Contamination and Impact

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is contaminated by explosive remnants of war (ERW), both unexploded ordnance (UXO) and abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO), and has a residual threat from antipersonnel and antivehicle landmines. Contamination is the result primarily of the 1948 partition of Palestine, the 1967–1969 Arab-Israeli conflict, the 1970 civil war, and the 1975 confrontation with Syria. Military training ranges and cross-border smuggling have added to the ERW problem.

Mines

Jordan announced it had completed clearance of all known mined areas on 24 April 2012 after completing clearance of the mine belt along its northern border with Syria the previous month.[1] Subsequently, Jordan acknowledged that not all mines along the border had been accounted for, and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) said it would check land adjacent to the mine belt for close to 10,000 mines from the mine belts that were unaccounted for and which may have been removed during unrecorded army clearance operations or by smugglers, or may have shifted due to weather, floods, and land erosion.[2]

Jordan also acknowledged that demining by the Army’s Royal Engineering Corps (REC) in the Jordan Valley, which was declared complete in 2008, had not complied with national standards and that further verification and clearance was needed.[3] By mid-2011, the REC had estimated the area needing verification at about 12.5km².[4] By the end of 2012, Jordan estimated the area at some 5km².[5] In addition, a NATO-funded ERW survey undertaken by the REC reported in 2011 that it had identified eight suspected mined areas.[6]

Cluster munition remnants

Jordan may have some cluster munition remnants in remote areas, the result of the armed forces testing cluster munitions on firing ranges, but the National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation (NCDR) has said any contamination is unlikely to be extensive.[7] A NATO-funded ERW survey initiated in September 2008 had recorded no cluster munition remnants as of end 2011.[8] The NCDR sees the main risk of submunitions as arising from imports of scrap metal from Iraq. The only submunition found since 2010 was at a north-eastern checkpoint where it appeared to have been imported with scrap from Iraq.[9]

Other explosive remnants of war

The NCDR describes Jordan’s ERW contamination as a problem that “occurs in all provinces and directly impacts the lives of 1.8 million people.”[10] A NATO-funded ERW survey (started in the Jordan Valley in September 2008) was completed in September 2011, surveying 296 of Jordan’s 1,040 communities, identifying 396 hazards in 162 impacted communities, and locating 5,021 items of ERW, three-quarters of them classified as high risk. Resurvey of 18 communities found four more that were contaminated, raising the total number of affected communities to 166.

The survey identified confirmed hazardous areas (CHAs) covering 15.1km² and identified 5.3km² of suspected hazardous areas (SHAs), affected by a wide range of ERW, including air-dropped bombs, rockets, some landmines, grenades, and AXO.[11] Most UXO dated back to the civil war of the 1970s, but surveyors found some UXO in the vicinity of military firing ranges. The NCDR reports the most affected areas are concentrated around Ajloun, Jerash, and Irbid in the Jordan Valley, particularly near former Palestine Liberation Organization bases, where munitions were hidden in caves and buried underground. Most CHAs (42%) identified by the ERW survey, however, are in Ma’an in the vicinity of military training grounds, but UXO was also found at Risha in the northeast where BP plc has a US$237 million project to exploit natural gas.[12]

Mine Action Program

Key institutions and operators

Jordan established the NCDR under Law No. 34, passed in 2000, and an April 2002 royal decree, which appointed its board of directors. It includes representatives of the Jordanian Armed Forces, the government, NGOs, landmine survivors, and the media. It became fully operational in 2004 when Prince Mired Raad Zeid al-Hussein became the NCDR’s chair.[13]

The NCDR was established as “the primary national mine action authority” responsible for preparing and overseeing implementation of a national mine action plan, including mine clearance, mine/ERW risk education, and victim assistance, and ensuring that mine action is integrated into the country’s wider development strategies. As a result of the rising number of ERW casualties, its mandate has widened to include the issue of ERW.[14] It is responsible for coordinating, accrediting, regulating, and quality-assuring all organizations involved in mine action as well as for fundraising.[15]

Under the 2010–2015 National Plan published by the NCDR in June 2010, Jordan aimed to complete clearance of all known mines, including 65,000 mines from the northern border, by May 2012, and to clear all ERW by December 2012.[16] However, NCDR reported in July 2011 that the results of the Jordan Valley sampling and verification project were under review.[17]

Land Release

Between January and the end of April 2012, NPA manually cleared 44,727m² and verified another 423,374m², destroying 3,828 antipersonnel mines and 2,385 antivehicle mines.[18] With the completion of clearance of the mine belt, it reduced its field staff from 156 to 82 with one support staff in Amman for the final phase of verification using technical survey in areas where evidence, environment, and experience pointed to the possibility of residual contamination.[19] Jordan estimated some 7km² required verification.[20]

Between June and the end of December 2012, NPA conducted technical survey and verification employing at least one asset on 980,733m² and visual inspection of a further 1.31km², recovering 246 antipersonnel mines and three antivehicle mines.[21] By the end of March 2013, the number of items recovered had risen to 368 antipersonnel mines and four antivehicle mines. NPA had expected verification to be completed by the end of June 2013, but work on the northern border was halted in February 2013 because of the conflict in Syria. At that point, Jordan estimated some 5km² still needed verification. NPA instead deployed to the Jordan Valley in May 2013 to accelerate the verification work under way there.[22]

In the Jordan Valley Sampling and Verification project, the NCDR reported that the REC verified 36 areas covering 2.1km² in 2012, the same amount of land as in 2011, destroying 313 antipersonnel mines and 108 antivehicle mines. NCDR said it expected the project to be completed by the end of 2015.[23]

Mine clearance in 2012[24]

Compliance with Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty

Under Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty (and in accordance with the four-year extension granted in 2008), Jordan was required to destroy all antipersonnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible, but not later than 1 May 2012.

Jordan officially declared completion of its Article 5 obligations on 24 April 2012 after NPA completed demining minefields along the northern border with Syria, and submitted its formal declaration of completion to the Twelfth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in December 2012.[25] Announcing completion, however, Prince Mired acknowledged that “a residual risk could remain in areas where landmines have been emplaced.”[26] At the 2013 Standing Committee meeting, Jordan said it expected verification efforts to last two more years.[27]