WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is being urged to wrap up a longstanding review of U.S. landmine policy, almost five years after it began and months after the administration suggested that it was closing in on a final decision.
The United States remains one of just a handful of countries that has not joined an international ban on antipersonnel mines. This week, advocates and federal lawmakers continued to turn up the pressure on the administration to finish the review, outlaw the use and production of these weapons, and formally join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
“It is inexcusable that 20 years after President Clinton challenged the world to eliminate antipersonnel landmines, and 18 years after he announced a U.S. plan to develop alternatives to mines, we are still waiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Wednesday on Capitol Hill ahead of commemorations for the International Day for Mine Action, marked on Friday.
“Ask yourselves this: If landmines were littering this country – in schoolyards, along roads, in cornfields, in our national parks – and scores of children were being horribly maimed … how long do you think it would it take before the White House joined the Mine Ban Treaty? Two days? Two weeks? I doubt it would be longer.”
Leahy has long been a leading figure pushing the U.S. to formalize its opposition to landmines, and his exasperation on Wednesday was palpable.
“We hear the same excuses, year after year. But if you get beyond the talking points and the PowerPoints, it is really about bureaucratic inertia and a lack of leadership,” he noted. “Let’s keep telling the White House that we expect more from the most powerful nation on Earth.”
In the past, the U.S. was one of the world’s largest suppliers and users of antipersonnel landmines. But, as Leahy .pointed out, when the Mine Ban Treaty opened for signatures in 1997, President Bill Clinton indicated that the U.S. would join, but not until 2006.
By that time, President George W. Bush had been elected. However, particularly in the context of increased security concerns in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush reversed this plan. He said the U.S. would never accede to the treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention.
This was the situation inherited by Barack Obama when he became president in 2009. By the end of that year, he initiated a review of U.S. policy — a process that has inexplicably continued to this day.
“We again urge that the policy review conclude with a decision to join the Mine Ban Treaty as soon as possible, to prohibit the use of antipersonnel mines immediately, and to begin destruction of all stocks of antipersonnel mines,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, which chairs the U.S. branch of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said last week in a letter to President Obama.
“U.S. accession would help to convince the other countries not yet party to join, strengthening the norm against the weapon, and thereby helping to ensure that it is not used in the future.”
4,000 per year
About 161 countries are currently party to the Mine Ban Treaty, which came into effect in 1999. Last year, just a few countries are known to have used antipersonnel mines, including Syria and Myanmar, but nearly three dozen remain outside of the treaty. These include China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Sri Lanka, among others.
The U.S., meanwhile, is the only member of NATO not to have signed onto the convention, as well as the only country in the Western Hemisphere — except Cuba — not to have done so.
The treaty bans the use, sale or stockpiling of landmines, while also mandating that members destroy all mines within their territories. The convention is widely seen as having been successful in significantly bringing down the number of landmine-caused injuries and deaths, from about 25,000 per year to current levels of around 4,000 per year.
That number is still very high, of course. Advocacy groups suggest that millions of landmines remain in upwards of 60 countries, including some left over from as long ago as World War II, highlighting the uniquely dangerous nature of these weapons.
“Global instances of the use of landmines have been fewer and fewer in recent years – this is a treaty that works,” Mica Bevington, communications director for Handicap International U.S., a charity that won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its anti-mine work, told MintPress News.
“At the heart of all this are people being injured every day from these indiscriminate weapons. These weapons are not smart — they can’t tell the difference between the footstep of a child, soldier or mother.”
Handicap International, which runs the world’s largest anti-mine operation, currently has de-mining and rehabilitation operations in 37 countries. The group says that 70 percent of the victims of landmines or unexploded ordnance are civilians, with nearly a third being children.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday warned that women and girls are “disproportionately affected” by antipersonnel mines. He called for “greater measures to involve more women at higher levels in mine action” and for all states who haven’t joined the Mine Ban Treaty to “follow suit.”
Pressing forward
In December, officials in Washington appeared to suggest that the U.S. policy review would soon be finalized. That reportedly set off a significant increase in behind-the-scenes policy discussions and related cajoling.
“There have been numerous discussions this year, and they’re trying to take a decision in advance of a summit in June,” Mary Wareham, advocacy director in the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told MintPress. “But beyond this, we only know that the issue is with the White House right now, not whether Obama has actually taken a decision.”
State Department officials would tell MintPress only that the agency is “pressing forward to conclude our review of U.S. landmine policy,” echoing the language used in December.
They also highlighted a peculiarity of the current situation: despite having failed thus far to formally ban landmines, the U.S. remains the world’s most generous donor on both mine clearance and assistance to victims. Over the past decade, the country has contributed some $2.2 billion to such global efforts.
“This vital assistance helps post-conflict countries consolidate peace and set the stage for reconstruction and development,” the State Department officials said.
“We have also helped to dramatically reduce the world’s annual mine casualty rate from approximately 9,000 a year in the late 1990s to less than 4,000 annually in recent years. The progress we are making is not only saving lives, it is helping communities recover so that they can finally turn the page on conflicts long since ended.”
Advocates on the issue, including critics of the delay in the Obama administration’s review, are clear in their praise for the United States’ efforts in de-mining. Further, there are no allegations that the U.S. military has used or produced landmines in years. The last known use was during the Gulf War, in 1991, and the country even halted all manufacture of the weapons in 1997.
Yet the U.S. military continues to stockpile an estimated 10 million mines. These would be available for future use unless new policy is passed or unless they are destroyed once and for all.
“When it comes to the harm caused by landmines, the U.S. has spent billions to treat the symptoms, but it refuses to endorse the cure of the ban treaty,” Human Rights Watch’s Wareham said. “It’s time for the U.S. to match its financial commitment to clearing landmines with a political commitment to ensure it never uses these indiscriminate weapons again.”
Guarding options
According to analysis by Human Rights Watch, the most likely obstacle to concluding the review has been ongoing military concerns over North Korea. Longstanding bilateral agreements would put the U.S. in charge of South Korean forces in the event of an attack by North Korea. While it now looks as though this unusual arrangement will soon be changed, it technically remains on the books today — a fact that appears to spook U.S. military planners.
The situation highlights an ongoing tendency within parts of the federal government to try to guard as many security-related options as possible. Last month, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that he continues to see military importance for so-called “smart” landmines, which can be set to destruct after a certain period.
“I consider landmines — especially the ones that we have … [which] can be set for four hours, 48 hours or 15 days, and then they self-destruct — I consider them to be an important tool in the arsenal of the armed forces of the United States,” Dempsey told the Armed Services Committee on March 6.
When asked whether anything had changed since 2009 that would make the use of such mines more or less important, Dempsey noted that “actually … the tensions on the [Korean] peninsula have increased.”
Speaking alongside Sen. Leahy and others this week to commemorate the International Day for Mine Awareness, the U.S. government’s top official on arms control, Rose Gottemoeller, touted past U.S.-led de-mining achievements.
Gottemoeller, however, made no mention whatsoever of the Mine Ban Treaty or the ongoing policy review.