Land Mines Mostly Injure the Innocent

Church bells will be ringing all over the United States and the world to celebrate the land mine ban treaty, which enters into force today in record time, and to mourn the weapon’s hundreds of thousands of victims. In the U.S., the bells carry an additional message: The mightiest military power on Earth, no less than the least, must end the use, production, transport and stockpiling of this grossly inhumane and excessively injurious weapon. President Clinton should sign the treaty now.

Persuading Clinton to take such a position will require American citizens to demand it, by the thousands. An American land mine victim, Ken Rutherford, who lost both his legs to a land mine while he was doing humanitarian work in Somalia, once said that if American parents knew that their children risked losing a leg, an arm, an eye or their lives when they went outside to play, the U. S. would waste no time in signing the land mine ban treaty. Though children face no land mine threat in the U.S., Americans abroad have suffered land mine injuries in large numbers. In Vietnam, one-third of all American casualties were caused by anti-personnel land mines, most of which were American mines stolen and reused by the enemy. American soldiers deployed as peacekeepers are at risk of land mines, as are missionary and relief workers.

What accounts for American reluctance to join in the treaty, and its insistence on continuing to produce and use anti-personnel land mines? The heart of the problem is that the U.S. military’s anti-tank land mines are deployed in a “mixed system” that includes prohibited anti-personnel land mines. The U.S. is requesting funds to produce a new mixed system for future use.

The U.S. is providing welcome resources and leadership in the area of demining and humanitarian assistance for survivors. But de-mining alone is no solution when new land mines are being deployed. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was negotiating with Serbs and Albanian Kosovars in Rambouillet last month, Serb military engineers reportedly laid tens of thousands of mines along key corridors on the Albania-Montenegro border and on a bridge on the road between Skopje, Macedonia and Pristina. Whatever the end result of the Kosovo negotiations, the mines will remain.

Clinton is in a poor position to hold treaty violators accountable or to urge hold-out nations such as China and Russia to sign, when our own military insists on producing and using the weapon itself.

It is past time for the U.S. to end its reliance on a prohibited and hated weapon of mass destruction whose principal victims are civilians. Clinton should take the opportunity of the treaty’s entry into force to state that the U.S. will sign it by the end of this year, will immediately enact a production moratorium, will comply with the treaty’s requirements on transparency, will destroy its own stockpiles of anti-personnel mines and will financially assist other governments to do the same.

The dream of legally stigmatizing and prohibiting the weapon has come true with the land mine ban treaty’s entry into force today, with a remarkable 64 ratifications and 133 signatories. But millions of anti-personnel land mines are still on the ground or stored in warehouses, thousands of new ones are being deployed, and the task of stopping their use is slowed and hindered by the United States’ refusal to sign the treaty.

Two years ago, the president promised to sign the treaty “as soon as possible.” The world waits for him to act now on that promise.