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DAVID ISENBERG: The brutal land mine count
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(September 9, 1997 4:21 p.m. EDT) -- The death of Diana, Princess of Wales,
focused world attention on the campaign to ban antipersonnel land mines, or
APLs, a cause which she helped publicize.
Ironically, the Clinton administration, which expressed its admiration for
her efforts, is undermining her goal of a mine-free world by seeking
exceptions to a draft treaty, being finalized in Oslo this week and next,
which would ban the production, stockpiling, use, and export of such mines.
There are more than 100 million antipersonnel mines scattered around the
world with another 100 million in military inventories worldwide.
Approximately 26,000 people a year are killed or maimed by mines, most of
them civilians, and most of them women and children.
That works out to a death or injury about every 22 minutes.
The problem is that U.S. officials continue to legitimize land mines as
acceptable weapons when the reality is that they contravene international
humanitarian law governing the conduct of hostilities.
Mines are utterly indiscriminate weapons that do not distinguish between
civilians and combatants.
The use of so-called "smart" mines, those that self-destruct after a
certain period of time, will not change that reality.
Earlier this year the U.S. declared it would work in the U.N. Conference on
Disarmament (CD) for a worldwide ban on mines.
As the CD is notoriously slow, works by consensus, and includes states
opposed to a comprehensive ban, this approach ensures nothing will be
accomplished.
President Clinton ignored a more promising alternative, a Canadian-led
initiative known as the Ottawa process.
Last October the Canadian government sponsored a conference for those
nations interested in achieving a comprehensive ban on APL.
Canada declared it would hold a treaty-signing conference for a total ban
by the end of this year.
At the end of the conference over 50 countries declared their support.
Currently 107 countries have declared their support.
Although Mr. Clinton has called for the eventual elimination of APL, his
actions have not lived up to his rhetoric.
For example, last year Clinton released the administration's land
mine-policy that continued the status quo.
The president ordered the Pentagon to stop using dumb
(non-self-destruct/self-neutralizing) mines by 1999, except along the
Korean Demilitarized Zone and in troop training, but reserved the right to
use smart mines.
Furthermore, the U.S. continues to insist exceptions should be made for its
self-destruct ("smart") and non-self-destruct ("dumb") mines in the Korean
DMZ.
On Aug. 18, in a transparent attempt to spin the issue, the administration
announced that it would participate in Ottawa.
But it has not changed its stance on trying to carve out exemptions for its
current land mine policy.
Thus, it went to Oslo knowing that its policy is unacceptable.
Clinton has been reluctant to change policy for fear of antagonizing the
Pentagon.
But even American military officials acknowledge that land mines are
replaceable.
A report released by the Pentagon in May stated that "effective
alternatives should be feasible by integrating various elements of existing
and near-future technologies, combat forces, and military doctrine."
For example, in Korea, mines could be replaced by increased use of such
weapons as the Multiple Launch Rocket System, or greater use of new
technologies, whose ability to precisely locate targets lessens the need to
rely on indiscriminate weapons such as land mines.
The argument that mines are needed for their battlefield utility is
increasingly questioned.
Actual combat experience shows that antipersonnel mines are likely to
inflict a deadly "blow-back effect" - harming the very soldiers they are
meant to defend.
In Vietnam, the U.S. Army estimated that 90 percent of the mines and booby
traps used against its troops were either U.S.-made or made with U.S. parts.
A third of all U.S. casualties in Vietnam were caused by mines and booby
traps.
The president should take that as his cue.
It is an unpleasant fact that the effort to locate and destroy existing
land mines will take us well into the 21st century.
At the very least he should try to keep the problem from getting worse.
He can do so by supporting a worldwide ban, with no exceptions, on the
production, development, export, and use of mines by the time we enter the
next millennium.
(David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the Center for Defense
Information in Washington.)
Copyright 1997 Nando.net
Copyright 1997 The Christian Science Monitor
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