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Landmines Still A Global Threat
By Dina Rashed
14/03/2001
This month, March, marks two years since the Mine Ban Treaty, a result of a 1997 convention in Ottawa, went into force. The threat of landmines, nevertheless, still perseveres.
Washington, D.C.'s mayor, Anthony Williams, declared the week of March 5, 2001, to be "Ban Landmines Week," and experts, Noble Prize laureates and advocates from over forty U.S. states flooded the U.S. capitol to share in weeklong seminars and sessions, hoping that their efforts would influence the American administration to join countries worldwide in banning these explosive devices.
A landmine is an explosive charge that is deployed just under the land's surface. There are two types: anti-personnel (AP), designed to maim or kill enemy troops advancing over a concentration of mines (known as a minefield); or anti-tank (AT), larger mines designed to damage or destroy armored tanks. These are usually placed on roads.
They can be operated by a pressure sensor or sometimes, in AT mines, electromagnetic sensors. Ironically, landmines can be purchased for as little as $3.00, but the safe removal of any one unit can cost as much as $3,000.
Despite a significant decrease in the implantation of landmines in the last two years (in the 1970s, 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, mines were laid in the millions annually), according to U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) estimates, 110 to 180 million landmines are still active underground, causing nearly 26,000 injuries a year.
In 1999, Russian forces laid 50,000 landmine units in Chechnya, and similar implantation by Yugoslav forces occurred in Kosova. Israel is also still actively using them in South Lebanon as well.
Every country in the western hemisphere except the U.S. and Cuba; every member of the European Union except Finland; every member of NATO except the U.S. and Turkey; 41 of 48 African countries; and key Asian nations such as Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia, have signed the treaty.
Several of the most heavily mine-affected countries are states that are parties to the treaty - Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, and Croatia. Several others are signatories - Angola, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Major past landmine producers and exporters are also parties to the treaty, including Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
All in all, fifty-six countries have not yet signed the treaty. This includes three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Russia, and China. And also includes most of the Middle East, most of the former Soviet republics, and many Asian nations.
Major producers such as the U.S., Russia, China, India and Pakistan are not a party to the treaty. According to a report by
Land Mine Monitor, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Eritrea are perhaps the most heavily mine-affected countries that have not signed. In Afghanistan and Somalia, there is no internationally recognized government capable of signing. However, the Taliban in Afghanistan have unilaterally declared a comprehensive ban on the devices.
The treaty became part of binding international law when it acquired forty ratifications from the state signatories in September 1998.
One of the challenges facing the international effort to ban landmines is to reach universality, but an even greater challenge is that some of the states that have signed (but not ratified) the treaty are still using landmines. Angola is one of those countries, according to the
Land Mine Monitor Report 2000. In the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), all three parties involved in the fighting (Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) deny responsibility for planting mines in DRC.
The United States' Position
The U.S. is coming under heat for not yet joining the treaty; in part, because of its status as a major producer/exporter of landmines, but primarily because it is the sole existing super power preaching for conflict resolution and world peace. U.S. officials have expressed a desire for their government to join the treaty by 2006, pending Pentagon officials finding an alternative to AP mines.
Information gathered by Human Rights Watch (HRW), released the first week of March, showed the U.S. to be one of just sixteen anti-personnel mine-producing countries left in the world, possessing the third largest stockpile of anti-personnel mines in the world, totaling more than 11 million (including 1.2 million of long-lasting "dumb" mines and 1.7 million AP's in twelve foreign countries, five of which are party to the Mine Ban Treaty). Between 1969 and 1992, it exported over 5.6 million AP mines to thirty-eight countries.
An HRW fact sheet also indicates that 19% of total U.S. mine action funding goes to Pentagon de-mining technology research and development programs. At the same time, 80% of the total $25 million budget for humanitarian de-mining is spent on travel costs and U.S. military personnel expenses.
Despite his initial inclination to work towards a worldwide elimination of all landmines as stated in his 1994 address to the United Nations General Assembly, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, in 1997, was dissuaded from signing on with other signatories to the treaty by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the regional commander-in-chief to the Ottawa Convention.
They argued that the treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of AP's, would deny American troops deployed throughout the world a tool that they and their military commanders consider absolutely essential to force protection.
Efforts led by Representative Lane Evans (D-IL) and Jack Quinn (R-NY) to appeal to Clinton to announce a permanent ban, or at least a moratorium on the production of AP's and their components, before his leaving office, failed to change official U.S. policy.
The fact that the U.S. is the major donor of humanitarian funds for affected countries did somewhat relieve the guilt of the military officials. Nevertheless, U.S. military personnel are prevented by law from entering minefields or physically participating in the mine removal process during humanitarian missions. What they do is give military and technical training to nationals in these countries to safely de-mine their own implanted fields.
Advocates of the landmine ban hope that current U.S. President George W. Bush's inclination to reduce the number of American military troops involved in regional conflicts around the globe may persuade him to reconsider the country's position.
It is unclear whether there is solid ground for hoping for this because of the special historical relationship between the military establishment and the Republican Party, and Bush's frequently expressed desire to strengthen the military's technical capabilities.
Landmines Affect Not Only Humans: The Impact On The Environment
In addition to human damage, the environment has also been hazardously affected by the implantation of landmine explosives. Some animal species have become endangered because of the use of landmines in armed conflicts within the jungles of Africa and Asia. Elephants are considered one of the animal casualties to have suffered most in jungle battlefields along the border between Thailand and Myanmar, the former Burma.
One-third of the potential agricultural land in Libya is considered unsafe because of landmines and unexploded ordnance dating back to World War II, according to some experts. One report cited that mines and other ordnance in Libya between 1940 and 1980 killed 125,000 camels, sheep, goats, and cattle.
Mines are also killing camels in western China, tigers in Cambodia, water buffalo in Vietnam, elephants in Sri Lanka and gazelles in Libya. Snow leopards have reportedly been killed in Afghanistan; bears, deer and foxes in Croatia; and blue sheep and musk deer in Kashmir.
Unfortunately, the use of these mines is not confined to war; hunters also use them in traps by tying small animals to nearby stakes and waiting for tiger or boars to detonate them. In other cases, hunters plant mines and then drive herds into the minefield. In addition, land mines leak toxic chemicals into the ground over the years, poisoning the soil and nearby waterways and threatening the lives of fish, snakes and other animals.
Civilians, including children, have been major victims in rural villages all over the world - farmers flocking their herds or looking for water sources cross over unlabeled minefields, leading to the loss of human and animal life or limb injuries.
In areas of conflict within some underdeveloped countries, the absence of clear maps marking the location of minefields poses yet another challenge that the international effort must deal with.
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