A New Breed of Spiders: Landmines

(Via Human Rights Watch) In their review of Bush administration policies currently under consideration, the HRW reports that the White House appears poised to erase many of the positive steps the United States has taken in the past toward banning antipersonnel mines. The United States has apparently not used antipersonnel mines since the Gulf War in 1991. (a) It has had a prohibition on exports of antipersonnel mines since 1992. The last antipersonnel mines rolled off U.S. production lines in 1997. However:

1. The United States will decide in December 2005 whether it will begin the production of a new antipersonnel mine called Spider.

2. According to a media report, which the Pentagon has yet to confirm or deny, in May 2005 the U.S. Army was to begin deploying to Iraq a new remote-controlled landmine system called Matrix, which relies on technology developed for Spider.

3. The Pentagon has requested a total of $1.3 billion for development and production activities for another new antipersonnel mine called the Intelligent Munitions System, with a full production decision expected in 2008.

4. There is concern that a United States proposal for an international prohibition on export of landmines that do not self-destruct will pave the way for the resumption of U.S. export of antipersonnel mines that do self-destruct.

These developments are the result of the Bush administration’s landmine policy announced in February 2004 under which the United States abandoned its long-held objective of joining the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which comprehensively prohibits the use, production, trade or stockpiling of antipersonnel mines. (b) The United States still stockpiles 10.4 million antipersonnel mines, the world’s third largest arsenal after China and Russia. (c) The U.S. also has 7.5 million antivehicle mines, and production and export of antivehicle mines has been ongoing. (d)

Future use, production, or export of antipersonnel mines by the United States will of course not constitute a violation of the Mine Ban Treaty since the United States is not party to the treaty.

(a) The United States used landmines in 1991 in Kuwait and Iraq, scattering 117,634 of them mostly from airplanes. The U.S. apparently did not use landmines in Yugoslavia (Kosovo) in 1999, nor in the fighting in Afghanistan since October 2001, nor in the fighting in Iraq since March 2003. However, the U.S. reserved the right to use antipersonnel mines during each of these conflicts, and deployed antipersonnel mines to the region at least in the cases of Kosovo and Iraq.

(b) U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, “Fact Sheet: New U.S. Policy on Landmines,” February 27, 2004. The full name of the treaty is the Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and On Their Destruction.

(c) Included in this stockpile are 2.8 million non-self-destructing landmines. Mixed systems that contain both self-destructing antipersonnel and antivehicle mines constitute only 11 percent of the overall stockpile. For details see, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Landmine Monitor Report 2004: Toward a Mine-Free World (New York: Human Rights Watch, November 2004), pp. 1,141-1,142.

(d) For example, the U.S. exported 124,000 antivehicle mines to South Korea in 2004.

technorati tags: Iraq, Landmines, War