Imagine seeing a giant rat as a welcome sight, the same way you greet a talented colleague at work in the morning. Coffee might not be shared, but doughnuts are certainly welcome.
That is the reality of APOPO’s work.
APOPO is a Belgian international non-profit founded in 1998 and renowned for training African giant pouched rats, HeroRATs. These star rats pick up the explosives among myriad pieces of shrapnel and metal items, which slow down traditional metal detection technology. They tend to smell and indicate only on explosives, saving time and effort on investigating other clutter indications. One of the most talented of these rats, Magawa, detected 71 landmines and 38 unexploded ordnances over five years. Their light weight means they face fewer threats when triggering the device, and during its 20 years of work, APOPO has never had an animal injured or killed in action. APOPO also utilises dogs, and the different animals complement each other in operations.
APOPO works in six countries: Angola, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Senegal, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Their animals are treated as valued staff members.
Azerbaijan estimates that Karabakh is littered with 1.5 million landmines and an unknown number of unexploded ordnances (UXOS). Besides the 2020 conflict, the region still has the legacy of the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1988-1994). Civilian casualties are in the hundreds. Michael Heiman, who serves as APOPO’s Head of MA Programs, was behind the establishment of the operations in Karabakh in 2022 and is responsible for coordinating with national and international partners, ensuring the effective deployment of detection animals and demining teams.
European Interest: Landmines render land unusable and remain active for a long time. This is part of their tactical and perhaps political appeal. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia is a party to the Ottawa Convention. They are not alone. Some EU member states, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland, have announced their plans to withdraw from the convention. In your view, as a professional who has worked around the world, what is the significance of this trend?
Michael Heiman (APOPO): As humanitarian mine action operators, we want to see as many states as possible sign onto the Treaty. We also regret seeing the recent statements of countries planning to withdraw from the convention. We see it as a devastating step backwards in global efforts to protect people from indiscriminate and inhumane weapons.
I believe that today, there is more advanced Military technology that allows for much more effective measures to protect your borders or perimeters, and there are combinations of systems that prevent targeting civilians. Unfortunately, laying mines is simpler and cheaper, even if not entirely effective. These landmines remain a problem long after the end of a conflict and cause mainly civilian casualties, with little or no control over who will step on them. Will it be a soldier, an innocent farmer, or a child?
In Ukraine, we have seen new landmines that can be remotely deactivated or have a self-destruction mechanism. Even with these “smart” features, the failure rate is substantial and is very common. It’s simply not good enough. We have a similar challenge with cluster munitions, which again are dropped from the air and are supposed to detonate on impact, except often they don’t, at the cost of thousands of lives long after the conflict, as we could see in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, for example. We regret to see that despite all its efforts to eradicate landmines and cluster munitions around the world, the U.S. announced its plans to deliver mines and cluster munitions to Ukraine last year.
Countries, of course, make decisions based on their security objectives, budgets, and specific circumstances. But civilians will eventually pay the price for these short-sighted decisions.
European Interest: Focusing on Karabakh. The legacy of Karabakh dates back to the first conflict (1988-1994). How much of your work involves older technology landmines?
Michael Heiman: The majority of the landmines are various Soviet models that should detonate on impact with fairly simple mechanisms. Even if the mechanism is simple, that does not mean it is less dangerous because these items have been lying on the ground for many years and were sometimes disturbed. Therefore, their fuses can become pretty sensitive. We also deal with a wide range of ammunition, sometimes with more sophisticated fuses. We destroy these items in situ to allow maximum safety for our staff. In this fieldwork, we don’t necessarily ask which generation the explosive item dates to. Azerbaijan has been conducting demining operations for quite some time, and the National Demining Agency, ANAMA, has accumulated much knowledge and experience.
The biggest challenge in demining is not the item itself. We handle it cautiously and have plenty of materials, tools and experience to reduce working accidents. The biggest challenge is that the areas are pretty vast, and we need to use different methodologies to focus only on areas that contain landmines and reduce the ones that do not contain any evidence. If we don’t apply these “land release” principles, we will be clearing areas that do not contain landmines, which will be endless. Battle Areas in places like Ukraine and Azerbaijan stretch for miles. Sometimes, you must examine 200 hectares with a populated village next to it. The people there are afraid to use the land, whether this area eventually has only one mine or hundreds of mines. The impact is the same: people cannot use the land. We need to quickly determine which land does not require clearing so as not to waste resources. This survey process is the key to utilising your resources correctly.
[Image Copyright: APOPO @herorats]
European Interest: This brings us to the fact that mines have been an element of bilateral diplomatic negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This usually entailed the exchange of land with minefield maps. How helpful are these maps?
Michael Heiman: I didn’t work in Armenia, so I can only comment on our Azerbaijan operations. Countries that have demining programs typically have national agencies. In Azerbaijan, the agency is ANAMA. ANAMA collects and collates all kinds of information on the presence of landmines. The sources include interviews with former combatants who fought in a particular region, maps from the country that created the minefields, witnesses, and others. All this information is stored and processed by the National Agency, which makes it available to us, the operators. So, when we cover an area, we have a drawing, or a rough map provided by the National Agency. I assume that sometimes, these will be based on the Armenian records you refer to.
European Interest: How costly is demining? I have read it can be as expensive as $300 to $1,000 per land mine.
Michael Heiman: We measure operational cost efficiency by calculating the cost per square meter, and we measure effectiveness by working in communities that need it most. Different threat levels and the impact on the population often vary between provinces/regions. National Authorities typically have a strategy and a prioritisation scheme, and the operators’ tasking relies on these two. Some agencies can be strict regarding tools, level of coverage and methodology. In contrast, others leave this decision to the operator, in which case we apply risk assessment following methodologically consistent surveys. We all follow international mine action standards, and each country has its specific set of national standards.
In Cambodia, the cost per square meter can be $0.2-0.5. That is a big range. Why? Because you have very dense minefields in rugged terrain, where you need to apply more rigid tools, it takes longer and is more expensive. Other areas contain fewer mines and are flat, so that you can use lighter tools. Climate, terrain, vegetation, type of mines, density, and remoteness affect our pace and cost. In some countries, you can work 12 months a year. In the northern parts of Karabakh, you have a cold winter with snow, rain, and wind, so we lose many operational days during the winter.
In general, this work is not very cheap. It’s meticulous, risky fieldwork that takes time, and you must appropriately compensate people. The cost of the operation varies between countries because each country has its own wage range.
We always try to invest in the local community and build local capacity. Recruiting people from the affected communities is helpful: it provides better information, more support, and is often cost-effective. If it’s a long-term project, that is standard practice.
Training staff to work with animals takes longer than with metal detectors. Therefore, we bring crews from other countries when we have a relatively short-term project. We did this in Azerbaijan in 2023, where we brought a team from Cambodia for a 9-month project that ended in 2024. When funding becomes available, we hope to revive this project and make it long-term with local Azerbaijani staff.
European Interest: How do you get animals to cooperate? Could you clarify?
Michael Heiman: Conditional training is very similar to educating small children. The animals know that they need to do X to receive a reward, and this is followed by positive reinforcement. Of course, it’s not that simple, and we need qualified people who can read animal behaviour and apply the most appropriate technique to get the result we are looking for.
The first stage in training working animals is socialisation with humans. They trust you and learn to trust and live next to humans. They get used to being close to us, and they don’t panic every time you touch them, move them, or place them in a vehicle, a house, or a kennel. Animals in mine action work in different environments; they move a lot, so we focus on their environmental strength from a very early age.
Rats are a unique case, and APOPO has been breeding and training African Pouched Rats in Tanzania for the last 25 years. It’s their natural habitat, so it’s the perfect place to have the training centre there. It takes about a year to train and accredit a Rat for landmine detection. With dogs, it’s a bit different. We choose to scout young and promising talents from various sources and then train them in our Dog centre in Cambodia for another 10-12 months.
One important point to clarify about using animals in mine action: Most people see these military movies about dogs entering the perimeter before the soldier, and think the animals are there for us to avoid the risk. In mine action, it’s not about that. We can handle the risk and are not afraid of clearing the mines by ourselves. The main reason for using animals in mine action is that they can be trained to detect only the explosives and ignore all other materials in the ground, mainly the metal scrap. Since metal detectors are still the primary method for clearing mines, their biggest problem is the clutter. Minefields are former battle areas and typically contain other metallic objects such as fragments, fences, etc. All those slow the metal detectors down, because you need to go down on your knees and investigate every signal. By skipping the metal, animals can cover the area faster.
Animals also have limitations, of course. Scent detection is affected by climate, wind, rain, other volatile background scents, etc. There is no silver bullet in this sector; the best approach is to have a diverse toolbox. The toolbox includes animals, machines, deminers, UAVS, and others. Depending on the scenario, we select the leading method and the complementary tools to remove the threat and release the area most safely and cost-effectively.
