Wars have been waged for millennia; they are being waged today and will be waged tomorrow. Neither the causes nor the goals have changed. But the means have changed, and the weapons have been perfected. And as they have been perfected, peaceful populations have increasingly become targets, and wars have moved beyond conventional limits.

If in the old days, an army would confront an army, and a well-aimed arrow released from a bow would pierce an enemy soldier, now the target is uncertain, now the target is anything beyond the enemy line.

The wars of men are a thing of the distant past. We are living in the age of the wars of monsters. They place flamethrowers in a convenient spot, and disperse death within the widest possible range. This, probably, is more "humane". They don't see the man hit, they don't see the blood flow, they don't see the corpse. They kill as if they don't realize what they are doing. They lay mines and move on. In the back of their mind, the enemy soldier explodes a mine, the enemy soldier is crippled and maimed. They don't even give a it a thought that a village boy (it doesn't matter if it's during the war or after) will go looking for a lost lamb or a calf in the nearby fields, and will be blown up-and in the best case scenario will go through life armless, legless or eyeless. Those who plant the mines are on the other side of the battlefront; either they don't know what happens, or they have gone home before it does.

Once in Karabakh I witnessed a horrible scene. A flock of sheep had entered a minefield and been blown up. The shepherd, an old man, was crying like a child. The field was like a surrealistic canvas. The war came upon the poor man even after it was over.

In another region of Karabakh, tens of hectares of pomegranate gardens dried up before people's eyes. The land had been mined. Beyond the material loss, God-given life was vanishing.

In another place I saw a boy. He had bright blue eyes and was always silent. All my efforts to talk to him were in vain. My stupid questions, "How old are you? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Do you go to school?" went unanswered. I wanted very much to talk to him. Later, one of the villagers told me the boy was dumb. He stopped speaking when he saw his brother blown up by a mine. And the boy is still standing before my eyes speechless, as are the dried pomegranate gardens, and the shepherd crying like a child.

The land mines laid here and there, the grenades and other explosives accidentally left behind, are the war's gifts to children. Adults suffer from them too, but most of the time they fall to the children.

In spite of the efforts by humanitarian organizations, it is not possible even theoretically to get rid of all the remnants of the war. They will necessarily emerge in some places, and do their black deeds.

World War II ended a half a century ago, but newspapers still report from time to time on explosions and their victims in the areas near the former battle-fronts.

I am not such an optimistic that I believe that war will ever completely disappear. Wars have been and will be waged as long as the human race exists. But I am an optimist, and I believe that the same human race will one day rediscover the courage to renounce targetless, death-dispersing weapons.

He is courageous who, in a given time and place, looks into courageous eyes. And if he kills (unfortunately it is the reality of war), he kills taking responsibility for his guilt.

He is not courageous who, with no regard for time and place, throws bombs and lays land mines for no one and for every one, even, why not, for his own relatives and friends.

I am an optimist, and I believe that the human race will one day renounce targetless weapons. But until it does, you renounce it, you personally. And if one day you are enlisted in the army, and have the misfortune to fight in a war, be courageous, and refuse to lay land mines, to launch missiles, to throw bombs. Remember that the greatest defeat is harming the innocent.

Tigran Paskevichyan

See also: Lethal Toys: In his award winning project supported by the Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation, Yerevan-based photojournalist, German Avagyan, documents the victims of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and landmines.