was especially stark after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Türkiye and northern Syria in February 2023, compounding the destruction and misery that the war had already brought.

Though the US Treasury issued a six-month exemption on all financial transactions related to disaster relief, the measures had limited effect since banks and companies were nervous to take the risk, a phenomenon known as over-compliance.

Interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa — who led the insurgency that ousted President Bashar al-Assad — has argued the sanctions have outlived their purpose and are now only harming the Syrian people and ultimately preventing the country from any prospect of recovery.

Trump and Sharaa met Wednesday.

Washington eased some restrictions temporarily in January but did not lift the sanctions. Britain and the European Union have eased some of their measures.

What could lifting the sanctions mean for Syria? After Trump’s announcement, Syria's currency gained 60% on Tuesday night — a signal of how transformational the removal of sanctions could be.

Still, it will take time to see any tangible impact on Syria's economy, experts say, but removing all three sanctions regimes could bring major changes to the lives of Syrians, given how all-encompassing the measures are.

It could mean banks could return to the international financial system or car repair shops could import spare parts from abroad. If the economy improves and reconstruction projects take off, many Syrian refugees who live in crowded tented encampments relying on aid to survive could decide to return home.

“If the situation stabilized and there were reforms, we will then see Syrians returning to their country if they were given opportunities as we expect,” says Lebanese economist Mounis Younes.

The easing of sanctions also has an important symbolic weight because it would signal that Syria is no longer a pariah, said Shaar.

Mathieu Rouquette, Mercy Corps’ country director for Syria, said the move “marks a potentially transformative moment for millions of Syrians who have endured more than 13 years of economic hardship, conflict, and displacement.”

But it all depends on how Washington goes about it.

“Unless enough layers of sanctions are peeled off, you cannot expect the positive impacts on Syria to start to appear,” said Shaar. “Even if you remove some of the top ones, the impact economically would still be nonexistent.”