Feature
Landmines: time to stand firm
Anti-personnel landmines have now become a significant cause of disability and premature mortality in many parts of the world. Yet they are still regarded as a legitimate weapon by many governments, including our own. Tim Carstairs calls for faster progress towards a complete ban
In Cambodia today there are three major risks to public health: polio, malaria and landmines. There are about 36,000 registered landmine-amputees in the country. About the same number have been killed by mines or have died of their injuries. The majority of them were civilians when the accidents took place. World-wide, landmines have killed or injured an estimated 1 million people over the last 20 years and the figures are growing by about 26,000 each year. Most are civilians, including many women and children. Some 35 countries are seriously affected, including Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Eritrea, Georgia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Laos, Somalia, Sri Lanka... the list goes on. Another 30 or so countries have lesser problems with uncleared mines, some dating back to World War II.
Reports from Chechnya, one of the most recent conflicts to break out, suggest that Grozny’s hospitals treat up to 40 civilians injured by mine accidents every month. Bosnia is thought to be covered with several million landmines. However the war there finishes for the armies, it will continue a long time for civilians.
Landmines have been used in practically every conflict since the Second World War and represent to many people in developing countries today one of the greatest threats to their peace, security and self-sufficiency.
Mines not only indiscriminately kill or horribly injure, they deny land. In Cambodia, hundreds of thousands of hectares of good farming land are mined. This year, the country will import several hundred thousand tons of rice. Cities swollen with refugees in Angola are literally ringed with massive minefields. Inhabitants have the choice of waiting for air-freighted aid or braving the minefields in search of food. Landmines deny land, and they do so for ever, or until the mines are cleared by experts or, as Cambodian mine-clearers have put it, ‘an arm and a leg at a time’.
In this way, wars go on and on beyond the signing of international agreements and peace treaties. Landmines are a man-made disaster of unprecedented proportions. These small, autonomous and uncontrolled devices have outlasted their creators and are now even killing the grandchildren of those who laid them.
“Landmines deny land until they are cleared, as Cambodian mine- clearers put it, ‘an arm and a leg at a time’”
A movement has been growing since 1992 to call a halt to the production, stockpiling, trade and use of anti-personnel mines. Sponsored initially by non-governmental organisations, the campaign to ban anti-personnel mines now has support from the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UNICEF and other UN agencies, and from an increasing number of states and politicians. The campaign’s main argument is that the already limited usefulness of anti-personnel mines weighs little in the face of the human and economic devastation wrought by these weapons on civilian society.
A military force will often lay a minefield to hamper an enemy’s progress or to guide him into a more suitable ‘killing zone’, much as a soldier would use natural obstacles to shape a battlefield to his advantage. A weaker force might use them as ‘eternal sentinels’ to multiply its defences of wide perimeters. Landmines are also used as part of ‘scorched earth’ campaigns: if a force cannot or does not wish to hold a territory, it will mine it so that the enemy cannot use it either.
This is military doctrine, it is tactics and strategy. It is about control and denial of territory. It all looks fine on the war-gaming tables of Whitehall or wherever. It can even be made to sound reasonable coming from a politician or from an arms trade representative. ‘We have to use this and that weapon to protect our boys’, or as one commentator recently put it: ‘There would be a public outcry if a British outpost were overrun because our soldiers were not allowed to use landmines.’
But is this true? Military doctrine recognises that minefields will not stop an enemy, they will only delay him. That is why all minefields must be observed and covered by fire. If there were a public outcry after a British position had been overrun, it might well be because they had run out of other support.
The Iraqis are said to have used 5 million mines along the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia to stop coalition forces in the Gulf war. My own recollection is that the coalition forces went round, over and through this gigantic minefield within days. Retired US Marine Corps Commander General Gray seems to confirm this in Jane’s Intelligence Review of September 1994: ‘[I am] not aware of any operational advantage from [the] broad deployment of mines [and] know of no situation in the Korean war, nor in the five years I served in South East Asia, nor in Panama, nor in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, where our use of mine warfare truly channelled the enemy into a destructive pattern.’ In a submission to the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, General Sir High Beach reported that ‘none of these uses of anti-personnel mines is of such military significance to justify framing exceptions from what would otherwise be an extremely simple prohibition’.
The British government still regards anti-personnel mines as important defensive weapons. It also claims that Britain’s allies share its point of view, and believes that a complete ban on anti-personnel mines would not achieve wide international support. This appears to contradict the facts: the US Senate has agreed to ban the use of anti-personnel mines by US forces for a trial one-year period after a three-year grace period; Austria has renounced the use of anti-personnel mines; Belgium and Norway have passed legislation completely banning the weapons; Holland is destroying its stocks; France has banned production and is starting to destroy its stockpiles; Ireland, Sweden and the Italian Parliament have all called for a total ban. To which allies is the government referring?
So why does the use of landmines persist? Could it be that the military is frightened of setting a precedent that might be used by other campaigners? Are there people out there who cannot face admitting that the conclusions of their war games might be wrong? Could it simply be that governments are clinging to an absurd and anachronistic policy based on incomplete information and assessments that do not take into account the human and social costs of their choices? Or could it be that industrial and financial forces are such that they simply do not care enough to take a stand?
Tim Carstairs is co-ordinator of the UK working group on landminesSharif Mohammed, 24, of Penjwin, Kurdistan, suffered multiple injuries to his upper body, groin and both arms and legs. He was walking with a friend in an area they thought was safe. His friend hit a trip wire and was ‘torn to pieces’.
Sabah Amin, 34, also from Penjwin had his left foot amputated. He stepped on a pressure mine on the road verge as he was walking home.
Mohammed Aziz Faraj, 30, suffered multiple fractures of both legs and lost his left eye. A melon farmer, he tripped a wire in tall undergrowth. He did not known the field was mined.
From Hidden Death, Landmines in Iraqi Kurdistan, Human Rights Watch
Mine types
There are basically two types of landmine: anti-tank and anti-personnel. There are three main variations of anti-personnel mine.
- Surface-laid or buried blast mines injure through the effect of the blast that will destroy part or all of the foot and leg and drive dirt, pieces of bone and bits of clothing high up into the limb making surgical amputation almost a foregone conclusion.
- Fragmentation mines are usually placed above the ground and upon activation by means of a trip wire hurl small, high-velocity fragments up to 30 metres all around. Bounding fragmentation mines work on the same principle but explode at waist height after an initial controlled explosion sends the main charge a metre or so into the air. Such mines can be lethal up to 50 metres and more.
- Directional mines are fragmentation mines whose explosion is controlled to fire often pre-designed fragments in a given direction
International law
The use of landmines is regulated by a UN treaty which was under review this autumn. The international review conference was not expected to ban anti-personnel mines but was expected to extend the current treaty to cover non-international conflicts, to make armed forces responsible for protecting civilians from the minefields they lay and for clearing them afterwards.
However, the conference was likely to condone a newer threat: self-destruct mines which are being hailed by some states including Britain as being ‘less dangerous to civilians’. These ‘high-tech’ mines will be as indiscriminate and as lethal as their ‘low-tech’ counterparts until they self-destruct. There is also a great deal of disagreement about whether they actually work as well as is claimed. The introduction of such a new ‘acceptable’ face for landmines may even lead to an escalation in their use.
But in the event, it was the conference itself which self-destructed. Delegates from about 50 countries were unable to agree on measures to control the use of landmines and have been forced to reconvene in January and again in April 1996 in Geneva. If anything, that suggests that the growing campaign to ban anti-personnel mines is putting enormous pressure on governments to prove their own claims, that control is more practical and enforceable than a ban.
What you can do
The UK working group on landmines is a coalition of 45 aid and campaigning agencies, working together to raise public awareness of the landmines issues and to advocate a total ban on anti-personnel mines. The group can be contacted for further information so that individuals and groups can educate themselves, organise events, write to their MPs and to the Ministers concerned. Your voice counts, whether on the working group’s petition to Parliament or as a multiplier for information to others. Donations to the group’s work are greatly appreciated.
The UK Working Group on Landmines, 601 Holloway Road, London N19 4DJ. Tel: 01296-632 056.
