According to an
under-noticed report, Nicaragua declared itself
landmines-free at long last on June 18. The
announcement should have come as a reminder of a
callously unaddressed task in many parts of the
world, including ours, where the distinct
preference of powers-that-be is to pretend that
the danger of these weapons of civilian
destruction does not exist.
It took the
Central American nation 21 long years to rid
itself of this murderous legacy of its civil war
of the eighties. It may take centuries for the
world to be liberated from the death traps that
devastating wars imposed on several regions have
left behind.
The magnitude of the
problem is mind-boggling. Nicaragua itself claims
to have achieved its goal only after defusing
179,970 land mines at1,029 sites, including 70
bridges, 378 electricity towers and seven
hydroelectric plants. Over 10 million of these
dreaded devices - exploding on human operation or
the approach of a person, a vehicle or an animal
- are waiting to erupt in about 70 countries.
Every month, they murder or maim over 2,000
persons, mostly women and children in rural or
frontier or forested areas.
The
figures concerning de-mining are equally
frightening. For every mine cleared, another 20
are laid. In 1994, for example, while 100,000
mines were removed, an additional two million
were planted. A United Nations study of 1997 put
the cost of defusing the then 110 million active
mines at $33 billion. It was expected to take
over 1,100 years to make the world entirely free
from this menace. As for relief and
rehabilitation, land mine victims needed blood
transfusions twice as often as people injured by
bullets. Treatment of an amputee, in those distant
pre-recession days, cost $3,000 - or
$750 million for the UN-registered 250,000
amputees.
Buried land mines are
known to remain active for 50-years. The mines
also lay the land waste by making agriculture
impossible over vast tracts of several developing
countries.
The sole superpower
has played a leading role in the proliferation of
landmines. As Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega
has noted, most of the mines in the country were
planted by the US forces during the domestic
conflict though the rebel Sandinistas too resorted
to their use. Military operations, assisted by
the US Central Intelligence Agency, against the
local insurgents also included mining in
neighbouring El Salvador in the eighties.
Bordering countries like Honduras and Costa Rica
became victims of the landmining offensive as
well.
Mines planted or supplied by the
US have been identified during clearance
operations in places like Laos, Vietnam and
Cambodia in Asia and Rwanda, Mozambique, Somalia
and Angola in Africa.
The US forces
in Iraq have faced flak for use of cluster
munitions, which release and scatter landmines
too. In the other war theatre of Afghanistan,
over 530 square km have been identified as
mine-affected, with Kabul earning dubious
distinction as the most heavily mined capital
city in the world.
India should have
ample reason of its own to be concerned about the
problem. New Delhi, for example, should have
evinced more concern about the mines in a
neighbouring country. The resettlement of Sri
Lanka's war-uprooted Tamils was delayed and has
been made difficult by the landmines left behind
by both the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and
state forces. A closer cause of concern should be
the landmines strewn along the Jammu and Kashmir
border, which continue to claim the lives and
limbs of people on both sides of the Line of
Control.
The issue has an entirely
internal dimension as well. Weeks ago, we were
told the army might spare its Sappers for
de-mining the Maoist-affected areas, "ahead of
major operations by police and central forces:"
An expression of concern for the people of the
tribal terrain may help enlist popular support for
such an exercise.
India will do itself
proud by not staying on a stubborn non-signatory
to the Mines Ban Treaty of 1997 in the company of
the US and Sri Lanka, among
others.
by J. Sri Raman
