This article was written originally for Asia-Pacific Magazine
by James Trevelyan in May 1998. This is
an edited version for web users who want to understand more about the mine problem.
Even though this paper was written in 1998, not much has changed. For an update,
view this
recording of an address
to a Red Cross landmines information evening
September 2005. (Download Lecturnity Player from here)
Landmines and unexploded ordnance are a significant barrier to economic and social development in many parts of the world, seriously affecting countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Afghanistan in this region. The current methods for mine clearance are essentially unchanged since the 1940's when advances in electronics provided portable metal detectors. An early scene from the popular film 'The English Patient' provides a graphic demonstration. The work is risky, labour-intensive and slow.
The UN lists 70 countries affected by mines, and experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere has shown that it takes many years to establish an effective demining program in a post-conflict situation. Current demining programs measure their progress in terms of a few square kilometres of cleared land each year. In Afghanistan, approximately 25 sq km of land is cleared annually by removing about 20,000 mines and many other kinds of unexploded ordnance (UXO). With an estimated 10,000,000 mines still in the ground, one might conclude that clearance may take 500 years.
Thinking about the number of mines is rather pointless when estimates range from a few million world-wide (including national borders) to 150 million. It is much more sensible to think in terms of the areas of land which are:
a) known to be affected by mines, and are important to local or displaced populations: homes, food producing land, roads, infrastructure (roads, canals, power lines, water supplies etc.)
b) believed to be affected by mines
c) known or believed to be affected by mines, but land is of no immediate importance.
Reliable forecasts are based on the estimated area of mine-affected land which needs to be cleared. About 320 sq. km of high priority land remains to be cleared in Afghanistan taking about twelve years at current rates of progress. Surveys suggest that a further 400 sq. km of lower priority land also needs clearance.
The time needed to clear land varies enormously depending on local conditions, but the number of mines hardly affects the time required. Destroying them is quick and safe once they are found and identified. It is finding them that takes the time.
What, then, are realistic objectives? Do we really know enough about the mine problem to design an appropriate world-wide action plan? Are there technologies which could dramatically reduce the cost of mine clearance? Unfortunately there are many 'myths' and misleading ideas on landmines and mine clearance now. We need to understand more about the real problems on the ground to see why well-meaning governments are wasting money, and why mine clearance is progressing so slowly.
The signing of the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines was accompanied by an announcement by the USA of the '2010 Initiative' - to eliminate anti-personnel mines from the world by the year 2010. This commits the US Government to an effort to lift global spending on demining to $1bn/year, including existing classified military research and private contributions of $350m. However, the total pledged for mine clearance programs falls far short of the $33 billion which the UN estimates is needed to achieve this goal.
Current research suggests that demining costs can be effectively reduced by combining creative ideas with local innovation and participation. A modest increase in resources for mine clearance could provide far more beneficial results than relying on a solution derived from the by-products of military and other 'high technology' research.
Technological Solutions??
Many people have suggested that technology can fix this problem, even robots. For the time being the promise of technology remains an unfulfilled dream.
Almost all research efforts are being directed towards an improved mine detector but, paradoxically, it is a 'no-mine' detector which is really needed. Such a sensor must reliably confirm that the ground being tested does not contain an explosive device, with a reliability approaching 100 per cent. So far, trials in more or less ideal conditions have demonstrated that even the best technology is about three orders of magnitude (about 1000 times) short of the UN requirement for 99.6 per cent reliability.
Hi-tech demining machines are usually expensive, large and heavy and may have difficulty reaching mined areas. Often roads or bridges are unable to take the required loads, and transporters may not have sufficient ground clearance. Furthermore, machines are generally designed to operate on level, or gently sloping, open ground, whereas mines are often laid in forests, hillsides, embankments, buildings, ruins, river and canal banks, trenches and so on.
Here is a flail machine being tested.
(image/machines/flail.jpg)
For other pictures see 'mechan.html'
Manual techniques are often dismissed as being too slow and labour intensive. However, manual clearance is still the only method which works to the required level of reliability. Furthermore, even the best mechanical clearance techniques require careful manual checking after the machines have finished their work.
Why have high-tech solutions attracted so much more attention than manual-clearance methods? The experience of British, French, American and other Western forces in Somalia, Cambodia and Bosnia has made mine countermeasures a priority for military research. The wide use of mines by insurgent forces and guerilla groups has also contributed to this. The numerous potholes in decaying roads provided excellent hiding places for anti-vehicle mines in Bosnia and elsewhere. In Somalia and Cambodia, dirt roads were mined overnight to ambush convoys for food, money, arms and ammunition, or simply to disrupt organised communications. Whereas older military mine clearance methods were designed to be fast, but not necessarily totally effective, some casualties were inevitable. Now, pressure of public opinion means military casualties are no longer acceptable, especially in peace-keeping or peace-enforcement operations.
See our page on common myths on landmines. Click
for more references on why machines and robots will not work.
Mines and Minefields
Land mines are usually very simple devices and readily manufactured anywhere. There are two basic types of mines: anti-vehicle or anti-tank (AT) mines, and anti-personnel (AP) mines. AT mines are comparatively large (0.8 - 4 kg explosive), often laid in unsealed roads or potholes, and detonate when a vehicle drives over one. They are typically activated by force (>100 kg), magnetic influence, or remote control. AP mines are much smaller (80 - 250g explosive) and are usually activated by force (3 - 7kg) or tripwires.
A PMN mine has been exposed on a steep rocky
hillside. (image/afghanistan/ATC-28.jpg)
A single POM-Z fragmentation mine set up as a booby trap round
a
blind corner in an alley-way. (image/afghanistan/ATC-15.jpg)
Two minefields in Afghanistan (kindly supplied by Afghan Technical Consultants, and Mine Clearance Planning Agency).
Humanitarian demining operations face many complications: mines may have been in place for many years, they may be corroded, waterlogged, impregnated with mud or dirt, and can behave quite unpredictably; stakes that carried fragmentation mines may have fallen over; trip wires may be caught up in overgrown bushes, grass or roots; wind gusts may sway a bush enough to pull a trip wire and detonate a nearby mine. Mechanical activation of old mines (or even new ones) is not a reliable technique. Often mines were laid by untrained personnel or civilians. They were sometimes buried in deep ground to avoid discovery by metal detectors. Hitting a mine may simply dislodge dirt which allows the mine to detonate the next time a person steps on it. Similarly, deeper mines may not detonate when the ground is hard, but rain may soften the ground to the point where even a child's footstep will set them off.
A 'typical' minefield is difficult to find. Mines have been laid in every conceivable place in every type of environment. Often they have been used as a defensive measure and are laid in large numbers in a concentrated area. Elsewhere a single mine may have been laid in a highly visible spot to create the impression that a whole area has been mined. Mined areas may have become overgrown with vegetation. In open country or river beds, storms or floods may have carried mines far from their original locations or have buried them under layers of soil and debris.
For more information, and lots of pictures, see our pages on mines and minefields.
Clerance Costs
The UN estimates the cost of removing a single mine at $300 - $1000. But this can be misleading and understanding the different cost factors may suggest ways of reducing costs. Apart from variations in local conditions, the primary factor is the local cost of labour. In low labour-cost countries (such as Cambodia, Afghanistan, several African countries) US$100 per month is a high rate of pay for manual work, even with the obvious risks. In contrast, the labour cost for demining in the former Yugoslavia may be twenty times higher.
The Afghanistan Mine Action Program is a useful guide to the costs of a demining operation. Unlike practice in many other countries, most demining work is coodinated by the UN - and of the 3000 employees only seven are foreign workers. Since each foreign employee typically costs about US$200,000 a year to support, the Afghan program is one of the most cost efficient in the world. Afghanistan mine clearance statistics show that a 30-man demining team (with 24 deminers) can clear 1200 - 2000 sq metres per hour where the metal fragment density is low, but less than 100 sq metres per hour where the density is high.
Local conditions, such as the density of vegetation, also affect mine clearance costs. In Cambodia, for example, mined land which was originally used for farming or housing is now covered by thick scrub, bamboo, jungle or elephant grass. The vegetation must be cut and removed, piece by piece, by hand, to ground level to check for trip wires before metal detectors can be used to check for buried mines. HALO Trust and other NGO's now report a 50-80 per cent improvement in clearance rate with the use of mulchers. However, only one or two machines are in use at any time in each country.
Humanitarian demining is a small industry by world standards: apart from isolated clearances, such as the border between the former Eastern and Western Europe, annual expenditure is approximately US$80-120 million. The annual estimated cost of machinery and equipment accounts for around $10 million, so the many manufacturers serving this community cannot afford large R&D expenses. If research funds expended on humanitarian and military mine clearance technology (several hundred million $ in the USA alone) were spent on manual mine clearance, the rate of clearance could be vastly improved upon.
Reducing the Cost
For costs to be significantly reduced, there must be some refinement in the organisation of demining programs and of current demining methods. The Afghan demining program provides many useful pointers on how this can be achieved by eliminating unnecessary demining effort and maximising indigenous participation.
Refining the Demining Effort:
Initially, the land area requiring manual mine clearance must be minimised - but it is not always easy to identify land that is free of mines or UXOs. Accurate quantitative surveys - with central data collection, preferably using a geographic information system - are essential to define mined areas, produce maps, assess the kinds and numbers of mines present, and the economic significance of the mined land. Dogs, machines, and manually cleared test lanes can help to define the extent of mines (and UXO) within a surveyed mined area. The actual edge of the mined areas can be identified by driving machines into mined areas until they start setting off mines. In this way the land most suitable for manual clearance can be identified
The mines which threaten the safety of humans and animals should be the first to be removed, followed by those which disrupt the local economy. This method will result in many mines being left in or on the ground, but they will be concentrated around military posts on hill-tops and other areas which contribute little to economic activity and which can be left until other more important reconstruction is under way.
Since the objective is to restore access to land, one must distinguish between different mine clearance tasks and their impacts. It is also important to distinguish between infrastructure (roads, irrigation canals, power lines etc.), urban areas, and farming land. Checking a road for anti-vehicle mines may be sufficient to provide access to a large area of previously inaccessible farming land - although the possibility that the verge might still be mined must be considered. Urban land has the added risks of booby traps as well as large amounts of metal and plastic rubbish, of which each item must be carefully checked.
Build Indigenous Capabilities:
The development of a local mine-clearing capacity -- to minimise dependence on aid programs -- and the establishment of a single mine action centre (MAC) - to coordinate all demining activities and mine awareness education. - are essential for the efficient use of resources. While, in some countries, the UN performs this role, in others demining is chaotic with foreign and local military groups, police, NGO's, development agencies and commercial groups all conducting mine clearance with different priorities and to different clearance standards - leading to costly duplication and unnecessary accidents.
Usually experts involved in mine clearance come from a military background. However, with the need to coordinate a large number of local people (deminers and support staff), the expertise of civil engineers with local knowledge may prove more suitable for organising mine clearance operations.
Similarly, the traditional approach to training is to use foreign military experts who supervise local deminers to help them to solve the particular problems they face in their own regions. Language and cultural barriers can often limit the effectiveness of such training. While there is currently no support available for exchange arrangements, senior indigenous demining staff have much to learn from their counterparts in different countries. Demining organisations in Afghanistan, for instance, have long experience to share with deminers from other countries where indigenous organisations are not as well developed.
Cost reductions can also be achieved through appropriate commercial practices, including effective quality control techniques and training in their use to maintain demining standards. The key to quality lies in how organisations operate, and in the incentives provided to everyone for high quality work.
Cost-effective technologies must also be developed, based on a thorough understanding of the problems deminers face under field conditions. For example, a recent demining technology conference (SusDem97) was held in Zagreb, Croatia, within easy reach of heavily mined areas of land.
UWA Research
Our own research aims to help achieve this by understanding the needs of deminers working in different regions, and by presenting our findings on a web site which is readily accessible to researchers in the West. Nearly all current research efforts are too closely linked to military requirements and standards which are not appropriate for humanitarian demining work.
Our approach is to achieve improvement by many small innovations, rather than a single technical breakthrough sought by most other research groups. Furthermore, by establishing a 'culture of innovation' with appropriate development support, the improvement process will become part of normal operations, resulting in further gradual improvements in cost-effectiveness.
To involve deminers in this innovation process, the Hameed and Ali Research Centre (HARC) was set up in Pakistan where Afghan demining organisations are based. The centre employs two Pakistani engineers and six support staff who work with experienced Afghan deminers. Initially HARC produced local variants of improved tools and protective headgear developed at the University of Western Australia. However, within a few months, they have evolved their own designs and production methods, and within their first year of operation should make a significant impact on the Afghan demining program.
HARC has brought several important benefits to the research: realistic evaluations of the equipment; and developments involving people in the field, empowering them in an issue which is best taken care of locally with full regard to local customs and beliefs. Research costs are greatly reduced with the entire centre running on approximately one-quarter of the cost of a single foreign employee.
Afghan deminers Moqeem (lying) and Hakim evaluating
new designs for tools at HARC field trial centre in Pakistan.
(image/HARC/risalpur-6.jpg)
Conclusion
The bold US '2010 initiative' to eliminate anti-personnel landmines by
the year 2010 will only succeed if demining costs are reduced significantly
and more resources are committed to mine clearance programs. Smaller, locally
based measures are more likely to achieve this goal than the present large
current commitment to military countermine technology. Although not all
mines will be removed, those remaining will be out of harm's way, on isolated
hill tops and behind fences, where they can be left until local people have
the resources to remove them.
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Last modified: December 1998, James
Trevelyan, Checked January 2000
