Direct proof of use
Landmine use in the 2001 War in Afghanistan is documented mainly through victim-operated pressure-plate IEDs rather than factory-pattern minefields. UNAMA's Afghanistan reporting classed pressure-plate or trip-wire victim-operated IEDs as devices that often functioned as anti-personnel landmines, and its 2018 IED special report attributed civilian casualties from suicide and non-suicide IEDs during the covered period to anti-government elements, including the Taliban and ISKP.
Landmine Monitor used the term improvised mines for victim-activated IEDs and identified Afghanistan as one of the major affected states. Its 2022 Afghanistan profile recorded improvised-mine casualties and clearance, while its improvised-mine brief cited UNAMA's Afghanistan findings that many such devices had anti-personnel-mine trigger sensitivity.
Sources: UNAMA IED Special Report 2018, Landmine Monitor 2022 Afghanistan, Impact of Improvised Mines
Timeline
By 2018, UNAMA was describing pressure-plate IEDs in Afghanistan as victim-activated devices that continued to cause civilian casualties after fighting had shifted or subsided. The report gave an example from Maidan Wardak province in which a pressure-plate IED planted by the Taliban detonated when a boy stepped on it while grazing cattle.
In 2020, UNAMA and Human Rights Watch both emphasized Taliban pressure-plate IED use. UNAMA's third-quarter 2020 reporting documented 584 civilian casualties from pressure-plate IEDs from January through September and attributed almost all of those casualties to the Taliban; Human Rights Watch summarized the same pattern as pressure-plate IEDs functioning as banned anti-personnel mines on public roads.
Sources: UNAMA IED Special Report 2018, UNAMA Third Quarter Report 2020, Human Rights Watch World Report 2021
Narrative
The weapon's documented role was area denial, route interdiction, and force protection for insurgent forces. Taliban and allied militant use of pressure-plate IEDs made roads, grazing areas, and contested rural approaches hazardous for Afghan civilians and security forces, while the devices also remained dangerous after a firefight or local withdrawal.
The sources separate this use from command-detonated roadside bombs, magnetic IEDs, and suicide devices. The conflict-use claim here is limited to victim-operated devices that detonated from a person's or vehicle's presence, contact, or pressure and were therefore treated in mine-action reporting as improvised mines or landmine-like anti-personnel mines.
Sources: UNAMA IED Special Report 2018, UNAMA Third Quarter Report 2020, Impact of Improvised Mines
