In a former quarry surrounded by farmland outside the city of Deraa in southern Syria, experts are preparing to detonate an unexploded Russian missile left over from the war. A shepherd discovered it a few days earlier in a nearby field.
Everything involving the detonation is carefully calculated: the missile's size and its location above ground help determine that the blast radius will be 250 metres and that dangerous fragments could be propelled as far as 900m. Sandbags are filled and placed around the missile to absorb the explosion.
The only aspect left to chance is how long it will take to move the shepherds out of the way. In faraway fields on the edge of the radius, a lengthy discussion ensues between a pair of herders, who eventually meander with their flock away from the epicentre of the planned detonation.
It takes a split second to detonate a mine or other unexploded bomb, but years are needed to clear the Syrian fields and cities on which they are scattered.
On this day, the herders are forthcoming, which is not always the case. Most have lived through the war and aren’t scared of explosives. Many still take their herds to fields known to be dangerous. The shepherd who found the Russian missile carried it to the quarry himself.
“Most of the time the shepherds listen to us,” says Abdel Mohsen Al Masri, who led the controlled detonation with the British charity Halo Trust. “They are facing a lot of dangers. When they’re walking on land with mines and unexploded bombs, they are subjected to injuries and injuries for their children.
“The work depends on how big the device is. If it is small, you close off a small area. If it is big, you have large roads and a large area to close off.”
Polluted by explosives
Anti-personnel and anti-tank mines line the fields outside the city of Deraa, marking the former front lines of the Syrian civil war. They were laid by the forces of the former regime and its allies during the battle to retake southern Syria in 2017.
Today, as people return to the city and its surroundings from Jordan, they risk death or injury from leftover mines, unexploded missiles and improvised bombs.
More than 800 people, almost a third of them children, have been killed by unexploded munitions since the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, according to the Halo Trust's figures. Of the 2,300 people reported injured, 40 per cent were children, the charity said. Other cases may have gone unreported.
Hussein Qazhali, who leads Halo’s operations in southern Syria, said he was compelled to do this work after years as a paramedic during which he regularly responded to incidents involving unexploded war remnants.
He was displaced to Idlib in north-west Syria during the civil war, but returned to his home in Deraa last year. Many in his team are former fighters and first responders with experience clearing explosives.
He showed The National a WhatsApp group that documented incidents in the south, which occurred every two to three days and often involve children. News of another accident nearby appeared in the chat and he was clearly upset.
Before beginning a clearance operation, team members speak to the local community, gathering testimony about the war and the fighting. They refer to old regime maps of the front line. Drone imaging helps to locate disturbances that could be mines or unexploded devices.
Fragile return
Deraa has seen the largest number of residents returning since the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024. A newer wave of displaced Bedouin from neighbouring Sweida are also at risk as they seek shelter in abandoned buildings that had served as military camps for the former regime.
This is compounded by the continued insecurity in southern Syria. The new Syrian government has struggled to establish its police and armed forces in the Deraa governorate due to pushback from armed groups that took control during the civil war.
Israel sought to fill the vacuum and now occupies a buffer zone along the borders of the Golan Heights and has conducted several military campaigns in the region since December 2024. These were first to destroy the Assad regime and Iranian military bases, and then to support a Druze militia leader in Sweida who staged an uprising in the city against Ahmad Al Shara's government.
Hundreds were killed in the clashes between Druze militiamen and Bedouin who were loyal to the new government. Residents say Israeli strikes on former regime warehouses led to a more expansive scattering of regime weapons.
In Dahia, shepherd Ghiyath Ibn Ja’adan lives with his family in an abandoned building that previously served as a military base for regime forces after they reclaimed the city. He was displaced to Jordan during the war and returned to Deraa after the Assad regime fell.
Recently, he lost two sheep to a mine that exploded as they walked ahead of him. “The sound of the blast was so loud,” he said. “All I saw was the fire and the smoke in front of me, and then I heard the blast. I was no more than 10 metres from it.”
His brother, who lives nearby, lost a leg while herding sheep in the fields. “There are anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines. There is rocket debris,” Mr Ibn Ja’adan added. “There were also army camps here that the Israelis hit after the regime fell. There were warehouses full of missiles that were targeted and they were scattered across the land.
His biggest fear is for his children. “I don’t let my children go out in the fields. There are mines, there is unexploded debris. Children don’t know this. They could hold [a bomb] and it will explode in their hands. I am trying to teach them. But they are children. If they spot something, they will want to hold it.”
There are six fields immediately on the edge of the city, each measuring 75,000 to 170,000 square metres and containing mines, said Mohammed Al Hashish, who leads a local team for the Dahia suburb. There have been clearance activities in the neighbourhoods of Naimeh and Manshiyeh, which were heavily shelled by Assad's forces during the war.
Overseas funding fears
The work comes as the UK and other major western governments have slashed their foreign aid budgets to increase spending on defence. While Halo’s programme in Syria is currently funded by several governments and UN agencies, including the UN Mine Action Service, there is longer-term uncertainty for the work, which is likely to take a decade to complete.
“Our ability to work in Syria has massively increased as the country has opened up,” said George Tench, who is part of the Syria programme. “We have lots of incredible donors and have grown significantly but we haven't been able to scale up our impact across Syria as quickly as would have been hoped.
“It is a problem that will take many years to address and so requires a long-standing commitment from the international community. This is likely to be challenging in an environment of global funding cuts.”
Some aid organisations want overseas aid to be viewed as essential to defence budgets. Maj Gen James Cowan, Halo’s chief executive, said the charity sits in the “grey space” between aid and defence.
“The traditional hard power of defence and the so-called soft power of overseas aid interventions and diplomacy are twin pillars of global security,” he said. “Together, they help to build a safer, more stable world, strengthen the foundations of critical conflict prevention efforts, reinforce international norms and reduce human suffering.”
For the team clearing the explosives, the challenge is a deeply personal one and linked to Syria's recovery after more than 13 years of war.
Mr Al Masri of the Halo Trust said: “The people of Deraa are my people. Any thorn that pricks them, it's as if they were my children. It’s a humanitarian issue that’s not just about Deraa.”
