Abstract
In the early 1990s, Brig. Gen. Patrick Blagden, then mine clearance chief for the United Nations, was under pressure to come up with estimates of the number of antipersonnel mines that had been laid in various countries. The United Nations and its advisers used a simple “rule of thumb” to estimate that there were 100 million landmines worldwide. Afghanistan, for instance, was thought to have, say, 10 million.
Such a number, Blagden told me recently, was patently false. As Mike Croll, a British Army engineer and former deminer explains in his 1998 book The History of Landmines, had there actually been 10 million mines in Afghanistan, it would have meant that “the Soviets had laid 3,000 mines per day, every day” for nine years.
Nonetheless, the numbers were enormously influential. They not only spurred the United Nations to commit resources to landmine clearance, they also attracted the many non-governmental organizations who in the 1990s turned their considerable attention to persuading most of the world's governments to sign a treaty banning anti-personnel mines.
Disarming a landmine in Angola.
On March 1 of this year, the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines, and on their Destruction” enters into force. The treaty, signed by 133 countries, has so far been ratified by 58.
The successful completion of a treaty outlawing landmines would seem like a happy ending to a tragic story–with the moral that through grit and determination ordinary people could end a scourge that kills innocent civilians long after conflicts have ended.
But since the treaty's signing, a rift has developed between the “banners” and the deminers–between those who lobby governments and go to meetings, and those who work in the field. Deminers say the landmine campaign absorbs funds that would be better spent actually clearing mines–that the banners' efforts and financial resources continue to be spent on holding international conferences and conducting “public education” campaigns. Meanwhile, many organizations, flush with success, are turning their attention elsewhere, to a new campaign to end the international trade in small arms. (See the January/February 1999 Bulletin.)
A matter of priorities
Although none of the world's chief mine-producing nations–Russia, China, the United States, and North Korea–signed the ban on anti-personnel mines, the treaty has been hailed as a remarkable achievement for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a coalition of more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations, charities, and like-minded governments. The campaign's coordinator, Jody Williams, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, soon after the treaty was signed. As a result of the campaign, the use of mines is now regarded with widespread antipathy.
On the other hand, both the campaign and the treaty have their critics. A key point of contention concerns the continued use of inflated numbers of landmines, which the campaign and organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations still cite. Many deminers charge that using such misleading figures–saying that there are 110 million anti-personnel mines in the world, that it will take a thousand years to get rid of them, and that millions more are going in the ground than are being taken out–actually undermines mine-clearance efforts.
Mine clearance, say the deminers, is the one activity that prevents more people from being killed or injured and the one effort that enables once-strifetorn localities to resume farming. The numbers used by the campaign, they add, make demining look like Mission Impossible.
A deminer in Cambodia.
Paul Jefferson, a British mine clearer who was injured in a mine accident, told me that “by inflating figures, the campaign makes the issue look as if it doesn't have a practical solution.”
“Government ministers, donor institutes, and the public accept [these figures] unquestioningly,” Jefferson wrote in the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 1997. “The clearance problem is thus seen as intractable … something beyond our capabilities to address. Instead, people support a landmine ban, feeling that at least they are doing something.”
Croll, the author of The History of Landmines, writes that signing the treaty may turn out to be an empty gesture. Countries may sign the treaty, but “in extremis [they] may look after their national security interests before honoring a voluntary treaty. … Countries that use antipersonnel mines may be stigmatized in popular opinion, but in war the opinion of outsiders counts for little.” (The treaty, like most treaties, has an escape clause. Each party has the right to withdraw as long as it includes “a full explanation” of its reasons for withdrawing and it is not currently engaged in armed conflict.)
Tim Lardner, a deminer working in Cambodia, agrees with Croll: “Most deminers accept the ban as an ideal, but if you look at … where most of us are working, you will find that [they] are places where a piece of paper stating that it is naughty to use mines is really not of too much interest.” As an example he cites the Cambodian government, which, although it signed the treaty, is still laying mines.
Such comments lead to a central question: If a political ban against landmines will not prevent some countries from using the devices, then shouldn't attention be refocused on mine clearance? And does it make sense to continue pouring money into the campaign as opposed to on-the-ground demining?
Croll writes: “Many individuals working in mine clearance felt that the ICBL represented something of a double-edged sword. Certainly the campaign brought a great deal of publicity to the issue, but it … distorted the size and the shape of the problem and distracted attention from the crux of the issue.”
Troublesome numbers
How many mines are actually still in the ground? Nearly everyone agrees on the actual answer to that question: No one really knows.
“The very nature of mine warfare in the late twentieth century,” says Laurie Boulden, an arms analyst who recently studied demining in southern Africa, “has made it difficult to take an accurate census of deployed landmines.” In “so-called conventional wars,” she explains, “traditional military procedures and international treaties set out rules for landmine marking and removal. Those conventions … have little bearing on the civil and guerrilla wars of this generation.”
Croll agrees. With very few records to go by and no “distinguishable front lines” to use as guides for locating minefields, “mine clearance [in the 1990s] has frequently been likened to finding a needle in a haystack. But in Cambodia, for example, finding the haystack was a problem in itself.”
Despite the impossibility of accurately quantifying the landmine problem, coming up with an assessment was critical to getting demining programs under way. Blagden, the U.N.'s clearance officer in the early 1990s, told me the reason why his figures “were calculated by rule of thumb at short notice, [was] mostly because we had to prepare programs and make budgets–without having proper access to the countries concerned.
“Today's wisdom,” Blagden adds, would call for a “level one [minefield] survey.” But “the 1993 real-life situation was that we had no money for a survey until the plan had been approved–a perfect Catch-22 situation.”
Blagden says that the first global estimate to be announced publicly was “probably” the one the U.N. demining office produced in 1992. Its estimate of up to 100 million mines deployed worldwide was based on assumptions about the numbers in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Kuwait. Using a guesswork benchmark of 10 million mines in Afghanistan, mine clearance officials began making estimates for other countries. Croll says: “It was felt that Cambodia was not as heavily mined as Afghanistan, and a figure of seven million was produced. Similarly, Mozambique was considered to be not nearly as heavily mined as Cambodia and a figure of two million was adopted.”
Mine clearance officials soon realized they were wrong. Mozambique, for instance, probably “had fewer than 300,000 mines,” says Croll. But, he explains, “the United Nations continued to state the figure of two million officially in order to mobilize donor funding for the clearance program.”
Blagden, who admits that he was principally responsible for many of the initial U.N. estimates, says he “knew all along that they were flagrant estimates, but such estimates were needed at the time to get the whole mine clearance process started. If I went in high, it was because in the U.N. system it is easier to hand money back if you overestimate than to get more if you underestimate.”
Besides, he says, “Those who remember my briefings at the time will recall that I always began by saying ‘all the figures I give are wrong. They are worst-case estimates for planning purposes. I can only say that there may be as many as n mines in Angola, Mozambique, or wherever.’ The fact that the caveats seemed to disappear, and such figures became de facto totals is unfortunate, but beyond the control of the United Nations.”
Once the inflated figures had been repeated often enough, says Jefferson, the former deminer, “It was in nobody's interest to be truly objective. The incentive will always be to exaggerate figures. Why make the issue less dramatic?” There is also, he says, “a complicity to allow figures to escalate.” Aid agencies wanted to keep the funds flowing, the ICBL wanted to mobilize public outrage for its political agenda, and journalists wanted a dramatic story.
In the past year, the trend has been toward lower estimates. The U.S. State Department, which last year released a revised edition of its report, Hidden Killers: The Global Landmine Crisis, now estimates that the global number of mines might be closer to 60 rather than 100 million. According to estimates released in January by HALO Trust, a British mine-clearance charity that has long criticized the inflated figures, the combined total for Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Croatia, and Bosnia (countries in which HALO has been demining for several years) is between 1.6 and 2.5 million mines. But the U.N. landmine database continues to estimate that 40 million mines are still in the ground in those same six countries.
“Not a penny” from the Princess Diana fund has gone to mine clearance.
Do the numbers matter?
Most deminers say the numbers, by themselves, don't matter–the important thing is to get mines out of the ground quickly and efficiently. Progress should be measured by how much land is cleared, not by how many mines are removed.
“Realistically,” Tim Lardner, the deminer working in Cambodia, told me, “it doesn't matter to my deminers on the ground whether there are no mines or whether there are 1,000 mines in the five hectares of land they are told to clear.” Experts say it takes the same amount of time to clear a square kilometer of land with 100 mines as it does to clear one with 1,000 mines. Disposing of mines once they are found is relatively easy; combing every square inch of a suspected mine field is tremendously time consuming.
So why all the fuss about numbers? The answer is money. Money that could be used for mine clearance, the deminers say, is being “hijacked.” The ICBL's media campaign, they argue, has diverted funds from mine clearance by persuading potential donors that clearance is an open-ended, intractable problem.
“It is becoming more difficult to convince donors to fund [demining] because the problem is perceived as insurmountable,” says Lardner. Deminers cite a decision by billionaire financier George Soros as an example. In 1996 he announced that he would not fund mine clearance until it became more cost-effective. His foundation, the Open Society Institute, donated $3 million to the ICBL instead.
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund is another example. Established immediately after Diana's death to support her favored causes, including demining, the fund has so far given away $20 million, including $1.6 million to the landmine campaign. Not a penny has gone to actual mine clearance, according to Tim Carstairs of the British-based Mines Advisory Group. After the princess's death, the intense media focus on landmines generated millions of dollars for the fund, he says. “But for now, the fund has chosen to focus only on victim assistance” and has ignored mine clearance. In the meantime, he says, “The public thinks we are receiving money.”
“The ICBL brought a lot of attention to the mines issue,” Carstairs adds, “and we thought that our resources would increase as a result. But that just hasn't been the case.” (Christopher Spence, a trustee of the Diana fund, said in response to similar complaints: “Like Princess Diana, we are strongly in favor of landmine clearance, but we have to keep asking ourselves how best we can make a difference with our money.”)
Private foundations may not be the only entities influenced by misleading statements that it will take a thousand years to clear all the mines or that it costs $1,000 to clear each mine. Many demining agencies say these estimates have also had an impact on how donor governments–the source of most anti-mine funds–choose to spend their demining dollars. In particular, the mine clearance charities are concerned that governments spend too much money in the search for new demining technologies.
The agencies say it is unlikely that any “silver bullets” will make demining much easier. In a joint statement on funding released last November, three agencies–the Mines Advisory Group, the Norwegian Peoples Aid, and Handicap International, which together claim to represent a third of the world's demining capacity–predicted that despite the “need for new technologies to improve the speed, safety, and cost-effectiveness of demining, we are convinced that existing methods will remain dominant for years to come and should be supported accordingly.”
A matter of opinion
“The ICBL's publicity machine hijacked the issue of demining, turning a practical problem into a bureaucratic, legalistic, and media gravy train,” former deminer Jefferson wrote in the Wall Street Journal soon after the ICBL won the Nobel Prize in 1997. “It provides employment and kudos for bureaucrats, aid workers, lobbyists, lawyers, and administrators, which would not matter were it not for the counter-productive aspect. It diverts resources and attention from the real problem.”
This sort of criticism angers ban supporters, who prefer to view the campaign and mine clearance, in Jody Williams's words, as “mutually reinforcing goals.” Yet, says Croll, critics characterize the campaign's grand achievement–the treaty–as “parchment pacification, encouraging a false sense of security, and not reducing the casualties caused by mines by a single leg.”
Nevertheless, not all deminers believe the ICBL has had a negative impact on demining. Dave McCracken, a deminer who heads the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's (VVAF) landmine survey team, thinks there is more money for demining than ever. And he says many deminers fail to realize that mine clearance is just one part–albeit a crucial one–of what he calls “mine action,” which includes demining, advocacy, mine marking, mine awareness, victim assistance, and training. Funds are needed for each of these initiatives. Deminers, he says, should not assume that their work is the only objective.
As for criticism of the treaty, McCracken argues that “if the only thing it achieves is destruction of the 120 million mines stockpiled around the world, then it will have been a worthy cause and will have saved lives.”
Meanwhile, McCracken's organization, the VVAF–which co-founded the campaign–announced last year that it was shifting its focus. According to its web page (www.vvaf.org), “The VVAF's Campaign for a Landmine Free World now moves beyond calling for a ban” and is focusing on minefield surveys and victim assistance.
Blagden also doubts that the ICBL's use of high-end estimates is the cause of donor reticence. “Mine clearance is dirty and dangerous, and people die and are mutilated. Few organizations care to be associated with that. Much better to fund training, awareness, surveys, setting up of management headquarters–anything except the dirty bit.”
Further, at least one demining organization, HALO Trust, claims to have very little trouble raising funds. According to HALO's Guy Willoughby, an outspoken critic of exaggerated numbers, his organization is doing just fine.
Why, then, does he speak out so often about inflated estimates? “You work for a scientific journal,” he told me. “You can appreciate the need for accuracy.”
Irreconcilable differences?
Tim Lardner thinks that–funding aside–the rift dividing deminers and “banners” is caused by a fundamental difference in the two groups' approach to the landmine problem:
“Most banners are idealistic thinkers and probably have a longer-term perspective of things.” Deminers “tend to be more pragmatic and, unfortunately, often short-term thinkers. The fact is, most deminers are ex-military and are trained in a specific way–‘here's the problem, solve it, deal with the consequences later.’”
If there is no love lost between the two camps, says Blagden, that is only natural. “The mine clearers see themselves doing dangerous work in horrible countries with little recognition. … They believe that the honors and plaudits are going to a few outspoken self-promoters eating huge lunches in classy hotels in safe capitals. An exaggeration, but [one] with a grain of truth.”
While many deminers regard the campaign as time and money poorly spent, others are willing to give it credit.
“The future effects of the ICBL in practical terms will be extremely limited,” writes Croll. But, he continues, “the campaign is ultimately heartening. Armies will be more prudent when employing mines and the well-publicized difficulties of clearance may result in improvements in the marking and the recording of minefields. The most important effect of the ICBL is that it mobilized public opinion and brought the horrors of war to the public.”