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U.S.
Campaign to Ban Landmines Email Newsletter In this edition. . .
Action
Alert : Get Your Local NPR Station to Air Mines Radio Debate IF NOT, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL NPR STATION AND ASK THEM TO RUN IT. Major cities that do NOT typically air the show include Boston, San Francisco, LA, Miami, Washington DC, New York, Minneapolis, and Chicago. You can tell them that given that we expect the Bush Administration to come out with new US landmine policies soon, now is an important time to increase the public dialogue on this issue, and thus to play the show for their listeners. To find out how to contact your local NPR station, visit http://www.npr.org/members/
Action
Alert : Contact Your Senators This Week As you probably know, we expect President Bush to come out with new US landmine policies soon, and the USCBL needs your help in asking your Senators to get involved. Please fax, email or call your Senators and ask them to write President Bush a letter as soon as possible expressing their support of banning landmines. See www.banminesusa.org for more details. If you live in the following states, it would be particularly useful for you to contact your Senator(s) this week. They just need to hear that their constituents care about this issue. CALIFORNIA Senator Boxer: Ph 202-224-3553 Fax 202-224-3553 senator@boxer.senate.gov and Senator Feinstein: Phone 202-224-3841 Fax 202-228-3954 senator@feinstein.senate.gov CONNECTICUT Senator Dodd Ph 202-224-2823 Fax 202-228-1683 senator@dodd.senate.gov and Senator Lieberman Ph 202-224-4041 Fax 202-224-9750 senator_lieberman@lieberman.senate.gov IDAHO Senator Crapo Phone 202-224-6142 Fax 202-228-0353 ILLINOIS Senator Durbin: Phone 202-224-2152 Fax 202-228-0400 dick@durbin.senate.gov and Senator Fitzgerald: Phone 202-224-2854 Fax 202-228-1372 senator_fitzgerald@fitzgerald.senate.gov MASSACHUSETTS Senator Kerry: Phone 202-224-2742 Fax 202-224-8525 john_kerry@senate.gov and Senator Kennedy: Phone 202-224-4543 Fax 202-224-2417 senator@kennedy.senate.gov MAINE Senator Collins Phone 202-224-2523 Fax 202-224-2693 senator@collins.senate.gov and Senator Snowe: Phone 202-224-5344 Fax 202-224-1946 olymia@snowe.senate.gov MINNESOTA Senator Wellstone: Phone 202-224-5641 Fax 202-224-8438 and Senator Dayton: Phone 202-224-3244 Fax 202-224-2186 NORTH DAKOTA Conrad: Phone 202-224-2043 Fax 202-224-7776 senator@conrad.senate.gov and Senator Dorgan: Phone 202-224-2551 Fax 202-224-1193 senator@dorgan.senate.gov NEW JERSEY Senator Torricelli: Phone: 202-224-3224 Fax: 202-228-5803 and Senator Corzine: Phone: 202-224-4744 Fax: 202-228-2197 NEW YORK Senator Clinton: Phone 202-224-4451 Fax 202-228-0282 senator@clinton.senate.gov and Senator Schumer: Phone 202-224-6542 Fax 202-228-3027 Email senator@schumer.senate.gov SOUTH DAKOTA Senator Daschle: Phone 202-224-2321 Fax 202-224-7895 tom_daschle@daschle.senate.gov and Senator Johnson: Phone 202-224-5842 Fax 202-228-5765 tim@johnson.senate.gov WASHINGTON Senator Murray: Phone 202-224-2621 Fax 202-224-0238 senator_murray@murray.senate.gov and Senator Cantwell: Phone 202-224-3441 Fax 202-224-0514 WISCONSIN Senator Kohl: Phone 202-224-5653 Fax 202-224-9787 senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov and Senator Feingold: Phone 202-224-5323 Fax 202-224-2725
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and San Antonio Express-News Call for Mine Ban
The Killing
Fields There is nothing in this world more horrid than a field grown over with flowers but sown with mines. "Anti-personnel" -- less euphemistically, people-targeted -- mines kill or maim an estimated 24,000 people a year, with perhaps 8,000 of the victims children. Some 100 million mines are buried in some 60 countries around the world. Worse yet, no one knows exactly where the mines are. Even if there were once maps that showed where armies had buried them, the maps have been lost or are inaccurate, and rains shift the mines. Most of the mines are buried in poor, war-damaged countries, such as Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Angola and Mozambique. There are no reliable estimates of the amount of land otherwise suitable for cultivation that has been made unusable by the presence of mines. Clearing mines is very dangerous and expensive. The Mine Ban Treaty was devised in 1997. It prohibits all use, production, stockpiling and trade of anti-personnel mines. It has been signed by 142 countries and ratified by 122. Countries that have not yet signed it include "axis of evil" states North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- and the United States. Other nonsignatories include China, Cuba, India, Israel, Russia and Turkey, the only NATO state other than America not to have signed the treaty. The United States has not used anti-personnel mines since 1991, not exported any since 1992 and not produced any since 1997. The United States agreed to stop using anti-personnel mines in all countries except Korea by 2003 and the Clinton administration pledged the United States to sign the treaty by 2006, if certain military conditions were met. Some 1 million mines are buried in or near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, claimed to be necessary for the defense of South Korea against surprise attack from the north, although 45 percent of the additional 1.2 million mines designated for Korea are stored in the United States. Those opposed to the use of anti-personnel mines -- or, put another way, those who believe the United States should sign and ratify the Mine Ban Treaty -- fear that a current review of American policy under way within the Bush administration will result in abandonment of previous U.S. pledges to stop using these mines and to sign the treaty. Given the horror of these weapons and the potential for substitution of command-detonated, "man in the loop" mines for them if needed, we believe strongly that this weapon that never stops killing should be dropped from the nation's arsenal. America should sign the Mine Ban Treaty, and the administration should actively seek its ratification in the Congress. Then the United States should urge nonsignatory allies Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and others to sign the treaty as well, and put more money into mine clearance efforts. Enough poor, rural children around the world have lost their lives or their feet to these appalling weapons. With a $379 billion budget there is every reason to believe that the U.S. military will be able to find other ways to kill people. __________________________________________________________ U.S. Should
Support Ban on Landmines A recent earthquake in the warn-torn nation of Afghanistan has added to its problems. The quake killed more than 1,000 people and left many more injured or homeless. But the terrible situation was made even worse because of the millions of land mines planted throughout the mountainous nation, which is roughly the size of Texas. Rescue workers feared stepping on exposed or buried mines. The buried explosives have killed or maimed one in every 236 Afghan residents. About one-third of all victims are children. The problem is equally critical in other lands torn by civil war, especially Angola, Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. American troops also have been victims of land mines. Over the years, thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed in nations infested with the buried explosives. One died last week near Kabul. The number of soldiers killed or maimed - regardless of nationality - has been minor compared to the casualties in civilian populations, who are unintended targets. In the last three decades alone, land mines have killed more than 1 million people. Yet the United States refuses to join 142 nations that already have signed a 1997 treaty prohibiting the production and use of such weapons. Officials argue that land mines are necessary along the border between North Korea and South Korea. The Bush administration is backing away from a Clinton administration promise to phase out the use of land mines everywhere but the Korean peninsula by 2003 and to sign the treaty by 2006. Surely technological advances in weapons can make this major killer and deformer of innocent people obsolete. And surely the United States, the world's only superpower, should not refuse to join the rest of the world in banning this monstrous hazard. The Bush administration should change course and sign the treaty. The huge task then remains of ridding the world of the land mines already in place. Afghans Cavalier About Landmines
Bagram, Afghanistan, April 11, 2002 (AP) By Michelle Boorstein This time it starts out soberly, with Mustafa exhibiting an inch-long scar buried in his whiskers, from when his tank blew up last year. Then come stories of mines daringly dismantled for the precious fuel inside, mine parts used for ashtrays and to hold sugar in the kitchen. Within minutes, the young men are giggling, rattling off stories of how they ran through minefields and lived to tell about it. In the most heavily mined patch of one of the world's most heavily mined countries, these insidious devices have dug their way into the local culture - one that sometimes dismisses them as nuisances to be ignored or, worse, turns them into a chance to prove male daring. "Afghan people are very brave - they don't care about their lives," said Safa, one of dozens of Afghans working at Bagram, a former Soviet base in central Afghanistan (news - web sites) where thousands of allied soldiers now live. Playing with mines and showing they are unafraid, he says, is how Afghans deal with having to live with the explosives. In their daily work clearing mines from the base, Army specialists describe Afghans doing everything from juggling and jumping up and down on mines to clanging them together to prove they know when they will go off. "We learned quickly that we stand between them and the ordnance," said Capt. Rob Mitchell, commander of one of \ three groups of Army mine-clearing experts. The casual attitude of some Afghans appears to stem from both necessity and the psychology of war. It's common around Bagram for people to dismantle mines to get at the explosives inside. The white, waxy material can be placed between a few bricks, set on fire and used to cook food or for heat. The material inside mines doesn't necessarily explode from fire; it's pressure that makes it blow. Sometimes it's the only fuel to be found in this parched, treeless landscape. "There were no dry sticks - I had to," says 21-year-old Mashoq, eliciting knowing nods from Mustafa and the others. Not every story about local mine buffs ends well. In one, a group of people were trying to remove the paraffin explosive from a mine by beating it with sticks. Then "something went wrong and those people went away," was how a man from Bagram relayed the situation, Mitchell said. Soldiers attached to Baba Jan, the local warlord, guard an old ammunition storage area on base that is jammed with mines and other live ordnance left over two decades by the Soviets, the Taliban and the northern alliance. While the area is incredibly dangerous, and several Afghans have died in recent explosions there, the guards are there because Afghans sneak in at night in order to steal aluminum to sell for scrap. So cautious are the Army experts about Afghans and mines that they carry a little phrase book in the Dari language with some key expressions, including: "Stop!" "Don't touch that!" and "Get away!" There are various theories about the psychology of all this. Nowday, one of Mustafa's friends, says people who play with mines are "crazy people who don't want to live." Safa says they are uneducated, and that their views are the product of war and extreme poverty. Staff Sgt. William P. Spencer, an explosives expert who works with Mitchell, says he has seen a similar attitude in other places where war has woven itself into daily life: Rwanda, Kosovo and the Korean Peninsula, among them. "These people get used to the fact that they might die tomorrow. They've been at war for so long, they expect it. It's going to happen to them sooner or later, so why worry about it?" says Spencer, who is based at Fort McNair in Washington. But Spencer says he's never seen what he calls machismo like that of the Afghans. They know it's dangerous, he says. "The knowing's not the issue. It's the caring that's the problem." Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. For more information about the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines or to donate on-line, please visit www.banminesusa.org
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