U.S. Reneges on Campaign to Ban Land Mines

The town of Kuito, in the fertile central plain of Angola, tells the sad tale of carnage that has been the fate of Angola for 30 years. Structures pockmarked with bullet holes line the once lovely town square. Office buildings and houses are collapsing shells. And at every turn are the mutilados, the legless women, children and men claimed by land mines. They are the legacy of a war fueled by oil, diamonds and cynical agendas, supported at various times by the former Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa and the United States.

The peace accord signed in 1994 was supposed to end the long conflict. When the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, led by Jose Eduardo dos Santos, won a United Nations-sponsored election in 1992, the results were rejected by the opposing National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by onetime U.S. ally Jonas Savimbi. As a result, the country was again plunged into civil war, distinguished by a level of violence and destruction that was extreme even in the context of Angola.

As the cities of the interior were besieged and ringed with land mines, the Angolan people went through hell. Women escorted by soldiers outside city perimeters to collect firewood during lulls in fighting frequently were claimed by mines. By the time the peace accord was signed, 300,000 Angolans were dead and as many as 20 million land mines were planted in Angolan soil, contaminating some of the most fertile land in Africa.

The worldwide land mine crisis, with an estimated 110 million of the deadly weapons planted and an equal number stockpiled, has achieved a unique status in postwar Angola--most of the victims are women and children because women do most of the farming in Angola.

Paul Heslop, country director of the British Halo Trust Demining Operation, told us of a 6-year-old who tripped while playing on a riverbank near her home and set off a mine. Heslop found the child dead, the left side of her body and head blown away.

Deminers found another 15 mines, all within 300 feet of a spring used daily by villagers. Standing in a minefield as deminers combed the pastoral countryside, we could feel the fear that Angolan women face each day as they go to the fields to keep their children from starving.

When Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited Angola this past October, both Savimbi’s group, UNITA, and Angolan government officials promised to destroy 15 tons of mines and other ordnance the following week. The Angolan government and UNITA have yet to fulfill the promise. A credible accounting of their stockpiles of mines and other weaponry must be made and lethal devices that claim Angola’s women and children must be destroyed.

Fifty nations calling for an international ban on the trade, use and production of anti-personnel land mines met last October in Ottawa. Under the leadership of Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, the goal of achieving and signing a treaty to ban anti-personnel land mines was set for next December. Unfortunately, U.S. land mine policy, which is at variance with most of our NATO allies, is being dictated by by Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bowing under pressure from the Joint Chiefs, President Clinton failed to fulfill his own promise to ban land mines, as he pledged before the U.N. General Assembly in 1994. Instead, last spring he supported Shalikashvili’s position and sought to retain the U.S. right to use land mines. He did this despite the fact that the Senate, led by Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), voted to enact a one-year ban on use of anti-personnel mines, to begin in 1998. Clinton also ignored retired Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and other former military leaders, who stated that a ban on anti-personnel land mines “is not only humane, but militarily responsible.”

Had original calls for a ban on the use of land mines been heeded in 1991, most of the weapons that now lace Angolan soil would not have been planted. This also goes for the 5 million mines in Bosnia and the millions of mines in Chechnya and Rwanda that now claim innocent civilians. As it is, mine proliferation remains unfettered and these cheap (from about $3 each to make), deadly devices proliferate with terrible ease.

President Clinton’s policy on land mines reflects a choice of expediency over principle. In his second term, the president still has the opportunity to lead the world out of this human and environmental disaster. An international ban on land mines would represent an advance for the world’s citizens and a major humanitarian achievement for which the president would long be remembered.