The United States Refusal to Ban Landmines: The Intersection Between Tactics, Strategy, Policy, and International Law

• Author: Captain Andrew C.S. Efaw
• Pages: 02

1999] LANDMINES 87

THE UNITED STATES REFUSAL TO BAN LANDMINES:

THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN

TACTICS, STRATEGY, POLICY, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

CAPTAIN ANDREW C.S. EFAW1

I rather dislike mines, and the whole damn country is full of them. We lose officers daily, mostly with legs blown off or broken.2

Lieutenant General George S. Patton

I. Introduction

Richard I attacked the French stronghold of Acre in 1191 using such ancient weapons as the longbow and the catapult.3 The most important weapon he used, however, remains in military arsenals today: the land-mine.4 One ancient historian recorded that in the Battle of Acre, the most important soldiers "were the miners, making themselves a way beneath the

ground, sapping the foundation of the walls, while soldiers bearing shields,

having planted ladders, sought entrances over the ramparts."5

At Acre, landmines were still a relatively new conception, having first appeared on the battlefield only slightly earlier that century.6 Like the soldiers at Acre, the first sappers mined underneath the wall or tower of a stronghold, supporting their tunnel with pitch-smeared timbers.7 They then filled the mined cavity with combustible materials and set them on fire.8 The fire burned away the support timbers, causing the structure above to collapse.9 In the fifteenth century, some enterprising soldier had the idea of filling a mine with gunpowder to blow up a wall or tower.10 The idea worked, and explosive mines were here to stay.

Over the next four hundred years mines changed very little.11 By the dawn of the American Civil War, landmines were still quite rudimentary. Before long, however, the Confederate military managed to develop a self-contained, and hence portable, landmine.12 Some of these mines were industrially manufactured, but many were merely converted artillery shells.13 Confederates would simply bury the artillery shells underground with the percussion cap facing up.14 If someone were to step on the cap or a wagon rolled over it, the shell would explode.15 Meanwhile, General Grant's soldiers were still mining tunnels underneath enemy positions like their brethren of arms from the previous seven centuries.16 The Union engineers stuffed these mine shafts with tons of explosives and then detonated the mines beneath the unsuspecting Confederates.17

Landmines, in the modern sense of the word, have only been in use since World War I.18 Yet, even in World War I, most of the mines were still improvised on the battlefield and employed to guard trenches against enemy raids.19 As warfare evolved, so did the landmine. When the first tanks arrived on the battlefield, the first anti-tank mines arrived with them.20 Soon the need for mass produced mines became apparent.21 Research and development during World War I yielded amatol and

ammonal-explosives with three times the power of gunpowder.22 These explosives paved the way for the small, modern mines of today.23

In the years between World War I and World War II, the United States did little to develop mines or to train soldiers how to use them.24 Only as the United States anticipated entering World War II did the U.S. military begin to develop mines as a permanent part of their arsenal and military strategy.25 In North Africa, Americans first experienced the devastating impact that mines could wreak upon a battlefield. There, minefields derailed several Allied armor attacks26 and proved effective again in Europe as the German Wermacht used mines to halt Allied mechanized attacks.27

Today,28 landmines are much more complicated than their historical forebears are, but they still can be separated into two simple categories: anti-personnel and anti-tank.29 Anti-personnel landmines, as defined by international law, are "mine[s] primarily designed to be exploded by the

presence, proximity, or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure, or kill one or more persons."30 The typical anti-personnel mine is a pressure mine. They are designed to detonate whenever three to thirty-five pounds of force are applied to the mine's trigger.31

Generally, anti-tank mines are larger than anti-personnel mines and require significantly more pressure to detonate.32 Because of their size and

the pressure required to detonate them, anti-tank mines are easier than anti-personnel mines to locate and to remove from the battlefield.33

Mines can be further classified as either conventional mines or "smart" mines.34 Conventional or "dumb" mines are mines that once activated, remain lethal until they detonate, decompose, or are demined.35 In

contrast, "smart" mines have limited lives36 and contain mechanisms that cause the mine to either self-destruct,37 self-deactivate,38 or self-neutralize.39 The technology behind these devices is both simple and fail-safe-

they operate by battery.40 If the battery has already failed when the mine is planted, the mine is, obviously, already inert.41 Once the mine is planted, the battery only has a fixed life.42 The only way that the battery will never die is if it is never drawn upon, but in that case, the mine never has been activated in the first place.43 Admittedly, a battery may fail later than expected, but the battery (and, hence, the mine) nevertheless, invariably deactivates.44

II. The Landmine Problem

A. The Big Picture

Several nations have abject landmine problems.45 In recent years, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimated that more than

one hundred million landmines in over sixty countries lay dormant, waiting for some unsuspecting victim.46 Current studies, however, have largely debunked these figures as vastly inflated.47 Most of the international community now agree that the correct figures are about fifty percent of the earlier estimates.48 Yet even with lowered estimates, the problem of landmines claiming unintended victims remains serious and tragic, "a pandemic of global proportions."49

Though most landmines are laid as part of military operations, their danger usually continues long after hostilities cease.50 Of the approximately one million landmine victims during the past twenty years, eight out of ten were noncombatants.51 Many of these victims were children, who are unaware of the danger from mines.52 Mines seem so ubiquitous in some countries that children can be desensitized to their danger.53 In

Kurdistan, for example, "rural children commonly use mines as wheels for

toy trucks and go-carts."54 Additionally, children are often the ones who collect firewood and herd livestock, tasks that involve high risk of exposure to hidden mines.55

Not surprisingly, the countries most negatively affected by landmines tend to be developing Third World countries that depend on agriculture for survival.56 Mines can affect several segments of the economy simultaneously. First, large tracts of arable land in these countries have been planted with mines, making their agrarian economies untenable.57 Even where the land itself is not mined, the wells and irrigation systems often are.58 When the main water supplies and the best land have been rendered unusable, farmers and ranchers often move to marginal, erosion prone

land, or they deforest valuable timberland.59 The forests, no matter how important in the long run, inevitably yield to immediate survival needs.60

Second, landmines destroy a nation's infrastructure. They disrupt transportation and communication systems.61 The mining of dams and electrical installations hampers the production of power needed to rebuild war-torn countries.62 Finally, landmines directly affect the people. The families of victims are faced with "severe financial strain due to the costs of treatment and rehabilitation, loss of the victim's earnings, and the need to support an unproductive relative."63

B. Northern Iraq: A Case Study

Northern Iraq, or Kurdistan,64 is a classic example of a region with a severe landmine problem.65 The people of Kurdistan have sought autonomy from Iraq since the region was incorporated into Iraq after World War

I.66 Since then, the Iraqi government has repeatedly denied Kurdish attempts at independence, quelling resistance with force.67 Because of

both this internal conflict and the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, Northern Iraq is littered with landmines.68

The minefields left by the Iraqi military were unrecorded, unmarked,69 and contain some three to five million mines that are neither self-destroying, self-neutralizing, nor self-deactivating.70 Experts estimate that at least 2.5 million anti-personnel mines are in Dohuk, a region of Kurdistan.71 In the four months prior to the Gulf War, the Iraqi Army returned to Kurdistan and, using 2500 soldiers, laid even more mines.72

One section of twenty-one men, alone, laid 80,000-100,000 mines on Iraq's border with Syria and Turkey.73 The minefields were not mapped, which leaves activities as mundane as walking risky in this region.74 Also complicating the problem is that the region has employed more than twenty-three types of mines from ten different nations,75 and many of these are booby-trapped to frustrate demining.76 Finally, the civilian populace of Kurdistan is further endangered due to the "[a]bsence of, or inadequate, warning signs; absence of, inadequate, or incorrectly sighted perimeter fencing; [and] random dissemination of devices in areas regularly used by civilians."77

Landmines have injured thousands of civilians since the Iraqi army last withdrew in 1991.78 From that time until August 1992, landmine casualties were occurring at a rate of twelve to twenty a month.79 Because of the continuing strain between the Kurds and the Iraqi government, almost

no government sponsored demining has occurred.80 In 1991, the Iraqi army conducted limited demining operations in Dohuk by sending in three demining teams; but both lack of skill and equipment limited their efforts.81 At present, only NGOs are involved in mine clearing operations in Kurdistan.82

III. The United States' Landmine...