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Laying Landmines to Rest?
IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action
(with special focus on the 2004 Nairobi Summit of a Mine Free World)
History of landmines
Over 340 different mines are currently being found by demining groups all over the world. Each mine is designed to kill and main humans- soldiers or civilians
Credit: ICRC
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Today it is estimated that over fifty countries have, at some time, been involved in the production of approximately 340 different types of anti-personnel landmines (APMs). They are easy to deploy and cost as little as $3 to produce. Their utility allows them to be laid virtually anywhere - which combined with their relatively small size, and in some cases low metallic content, makes them difficult to locate and remove.
Some military historians claim the massive growth in design and use of APMs originated from efforts to inhibit the removal of anti-tank mines in World War II, but the true origins of landmines are found in the invention of gunpowder in China and the advent of improvised explosive devices in warfare. The military response to the easy detection and removal of anti-tank mines was to create APM, which eventually became weapons in their own right. Many countries' doctrines call for careful mapping and marking of minefields, and clearance upon completion of the mission. However, military organisations have often failed to remove their mines.
Pre- 20th Century World wars
The first improvised precursors of landmines were used in the 15th century at the battle of Agincourt in France. The term, 'mine', originated from the tactic of tunneling underground close to one's enemy defenses and packing the tunnel with explosives in order to detonate the gunpowder mix from a safe distance. The use of mines continued in battle throughout the world in various ways through the centuries up to the American Civil War in the 19th century, when explosive devices were developed resembling the modern APM. According to Dave McCracken, who authored The Landmine Action Smart Book, "Explosive mines activated by pressure, designed by Brig Gen J. Bains of the Confederate Army, made their first recorded operational appearance in the American Civil War."
Subsequently, one of the earliest known casualties of a landmine was a Union soldier killed in 1862 by a Confederate landmine during the Civil War. A century later in the 1960s, five live-Confederate landmines were discovered in Alabama, USA.
Landmines were employed on a relatively small scale in some 19th century colonial campaigns and during the Russo-Japanese War (1902-1906), but did not become a weapon used in significant numbers until late in the World War I.
The Two World Wars
The anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines were developed as tactical, defensive weapons intended to protect troops, military bases and key installations. They were also used to delay the advance of enemy troops to deny them access to certain areas and resources and to burden them with soldiers injured by landmines. In some instances, mines were laid to maximize the demoralizing psychological effect on troops through the use of 'nuisance minefields'. Soldiers during World War I and World War II operated in a climate of fear (of mines) and invested valuable time and energy in clearing suspected mine areas.
Mines have been integral to military operations since World War I. Anti-vehicle (anti-tank) mines were designed and deployed for protection against the newly invented tanks and, in turn, APMs were used to protect the anti-vehicle mines from destruction by opposing infantry units. Mines from the World War I era still turn up in different parts of Europe today.
During World War II (1939 - 1945), anti-personnel and anti-tank mines were employed in large quantities throughout battle theatres in dozens of countries. APMs were used extensively in their own right and to deter the disarming of anti-tank mines. One of the most effective APMs during this time was the German-made "bouncing betty", which was designed to jump from the ground to hip-height when activated and to propel hundreds of steel fragments within a wide range.
Significant quantities of mines that were laid in some former European and Far East war zones remain a menace to this day and millions of still-lethal mines left from World War II are strewn across the North African desert.
Military historians estimate that during World War II, more than 300 million anti-tank mines, filled with powerful, lightweight trinitrotoluene (TNT), were deployed by all warring parties. Apart from those that were detonated and some that were cleared after the war, hundreds of thousands remain abandoned - some live, some destroyed by time and corrosion.
The quantities of abandoned remnants of war were of such high quantity in France, for example, that in 1945 the French used 49,000 German POWs (prisoners of war), as well as French civilians and military personnel, in what was one the earliest post-war efforts to methodically and comprehensively clear landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Post World Wars
After World War II, advances in weapons technology accelerated rapidly. In the 1960s, an APM was developed that could be delivered by air and automatically activated as it hit the ground. These models, commonly called 'scatterables', made it possible to rapidly deploy large numbers of mines, rather than manually planting each mine by hand. Increasingly, scatterables and hand-deployed mines were used against civilian populations - to terrorize communities, to displace entire villages, to render fertile agricultural land unusable and to destroy national infrastructures like roads, bridges, and water sources.
Scatterables were first introduced by the United States during the Vietnam War. Nearly one-third of all U.S. casualties during the war were due to landmines deployed by U.S. troops themselves as soldiers found themselves retreating through unmarked minefields of their own weapons. The next generation of scatterables included the "butterfly" mine, which was extensively used by the Soviet Union during the conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The traditional rule of mapping and marking all minefields became increasingly disregarded after World War II. Mass-produced mines by the US, China and the Soviet Union, amongst others, were cheap, effective, and light. Not only during the Cold War era were they readily available during the proliferation of low-intensity conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were easy to manufacture or procure locally. In less developed areas of the world, landmines became the weapon of choice for many government troops, paramilitaries and guerilla forces.
In recent decades, new technologies have transformed the improvised "dumb" landmine, traditionally used for defensive purposes, into a sophisticated "smart" mine that is now used largely for offensive purposes. During the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense began replacing persistent ("dumb") anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines in its stockpiles with self-destructing and self-deactivating ("smart") landmines to prevent enemy use of U.S. landmines against U.S. forces and to minimize the threat to non-combatants. Technologically advanced mines include remote delivery systems and mines with low-metal content, electronic sensors and self-destruct mechanisms. Remote delivery systems deploy large numbers of scatterable mines from the air, which automatically activate as they hit the ground. Plastic mines contain very little metal content. They are extremely durable and they are virtually impossible to detect with traditional metal detectors.
While mines with electronic sensors are intended to differentiate between animals and humans, and are often capable of identifying the numbers of passersby before they explode, they do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians, and between children and adults. Accordingly, even these "smart" mines are indiscriminate weapons of war. Problematically, technological advances have made landmines more dangerous for civilians and more difficult, if not impossible, to detect. Greater numbers of mines can be laid more rapidly than ever before and landmines have become more sophisticated while mine-clearance technologies have developed very slowly. Manual clearance with prodders and metal detectors continue to be the most effective and reliable method for clearing mines.
The Arms Project of Human Rights Watch has compiled a list of nearly 100 companies in 54 countries - both in the developed and developing world - that have manufactured more than 340 models of APMs, or their components, at a production rate of five to ten million mines a year. Conventional APMs cost between $3 and $27 to produce, while technologically advanced mines, like scatterables and self-destructing mines, can cost up to 50 times more. Most warring parties, including rebels, paramilitary groups and governments in low-intensity conflicts, prefer to use traditional "dumb" mines because they are cheaper, simpler to use, and easier to manufacture.
The end of landmine history?
The production and trade of APMs has often been a secretive business. Governments and companies are reluctant to disclose information about their involvement in the production or sale of mines. The good news, however, is that the Mine Ban Treaty has had clear tangible effects on the production and trade of landmines, even among countries that have not yet become party to the treaty. By 2001, only 14 of the original 54 mine-producing countries continued to manufacture APMs or their components, and all traditional exporters of mines, except Iraq, have officially ceased their activities.
Depending on the success of the Mines Ban Treaty the boon of landmines technology, design and use may have passed its peak and history will record the 1990s as the last decade of serious use of APMs. With the effective implementation and universalisation of the Mine Ban Treaty, the APM may be an item of historical interest only and found in military and medical museums.
[This brief history was compiled using reports from Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Landmine Action Smart Book and The U.S. Department of Defense, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs]
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