The Arab Council Supports Landmine Removal in Northeast Syria

This summer in the northeast Syrian town of Qamishle, the Arab Council for Regional Integration organized a 35-hour remote learning course whereby a Druze Israeli mechatronics instructor helped Syrian engineering students address two urgent local needs: widespread landmines and low-yield agriculture. To address the first, the students learned to use low-cost hardware and open source code to build a roving metal detector and program it to scan for landmines. To address the second, they then applied similar tools to create a “smart agriculture” device that regulates the temperature and humidity of greenhouses. 

This video documents the project and its outcomes. Significantly, this cross-border civil engagement did not conform to conventional notions of Israel as an exporter of hi-tech innovations to the region. The knowledge Thabit transferred was decidedly low-tech, and the low-end hardware which the Syrians purchased for the project did not even originate in Israel. The Syrians chose to adopt the project for the simple and practical reason that it offered a better value and greater prospects for success than any alternative they could find. By contrast, some larger and loftier efforts at Israeli-Arab knowledge and technology transfer have missed their mark. In these cases, it was not for lack of impressive technology, but rather for missing knowledge of a given Arab country’s particular needs and ineffective communication between the Israeli and Arab participants. The Arab Council’s Syrian pilot project highlights that it is possible to overcome these obstacles, and that more is possible.