Superkit for Opposing Landmines and Cluster Bombs

If you would like to join the global movement to ban landmines and cluster bombs, here's a superkit with the top current links for taking action. If you have a college class or activist friends, here's a great way to contribute to peace.

LANDMINES IN CONTEXT

In the 1990s, I had the opportunity to serve in the U.S. Marine Reserves Infantry stateside, then later found myself threatened as a civilian by landmines in at least five different countries. Having studied both sides of the landmine dilemma, I've reasoned that the U.S. government's refusal to endorse the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty is wrong and threatens the safety not only of survivors of war but also of Americans.

Learning to plant explosives with the U.S. Marines was, admittedly, a riot. After all, outside of war, what did we have to fear except for a faulty fuse or losing our hands? We'd shape C4 charges, set up claymore mine traps, and blow the hell out of dummies. There was a fun course on Parris Island in which we had to hike through a swampy wood, negotiating a complex web of trip wires at night with only flashlights. Every one of us triggered a wire, sounding a pop flare which signaled our fictitious demise. At the time, landmines, unexploded rockets, and mortars were for us just the required cost of global security.

A few years later, my work as an aid worker took me to inspect the repairs of houses which were destroyed in the Azerbaijan-Armenian War. Many days we would hike through the detritus in the yard, bullet shells, broken cinder, and rocket fragments. There was absolutely no way to do the job without taking a risk of stepping on something. On another occasion in Bosnia right after the war, I was very careful to traverse a paved walkway through a mined area, but a wild dog zipped out of a collapsed building and tried to tear my hand off, and yet I couldn't escape because the area was mined. Imagine you are an Afghan or Iraqi farmer returning home after war, how would you rebuild your life if starting up the plow could just as easily end it?

COMPELLING REASONS FOR TAKING ACTION TO BAN MINES

Landmines and cluster bombs remaining in the ground after combat do not only threaten farmers, travelers, kids, and soldiers in war zones, they also threaten people from peaceful communities. Here's how:

Economically - Western tax payers are not only billed for the purchase of these deadly weapons, but also the cost of removing them, helping the wounded recover, and, more broadly, the cost of delivering food and livelihood aid to regions of the world where landmines have made farming impossible;

Geographically - Western professionals and travelers who work as soldiers, journalists, aid workers, exchange teachers, medical professionals, mountaineers, excavators, geologists, archaeologists, and much more encounter landmine risk every day. They not only face it in war zones, but even in tourism meccas like Israel, Croatia, and Thailand which remain plagued by mines from previous conflicts;

Collective Responsibility - Many of us in peaceful communities, like in the U.S., contribute to the use of landmines and cluster bombs and their potential side-effects simply by paying taxes. When someone loses their life, their leg, or their child to a landmine or cluster bomb made by a company in our country, we hold some responsibility for this. In fact, many survivors of the explosive remnants of war may benefit from U.S. assistance, but they may also blame the U.S. if it is responsible for their loss. And so Americans not only share some responsibility, but also may suffer the consequences of the cost in international relations;

As to the exceptions - The U.S. government may choose not to endorse the Mine Ban Treaty because of the financial costs of removal, the improbability of regulating allies, and the tricky question of the Korean division line. But U.S. taxpayers are already paying for the costs of mines, and will eventually, if not for removal than for recovering the damage done by others, namely the ruin of millions of hectares of farm land. Though the U.S. may not be able to control the actions of allies, it must set a good example.

THE LEADERS IN THE MOVEMENT

Here's a story from the Faster Times to get you up to speed on the latest in U.S. politics on the mine ban. Here's a link to the Cartagena Summit, the latest political conference on the effort. And here's an update on clearance progress from the United Nations. Organizations you should know include:

• The International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Go to their website for everything on this movement. My post here is simply a door into the movement which they lead.
• Human Rights Watch. A leader in the movement.
• Stop Explosive Investments. A remarkable new divestment campaign.
• UN Mine Action. The global agency leading the coordination of landmine and explosives removal.
• Halo Trust. One of the leaders in landmine removal worldwide. This agency cleared thousands of miles of land in Afghanistan, opening up farming to returnees. But in 2001, much of their work was undone when Al Qaeda attacked the US triggering the US response and a return to country-wide war.
• Handicap International. One of the leaders in assistance to survivors of landmines and other explosives.
• Herorats. One of the many creative means in which people are trying to speed up the explosives removal effort - by training rats to locate the mines. Other agencies use dogs. The vast majority of communities who wait in vain for de-mining projects which never surface often just graze their livestock in the mine threat area, assuming that if the animals don't trigger anything than it's safe.

DECISION-MAKERS TO APPROACH

First, it is vital to thank and celebrate people who have done great things for the movement. In the U.S. government, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has probably done the most for people threatened by landmines. Currently Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Leahy wrote the first law asking governments to prohibit mines, then began an effort which led to the Leahy War Victims Fund. So as you write letters to urge decision-makers to consider the ban, you might also send thanks and praise to Leahy and others who've done the right thing. Here are some U.S. decision-makers the movement needs, so please consider writing to them:

• President Barack Obama, White House
• Valerie B Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement
• Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
• Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
• Senators Ben Nelson (D-FL) and David Vitter (R-LA), Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
• Representatives Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Michael Turner (R-OH), House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

TAKING ACTION

Where to begin? You might like to...

• Click this Change petition which will send a letter for you to the decision-makers above.
• Go to the advocacy organizations listed above, read up, and sign their petitions;
• Donate to an advocacy organization like those listed above;
• Or donate to an agency like Halo Trust or Handicap International, also listed above, which serves survivors.

Keep the peace.

Photo: iwishmynamewasmarsha (Thai Landmine Museum)