They are trash, the debris of war, like burned-out tanks and bombed-out buildings. But long after peace treaties are signed and soldiers go home, land mines go on killing.
Bosnia may provide the latest example. There are an estimated 6 million anti-armor and anti-personnel mines there, only 1 million of which are mapped, according to the United Nations. UN peacekeepers already have suffered 100 casualties from mines in Bosnia.
Killing or maiming 70 people a day worldwide–26,000 each year–land mines are especially devastating some of the world’s poorest countries, according to the State Department and humanitarian groups. And with 110 million mines still buried in more than 60 countries, an international outcry has risen and is echoing in the halls of Congress.
Led by Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.), Congress is taking the extraordinary step of ordering the Pentagon to unilaterally disarm itself of anti-personnel mines, devices that in one form or another have been in the U.S. arsenal since at least the Civil War.
The House and Senate approved a provision in a foreign operations bill that would give the Pentagon three years to learn to fight without anti-personnel mines.
A one-year moratorium, which later could be extended, then would be placed on the use of anti-personnel mines by American forces, except along international borders or in clearly marked fields.
“The U.S. government ought to set a moral example, to lead the world to see the menace of land mines in a clear light,” said Evans, who pushed the proposal in the House while Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) worked the Senate.
No one is blaming the U.S. military for what the State Department dubbed “the global land mine crisis.” American forces routinely use “smart mines” that self-destruct or turn themselves off after a month or so in the ground. When they do use long-life mines in the field, such as the claymore, the mines are typically removed as the soldiers withdraw.
However, Evans and Leahy say that by disarming its military, America sets an example and can prod other countries to follow suit.
Evans and Leahy used a similar strategy three years ago when they pushed for a moratorium on the U.S. export of mines. Two dozen nations have since followed the U.S. lead in banning or restricting land mine exports. The most recent, France, went further this fall when it announced that it also would stop making mines and destroy those already stockpiled.
Though launched by liberal Democrats, the ban gained new authority on Capitol Hill when pro-defense Democrats, like Virginia Sen. Charles S. Robb, and 25 Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), backed it.
“In Vietnam I had a number of my men killed or wounded by various types of mines or booby traps,” said Robb, who had led a Marine platoon. “I have visited around the world, in combat areas, literally tens of thousands of amputees who were victims of mines and lots of those folks are just children, children who were playing.”
Ban proponents say they are singling out the anti-personnel mine because, unlike other implements of war, it keeps killing long after the fighting ends. In Denmark, some areas are still unusable because of mines planted there during World War II.
Many of the 200-plus types of anti-personnel mines manufactured around the world are designed to maim rather than kill because a severely wounded soldier is a bigger drain on enemy logistics and medical resources than is a dead soldier. Those same mines, ban proponents argue, are transforming farmers in developing countries into financial and emotional drains on their families and communities.
Still, the Pentagon is fighting to keep the mines.
The Army does not want to give up a weapon on which its field commanders have long relied. Anti-personnel mines are the perfect weapon for defending battlefield positions, protecting economic assets such as power plants, slowing enemy advances or detouring enemy troops into “killing zones.”
Worried about the effect on the Army, Senate Armed Services Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a senior member of that panel, plotted with House Republicans to kill the ban. They intended to place a provision in the defense authorization bill giving the Pentagon veto power over the moratorium. However, Warner said, he dropped that plan after being lobbied by Leahy.
“Let him have his shot at it,” Warner said.
One remaining obstacle is the difficulty congressional leaders have had getting the foreign operations bill to the White House. The House and Senate approved the bill in early November, but remain divided over a separate abortion amendment, preventing the bill from moving forward.
Momentum toward a land mine ban has been building since a year ago, when President Clinton called for the eventual elimination of land mines. Three months later, the United Nations approved a U.S. resolution urging action. Last summer, 280 members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Chicago issued a statement singling out land mines as an indiscriminate killer whose production should cease.
Meanwhile, hundreds of humanitarian groups have spent months–and in some cases years–cataloging land mine atrocities and lobbying for a worldwide ban on the manufacture and use of land mines.
But this fall, the push for a ban fizzled when 42 nations at a UN-sponsored conference on conventional weapons failed to reach agreement.
“I don’t think there were two minutes of serious discussion . . . on a total ban on land mines,” said Stephen Goose, program director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Project and a delegate to the Vienna meeting.
Contrary to Clinton’s call for the elimination of mines, many anti-mine groups say, the administration is actually perpetuating the use of mines by pushing for expanded use of “smart mines” rather than backing a total ban.
“There is no technological solution” to the mine problem, Goose said. “A self-destructing or self-deactivating mine is still an indiscriminate mine. It will still deny the fields to the farmer.”
Evans said he hopes Congress’s action will redirect the administration.
“The president is far too cautious,” Evans said. “We’re encouraging them to be bolder, to demonstrate leadership in encouraging other countries” to give up mines altogether.
But Robert Sherman, of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, defended the administration’s push for advanced mines and other measures short of a ban, including requiring manufacturers to put at least eight grams of metal into each plastic mine so that they can be more easily detected. Such steps are a much more realistic way to protect civilians, he said.
“We know there will not be a total ban in 1996 or 1997 or whenever,” Sherman said. “If mines are your concern, you say this is bad. If people are your concern, you say this is good.”
Anti-mine advocates argue that “smart mines” often fail to self-destruct, compounding–rather than solving–what is already a daunting problem globally: detection and removal of mines.
Some anti-personnel mines sell for as little as $2 to $3 and hundreds of them can be planted in seconds by special artillery or trucks. In contrast, it takes 100 times longer to remove a mine at a cost of up to $1,000 per mine. And that’s if the mine can be found.
Many modern mines are as small as a can of shoe polish and made of plastic. Their only metal part is the size of a thumbtack, making detection by the 1940s-style minesweepers, still in use today, nearly impossible.
Also, for every mine removed, 20 more are planted. In 1993, the UN estimated that 100,000 land mines were found and removed at a cost of $70 million. During that time, 2 million more mines were laid. Even if no more mines were planted after today, experts said, it would take decades and at least $33 billion to clear those still in the ground.
The State Department and the Vietnam Veterans of America, in separate studies, found that mines left behind after wars have taken a devastating toll on civilians. Once fertile fields are now too dangerous to plow. Cattle are killed or maimed. Roads and major utilities hampered by mines make producing and shipping goods difficult.
“Without a clear statement by the U.S. that demonstrates that we are opposed to their use, other nations will continue to sell and deploy them,” Evans said. “This legislation, like the moratorium on exports, calls a `time out’ and puts us in the leadership position to challenge other nations to work with us and solve this global crisis.”
