Landmines, the Gifts that Keep on Taking

   

They are everywhere. A global menace. “Landmines, as Major General Michael Beary of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon aptly describes them, are an ‘insidious menace’ that disproportionately kill civilians. In recent decades, one of the most successful international agreements in recent decades has resulted in significant steps towards their elimination in warfare. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, better known as the Ottawa Treaty, was signed in 1997. The treaty aims for the complete elimination of anti-personnel landmines in warfare and has to a significant extent accomplished that aim. To date, 162 countries have signed onto the treaty, signaling their actionable intention to never develop, produce, use, stockpile, transfer, or retain landmines. The United States, notably, has not acceded to the treaty.” Will Schrepferman writing for the December 30, 2019, Harvard International Review.

Old “legacy” mines, leftover from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq and just about every other modern military conflict, kill an average of 11 innocents a day. They sit in fields, forests, farms and even urban centers, unfound, lurking, waiting for an inadvertent movement to set them off… long after the peace treaties, armistices, ceasefires have passed, the fighting ended. For those not killed, blasts from these old unexploded and very indiscriminate killers can maim, disfigure and destroy lives.

The danger is rising once again in Ukraine as the war brings a vast array of landmines by both sides, neither a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty. Russia deploys these devices particularly where its forces have been pushed out of conquered territory to punish the Ukrainian victors… and weapon-impaired Ukraine has relied on these devices to take out Russian tanks and defend its home territory from Russian advances. But long after the conflict, these mines and IEDs will keep killing and maiming. John Leicester and Yuras Karmanau, writing for the June 17th Associated Press, detail this current and prospective carnage:

“Russia’s war in Ukraine is spreading a deadly litter of mines, bombs and other explosives that are killing civilians, disrupting planting and complicating the rebuilding of homes and villages, and that will continue taking lives and limbs long after the fighting stops… Often, blast victims are farmers and other rural workers with little choice but to use mined roads and plow mined fields, in a country relied on for grain and other crops that feed the world…

“Ukraine is now one of the most mined countries in Europe. The east of the country, fought over with Russia-backed separatists since 2014, was already contaminated by mines even before the Feb. 24 invasion multiplied the scale and complexity of the dangers both there and elsewhere… Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said last week that 115,000 square miles — the size of Arizona — need to be cleared. The ongoing fighting will only expand the area.

“The war’s deadly remnants will ‘continue to be a hidden threat for many years to come,’ said Mairi Cunningham, who leads clearance efforts in Ukraine for the Halo Trust, a de-mining nongovernmental organization that got $4 million in U.S. government funding in May for its work in the country.

“There’s no complete government count of mine deaths since the invasion, but every week authorities have reported cases of civilians killed and wounded. Cunningham said her group has counted 52 civilian deaths and 65 injuries since February and ‘that’s likely underreported.’ The majority were from antitank mines in agricultural areas, she said… On a mobile app called De-mining Ukraine that officials launched last month, people can send photos, video and the geolocation of explosive objects they come across, for subsequent removal. The app got more than 2,000 tips in its first week.”

It’s not just the obvious military targets and real estate that have landmine issues. For example, Russia has planted landmines simply on agricultural land to decimate Ukraine’s vast and massively fertile fields of grain, among the most productive on earth. Further threatening global food supplies – Ukraine is a mainstay of food production for much of the third world – Ukrainian farmers venturing out to till their fields are all too frequently blown to smithereens.

“Even with the Russian soldiers gone, danger lurks amid the surrounding poppy meadows, fields and woodlands… Mines are still being laid on the battlefields, now concentrated to the east and south, where Russia has focused its offensive since its soldiers withdrew from around Kyiv and the north, badly bloodied… A Ukrainian unit that buried TM-62 mines on a forest track in the eastern Donbas region this week, in holes scooped out with spades, told the Associated Press that the aim was to prevent Russian troops from advancing toward their trenches… Russian booby-trapping has sometimes had no clear military rhyme or reason, Ukrainian officials say. In towns around Kyiv, explosive experts found devices in unpredictable places.” AP

Perhaps in the future, “smart” mines can save lives. “Smart” antitank mines should tell the difference between a heavy tank and a passing individual. Ideally, they can be turned off remotely, but their explosive power still remains underground, hidden. And their “smartness” is hardly reliable as yet. According to the he Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, "smart" landmines have failed to work and been rejected by all NATO allies of the United States. The number of innocents killed by landmines, during and after a conflict, is always a vast multiple of military casualties.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the vestiges of war-caused death, maiming and destruction often last many decades past the conflicts that planted these indiscriminate killers.