There is a worldwide landmine crisis. Although many people believe that landmines are a tragic issue for only a few deeply infested places, the problem affects at least 64 countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iraq, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Northern Somalia, Vietnam, and the former Yugoslavia.
March 1-8, 2002, is Ban Landmines Week to mark the third anniversary of the Mine Ban Treaty going into force as international law. The Bush administration is currently determining new US landmine policies. If the President accepts recent Defense Department recommendations, he will abandon all efforts to join the Mine Ban Treaty.
LANDMINES - HARSH REALITY
- At least 85 million and possibly more than 100 million unexploded landmines currently lie scattered throughout at least 64 countries.
- Every week, at least 500 people worldwide are maimed or killed by landmines. The primary victims are unarmed citizens-with children making up 30-40% of the victims.
- Vast numbers of live mines leave large areas of land inaccessible, prevent refugees and displaced people from going home, keep farmers and shepherds from working their fields, and hamper humanitarian aid.
- Each month, an estimated 300 Afghans are known to step on a land mine or unexploded piece of ordnance. Ninety percent of the victims receive no medical care.
- Thirty types of land mines are buried in Afghanistan, including millions dropped by the former Soviet Union, plus a large number of US-made mines left over from the Cold War.
Sources: Landmine Survivors Network, International Committee to Ban Landmines, Physicians for Human Rights.
PART II - Articles and Questions for Discussion
Ridding the World of Land Mines
Questions for Discussion
$27 Million Pledged for De-mining
Members of the House of Representatives recently signed on to a letter to the President urging him to
eliminate land mines from the US arsenal. Please send your own fax or email to President Bush and/or
Secretary Powell, urging them to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. Also, please send a fax or email to your Senators
asking them to send letters to the President in support of the Mine Ban Treaty. Model letters to Senators and
to President Bush/Secretary Powell are shown below.
WAND would love to receive a copy of your letter. Please
fax or mail us a copy at 404 524 7593 (fax) or 464 Cherokee Avenue SE, Suite 201, Atlanta, GA 30312.
SAMPLE FAX or EMAIL TO YOUR SENATORS:
As you may know, the Bush administration is currently determining new US landmine policy. Before President Bush finalizes
Powell fax: 202 261 8577
I am dismayed to hear that the United States may be moving away from its commitment to join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
In Afghanistan, there are already 8-10 million landmines on the ground. US deployment of mines in that country, an option military
Ridding the world of land mines
As governments and nongovernmental organizations look at the many huge tasks involved in nation building in Afghanistan, three challenges loom largest and may take longest: restoring roads and irrigation systems destroyed by 23 years of war, and clearing vast stretches of the country infested with deadly land mines.
The land mine crisis also presents President Bush with the opportunity to reverse the hollow and bankrupt land mine policies of the Clinton era.
Afghanistan, where the World Bank says demining efforts so far show the overall cost will be about $500 million, is but one example of the plight of 80 land mine-contaminated countries around the world.
In Afghanistan, if fighting ends tomorrow, the deadly threats facing Afghan families, American soldiers, peacekeeping units and everyone attempting agricultural recovery will continue for decades. U.N. experts estimate 4 million to 8 million mines litter the country - a lurking subterranean terror certain to inflict fear, injury and death for years.
The carnage is already increasing. Land mine injuries have jumped from three to 10 a day the last few months, including several U.S. Marines wounded in December. Since 1991, more than 400,000 Afghans have become mine victims. From 100 to 300 Afghans each month are known to step on a land mine or unexploded pieces of ordnance.
But an estimated 50 percent of landmine casualties are never reported. No one hears about the victims who die before reaching a hospital. At present, more than 200,000 Afghans live with lost limbs and eyes. Even more tragically, about 15 percent of Afghan mine victims are children, according to the United Nations' Afghanistan Mine Action Center. Mines designed to blast shrapnel into an adult's waist explode in a child's face.
About 30 different types of mines are buried in Afghanistan, including millions dropped by air by the Soviet army, plus large numbers of U.S.-made mines left over from the Cold War. Add to those the vast numbers laid by warring Afghan factions during years of civil war and battles with the Soviet army, which estimated that 33 percent of its casualties were from mines. (Most mines in Afghanistan are Soviet made, but they also come from China, Britain, Italy, Belgium, the former Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Iran, the United States and elsewhere.)
In his inaugural address, President Bush said, "Where there is suffering, there is duty. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless. And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side." But globally, the roads to many Jerichos have become minefields.
Bush has pledged to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Land mines are weapons of mass destruction in slow motion. They have killed more people than nuclear, chemical and biological weapons combined. Tens of millions of these silent killers have been left as military litter in more than 80 countries. Mines daily threaten innocent civilians, including thousands of children. Ninety percent of the survivors of land mines do not receive medical care or rehabilitation.
The United States must share responsibility for this century-long humanitarian disaster. Between 1969 and 1990, the United States exported millions of mines, which continue to show up in the killing fields of 28 countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Angola, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon.
Recognizing this insidious terror and carnage must end, nations of the world created the 1997 Treaty to Ban Landmines, which has now been signed by 142 countries. The United States is not one of them. President Bush can reverse the deadly and profit-driven policies of the Clinton administration, which claimed that the United States used land mines "responsibly."
He could start by signing the land mine treaty and by ordering the destruction of our stockpile of 11 million mines. Even our top soldiers say they have outlived their military usefulness. Moreover, there is no such thing as "responsible" use of mines. When peace is declared, no one turns them off or removes them. They are "brainless" - cannot distinguish between civilian and soldier, ally or enemy, adult or child. And because they are small, and destroy lives one by one, their horrific consequences often go unreported.
Here lies a crucial test of U.S. compassion, courage and leadership: sign the treaty to ban land mines and urge all countries in the world to follow this lead - including the new leaders in Afghanistan.
White is co-founder and executive director of the Washington-based Landmine Survivors Network (www.landminesurvivors.org).
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
$27 Million Pledged For De-Mining
Officials from 24 nations and international organizations pledged $27.2 million--including $7 million by the U.S.--for de-mining Afghanistan, as a two-day conference on rebuilding the country came to a close Tuesday.
Although the funds were welcomed by Afghan officials, they are a fraction of the $668 million over seven years that U.N. experts say is needed to eliminate the nation's land mine and unexploded ordnance problem.
Ridding Afghanistan of these time bombs, or at least minimizing their ability to inflict damage, is an ambitious goal. By some estimates, as many as 10 million land mines and other unexploded munitions litter the Central Asian country after decades of war and instability.
An estimated 300 Afghans are killed every month by the deadly leftovers, including children scavenging for the 25 cents' worth of metal in each mine, according to the United Nations. Half of the victims die instantly or succumb to their wounds on the way to doctors, who are often several days of hard travel away, land mine experts here say. That compares with about 30 people a month killed nowadays in Cambodia, a past poster child for anti-mine campaigns, the U.N. says.
At the conference in Tokyo, officials from contributing nations and Afghanistan pressed for a fast, concerted de-mining campaign. "The need for action is great," said interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai. "Our citizens are falling victim to them daily."
Experts argue that the $668 million price tag compares favorably with the more than $700 million spent de-mining Kuwait after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the $70 million spent so far in Kosovo, the Serbian province that sparked a battle between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Yugoslavia in 1999.
"Kosovo is a postage stamp," said Richard Daniel Kelly, mine action program director with the Office of the U.N. Coordinator for Afghanistan. "It's the size of one province in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan has 31 provinces."
Money spent to de-mine the country has secondary benefits. With nearly 5,000 Afghans now working to identify and deactivate mines, the campaign ranks as the nation's largest single source of employment, U.S. and U.N. officials say. A portion of the money pledged Tuesday by the United States, which is to be routed through the HALO Trust, a nonprofit de-mining group, is expected to employ 800 more.
Torek Farhadi, an economic advisor to the interim government, said mines take a huge psychological toll on Afghans, killing people years after fighting has stopped. In addition to preventing such tragedies, mine clearing allows refugees to cross back into Afghanistan, helps put farmland back into production and gives children and adults the confidence to walk roads to schools and markets, he added.
Some of the money pledged Tuesday is expected to go to UNICEF for an intensive education campaign timed to coincide with the scheduled reopening of schools in March. The campaign will cover what mines look like, how to avoid them and how to report them to authorities.
In the last six months, about $10 million in land mine detection equipment has been stolen, vandalized or destroyed in Afghanistan, officials said. Japan will spend $15.4 million to pay for new equipment.
The U.S. has refused to sign a 1997 international accord banning land mines, arguing that the weapons are necessary in certain places such as the border between North and South Korea. But Washington is reviewing its position, with a decision expected within a few months, a senior U.S. official said. He added that the government has destroyed about 3.3 million of its own stockpiled land mines and banned the weapons' export. Karzai said Monday that his government plans to sign the accord.
The de-mining effort in Afghanistan comes amid a long-standing debate over the relative benefits of using people to defuse mines--creating jobs but putting workers at risk of injury or death--or spending scarce resources on new technology. At least 60 Afghans have been killed in de-mining operations in recent years, and several hundred have been wounded, experts say.
On the eve of the Tokyo conference, Japan weighed in with a strange-looking contraption that it said was a prototype robot capable of clearing mines. But a Japanese official at the gathering said a working model could be a decade away.
Searchers using metal-detecting devices often dig up soda cans and empty shell casings, and the problem has gotten worse as mine manufacturers use less metal and more plastic and ceramic in the devices. This has sparked research into X-ray and microwave technologies, ground-penetrating radar and a system that would turn microbes in the explosive material a luminescent color.
Deciding where to start demining in Afghanistan is a problem. The Russian government gave 350 battle plans, showing some minefields, to the Afghan government in the early 1990s, but they were lost. The Russians have now found 150 more maps that will be handed over to the U.N. de-mining authority, a senior U.N. official said. The U.S. has provided a list of 188 locations where it dropped cluster bombs, the official added.
According to U.N. estimates, more than 320 square miles of the country are riddled with mines, with nearly half that in heavily populated areas.
In some places, surveyors catalog where land mine accidents have occurred, and computers correlate the data with road, electricity and water grids. This allows planners to identify the worst dangers in the most populated areas.
"It's impossible to clear every ordnance in Afghanistan," said Donald K. Steinberg, deputy director of policy planning with the State Department. "The goal is to figure out where you're going to get the best results quickly and also where there are no land mines."
Unpopulated areas with lots of land mines may not be worth the effort.
"There are supposedly 20 million land mines in south Egypt, but no one ever goes there. So you put signs up and focus on higher priorities," said a senior U.S. official.
The Union-Tribune, January 24, 2002
By Jerry White
Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2002
By Mark Magnier
PART III - RESOURCES
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
www.icbl.org
Physicians for Human Rights
www.phrusa.orgUnited States Campaign to Ban Landmines
www.banminesusa.org
Friends Committee for National Legislation
www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/landmines_indx.htm
PART IV - Action on Landmines
SAMPLE EMAIL or FAX to PRESIDENT BUSH and SECRETARY POWELL:
this policy, please urge him to give up antipersonnel landmines from the US arsenal and to join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
Thousand of innocent civilians continue to be maimed and killed by landmines each year. Our own troops and peacekeepers
are at risk from mines in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Most NATO nations have given up this cruel, indiscriminate weapon.
It is time for our country to do the same.
Bush fax: 202 456 2461
Bush email: president@whitehouse.gov
Antipersonnel landmines maim and kill upwards of 18,000 people each year, mostly children, farmers, and other innocent
civilians. This indiscriminate weapon also renders land useless for cultivation. Most of the world's nations, including
almost all of NATO, have joined the Mine Ban Treaty. It is time for the US to do so as well.
leaders say is possible, would only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and put US ground troops at risk. Please lead our country in
giving up this dishonorable weapon in Afghanistan and everywhere else.
Union-Tribune, 24 Jan 2002
By Jerry White
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Press Release
Los Angeles Times, 23 Jan 2002
By Mark Magnier
NOTE: FAIR USE NOTICE: This site
contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material
available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.
We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided
for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research
and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use',
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
