/IPS DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN/ DISARMAMENT: Mine Clearance Hampered

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Expense By Judith Perera LONDON, Oct 5 1996 (IPS) - Despite the 110 million unexploded anti- personnel mines in almost 70 countries, no new technologies are being developed to clear them.

It is just not cost effective. Over 100 million mines are stockpiled around the world, and two million more are planted each year.

Delegates from 70 countries are currently meeting in Ottawa to debate the next steps in a global effort to ban the weapon.

Detonations kill or injure more than 26,000 people per year, many of them women, children and farmers. These mines cost three to 30 dollars each to make, but neutralising them costs between 300 and 1,000 dollars each.

“We are using the same techniques today as we did 50 years ago,” says U.N. under-Secretary General Yasushi Akashi.

The most widely used method for clearing land mines still involves poeple crawling along the ground prodding ahead for buried explosives, but although manual demining is slow and hazardous, it remains the most widely used method.

In Afghanistan there are 3,000 deminers and the mine clearance programme is the country’s largest employer. There are 1,600 deminers in Cambodia, 500 in Mozambique and 900 in Angola. Yet one deminer is injured for every 2,000 mines destroyed, and one is killed for every 5,000 mines destroyed.

There are some 200 types of land mines manufactured in 36 countries ranging from a crude wooden box loaded with dynamite to sophisticated “magnet-sensitive” mines that can be calibrated to explode under the weakest part of a vehicle.

Mines can be buried by hand, dropped from aircraft, or fired from a cannon-like “mine projector “up to 36 metres away.

There are two main categories of anti-personnel mines: blast and fragmentation, based on the type of injury inflicted. Blast mines wound with a single upward explosion that destroys part of the leg and drives dirt and debris into the wound.

This often leads to infection requiring eventual amputation of more of the leg over time. These mines include the U.S. M-14 and the Soviet models PMN and PMN2.

Fragmentation mines are detonated either by exerted pressure or by tripwire. They shoot out metal or plastic projectiles over a “killing radius” causing trauma, loss of limbs and slow or quick death.

These include the Soviet model POMZ-2, the U.S. M-18 Claymore and the Valsella Valmara 69 mine produced in Italy and Singapore. The Claymore has a killing radius of 50 metres, and the Valsella shoots more than 1,000 metal fragments over a 25-metre radius.

There are also bounding mines that spring upward. These include the Soviet OZM-3 with a killing radius of 25 metres, and the U.S. M16.

Apart from the use of human deminers, other possible methods include specially trained dogs, mechanical methods and remote sensing.

Mine-sniffing dogs can be cost-effective and efficient in some situations, in particular in areas with a low density of mines.

The main constraint is training of both dogs and handlers. “Dog handlers are scarce people,” says South African expert Vernon Joynt, head of the Mechem Division at the South African technology company Denel (Pty) Ltd.

Using an adaptation of technology developed for detection of explosives and drugs at border posts and airports, he has devised the Mechem Explosive and Drug Detection System (MEDDS) which he claims is 99 per cent accurate.

This “takes the mines to the dogs, not the dogs to the mines,” he explains, by trapping vapours from mapped terrain, then sending the vapour concentrator tubes to a centre where specially trained dogs can detect which areas are mined.

Mechanical mine-clearance vehicles are quicker but less accurate. They are intended for military use enabling troops to pass through minefields in a combat situation.

It would require substantial investment to alter these vehicles so that they satisfy the 99.6 percent quality-assurance level requested by the United Nations.

Other technologies under development include airborne sensor systems. Lawrence Nee, chief of the countermine division of the Office of the U.S. Army Project for Mines, Countermine and Demolitions believes these hold out the best hope because they can survey large areas without any risk to the operator.

The system which is almost ready for field use is the U.S. Army’s Airborne Standoff Minefield Detection System (ASTAMIDS).

However there is a need for better cooperation with humanitarian organisations that have experience in the field, says Hap Hambric, humanitarian detaining project leader at the Countermine Division.

Finally there is the ‘Artificial Dog’, a biosensor device being designed by Bofors Applied Technologies of Sweden.

A prototype will be ready by the end of the year and the company says it will be 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than existing mechanical sniffers.

“The best way to rid the world of mines is to make them ineffective,” says Vernon Joynt. “If mines can be easily countered by cheap and effective means, combatants will stop laying them.”

Ralph Lysyshyn, director general of international security at Canada’s External Affairs Department, told delegates at the Ottawa meeting this week that he expects the 50 official members of the conference — another 20 have observer status, including Russia — to sign a draft declaration for a global ban on land mines.

Lysyshyn said the United States, which still manufactures mines, planned to submit a resolution to the U.N. General Assembly this year calling for a total ban on the production and deployment of anti-personnel land mines.

But meanwhile, experts note, for every mine cleared today, 20 more are being laid.