Anti-Personnel Landmines

A Just Means of War?*

KRISTIA.N BERG HARPVIKEN & MONA FIXDAL**

In the following we will briefly introduce the just War tradition, focusing on its main concepts. We will then turn to the assessment of landmines in the light of the ius in bello principles from the just War tradition, relating first to the principle of discrimination, then to the principle of proportionality. We will conclude by discussing the implications that the use of unjust means has for the overall evaluation of war.

At the core of the just War tradition is the question of when and by what means it is legitimate to resort to the use of military force. Thus, the tradition does not argue against war as such. Its contribution is rather to introduce criteria for when it is justified to enter into war (ius ad bellum) and for how war ought to be fought (ius in bello). Table 1 lists the most central just War concepts.

TABLE 1 Central just War concepts

lus ad bellum (justification of resort to war)

Source: Adapted from Richard B. Miller, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just War Tradition (Chicago, IL & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 13-15.

Although there is wide-ranging agreement on what constitutes the core terms of just War, there is considerable disagreement about their application. Hence, one cannot talk sensibly about a Just War doctrine, but only a Just War tradition. Since the Just War tradition does not offer a theory of when force is justified and how force should be used, it may be said to reflect a pluralist view of morality, which goes against the assumption that ultimately there must be only one source of moral value. Morality is complex, and various considerations must be taken into account when making ethical judgements. Thus, the Just War tradition incorporates moral principles which give primacy to absolute rules (deontology) and to consequences (consequentialism).

As we are here occupied with the legitimacy of a particular means of warfare; the in bello principles will come to the fore. The two in bello principles, discrimination and proportionality, diverge in their moral philosophical foundation. The discrimination principle states in essence that civilians and civilian property should enjoy immunity. An act of war that harms civilians or civilian property must therefore be judged as unjust. This is a deontological principle, in that there are certain restrictions on what one might legitimately do, even if it produces good consequences. The proportionality principle, on the other hand, is based on consequentialistic morality. It states that an action is just if it produces more good (in military terms) than harm (in humanitarian terms).

One of the main reasons why we seem to be dealing with both consequentialist and deontological principles within the just War tradition may be that the tradition originally belonged to neither category. Most basically, the medieval Just War doctrine (like so much of medieval Christian thought) was primarily concerned with virtues, not with absolute rules or expected consequences. A central concern in the writings of thinkers such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas is the effects warfare has not only on the victims but also on the combatants, that is, on their moral quality as human beings.

In this article we will be mostly concerned with deontological and consequentialist arguments based on the Just War tradition. However, the virtue-ethical concerns should not be completely forgotten. Indeed, a central argument against many forms of warfare is their effect on public and private morality. It is obvious that landmines which maim and kill innocent victims are brutal means of war which do little to raise the moral quality or self-esteem of those who deploy and use them.

The Just War tradition offers perspectives of three different kinds: deontological, consequentialist and virtue-ethical. This plurality is a strength in that it provides a balanced and diverse framework for assessing warfare. However, it also introduces questions and problems. Since there are different criteria by which to evaluate the acts of war, how should one order and weigh them? Are some of the Just War criteria more important than others? Do all the criteria need to be satisfied in order for the war to be judged just? If, for instance, the war is fought with means that are clearly unjust, what implication would this have for the total evaluation of the war? Some of the in hello criteria could arguably affect the discussion of the ad bellum principles. If these questions are to be treated properly, however, one must discuss both the relationship between all of the criteria within ad bellum and in hello, and the relationship between the two categories. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Since we are primarily concerned with the two in hello principles, the most pressing question is the relationship between these two principles. What is the normative status of the discrimination principle and the proportionality principle? Should they be regarded as absolute principles which cannot be violated, or is one of them more important than the other? On this question opinions diverge. Some argue that the principle of proportionality takes precedence over the discrimination principle, and that the latter should be applied flexibly in the ethics of war. The US Catholic Bishops reverse this priority, maintaining that non-combatant immunity is a rule which cannot be broken even for the sake of good consequences.7 We will start from the assumption that both criteria need to be satisfied in order for the warfare to be judged just. They are, in other words, equally valid criteria on which to base the evaluation of landmines. If they diverge, however, in their assessment of the permissibility of landmines, the discussion remains concerned with how one should balance the competing judgements.

Discrimination refers to the immunity in war of civilians and civilian property. Indirectly, it is also an argument for the protection of material property that has no military value. The discrimination principle is a deontological moral principle - it refers to something that is wrong, not on the basis of the consequences to which it leads, but on the basis of qualities of the act itself. It postulates that there are certain rules that constrain us in the pursuit of our ends, even if the ends are good.

Although there is consensus that discrimination is a core principle, there is considerable disagreement about where the dividing line between combatant and non-combatant runs. There are writers who argue that the distinction between those who are in uniform and those who are not is overstated, as most adults in a society at war will somehow contribute to the war effort.8 Hence, the best immunity one can expect stems from the fact that a combatant has a weak preference for attacking a non-combatant, while the latter has a strong preference not to be killed. This is a position that precludes independent moral considerations of warfare, leaving the conduct of war solely to the logic of the battlefield. The more common position, which also informs this article, is to draw a line between those who contribute directly to the war effort and those who do not. This would imply that civilians engaged in arms production are legitimate targets, while people involved in food production are. not, because the latter is not a war-specific activity. The underlying ethical reasoning is that the person directly involved in the war effort has given up his or her right to be protected. A practical argument can also be brought in: for the rule of distinction to be practicable in war, it must be as unambiguous as possible.

It is common to draw a line between international and internal wars when assessing the extent to which landmines have indiscriminate effects.9 In the 1990s the trend has been towards an increasing dominance of internal conflicts, and it appears that the use of landmines is more extensive in these than in international conflicts. The internal-international distinction tends to disguise the responsibility and the moral obligation of a state when fighting insurgency forces. To avoid this obscurity, we will instead make a distinction between regular and irregular forces. The former term denotes forces which are controlled by a state government; the latter, those that are not.

We will first look at regular forces and assess their landmine use on the basis of three distinct strategic scenarios that will cover most situations where largescale use of landmines is likely. We will then look at the use of landmines by irregular forces.

3.1 Defence against Regular Forces

The defensive qualities of landmines probably constitute the most central argument used in their favour. Anti-tank mines have a key function in hindering attacks by armoured vehicles, and anti-personnel mines were initially developed to protect anti-tank minefields. Defensive landmine strategy seeks to establish barriers that will both delay the attacking forces and canalize them into certain patterns that facilitate counterattack. Ideally, defensive landmine use should be compatible with minimizing civilian casualties, as the minelaying can take place in advance to allow for proper marking and mapping. Unfortunately, history proves otherwise. The minefields laid during World War II have caused considerable civilian suffering, particularly since the end of the war. It is by now a well-documented fact that regular armies rarely abide by their own standards for laying mines. Minelaying most often takes place under pressure, and it has proven difficult to restrict landmine use to what is prescribed in military field manuals. Once landmines are available, they are likely to be used in innovative ways.

3.2 Offensive against Regular Forces

The offensive use of landmines is primarily related to the development of equipment for remote delivery of landmines, which permits them to be spread within or behind enemy territory.10 There is a whole range of delivery systems, using mortar, artillery, helicopter or airplane. Under these circumstances, marking or mapping is not possible, at least not with a precision that would give it any practical value in terms of protecting civilians or facilitating clearance. Remotely delivered landmines were first used by US forces in Indochina, and later by Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In both cases the effects in terms of civilian casualties were disastrous. Increasingly, use of remotely delivered mines has become a part of the standard doctrine for attack. It is certainly not compatible with respect for the discrimination principle.

3.3 Operations against Irregular Forces

It appears also that landmines are increasingly becoming a weapon of choice of regular armies engaged in counterinsurgency operations. Because insurgency forces most often live and hide in local communities, it.is hard to imagine a counterinsurgency use of landmines that would not cause harm to civilians. In several instances, particularly where the other party was an irregular force with popular support, regular armies have used landmines to terrorize civilians (e.g. Angola, Afghanistan). In most cases where landmines have been used to terrorize civilians, they have been among an array of weapons applied within a broader strategy, including the indiscriminate use of artillery arid air bombardment. This has led to the argument that the problem is not use of landmines, but rather the intended targeting of civilians, which in any case violates accepted codes of conduct. However, landmines do pose a particularly serious threat to civilians. Furthermore, unlike conventional arms, landmines remain active after hostilities have ended.

Most regular armies have landmines as a part of their repertoire. Armies that use landmines have strict rules for how to lay them and register them, rules that comply with their interpretation of the Inhumane Weapons Convention. However, in practice, landmines are randomly laid, and they are not properly marked or registered.11 The empirical evidence from the battlefield shows that precautions which supposedly should protect civilians from landmines are impractical. In the heat of the battle, time-consuming mapping and marking are likely to be dropped, and available arms which can increase a soldier's chances of surviving another day are likely to be used.

3.4 Operations by Irregular Forces

Irregular forces often operate differently from regular forces when it comes to the weaponry resources they command, as well as their organization and professionalism. Therefore, such forces tend to lay mines in a wholly unsystematic way; rarely do they command the competence to lay systematic minefields and to mark them, and rarely can they afford enough mines to apply a conventional strategy. The result is that mines are often used as instruments of terror against a restricted target, since they are laid individually and in small numbers, and without any pattern that could help post-conflict localization. Furthermore, internal wars are often mobile and long-lasting, with the result that mines can come to be laid almost anywhere. In Angola and Mozambique, where landmines have been used extensively by both the government and the opposition forces, it has proven difficult to detect patterns in the presence of landmines, even after years of demining activity.12 This widespread and unsystematic presence of landmines constitutes a grave problem. One reason is that it makes demining operations much harder. Given current techniques of humanitarian clearance, it is the area that needs clearance that defines the size of the job rather than the number of landmines in it. A few scattered landmines can affect civilians as much as huge minefields. In Mozambique a village of some 10,000 people was depopulated because it was reputed to be heavily mined. The clearance team spent three months in clearing the area, and found four mines.

3.5 The Threat Survives the Cessation of Hostilities

While it is clear that landmines have indiscriminate effects in the midst of war, they also have long-term effects which are exclusively indiscriminate. The enormous minefields laid in the deserts of Libya and Egypt during World War II, for instance, still present a danger to people, and make large areas of land inaccessible. According to the best available estimates, 26,000 people now fall victim to landmines every year, and many of these die.13 A recent survey establishes that 590 of mine casualties in Afghanistan are fatal.14 The same survey identifies 4% of the victims as soldiers, and 18% of the casualties as having occurred during fighting. In other mine-affected countries where the war is over, landmines continue to kill and maim people every day. These are victims that by definition are non-combatants. The simple fact is that most landmine victims are not soldiers, and most are killed after the fighting is over.

Landmines also affect civilian infrastructure, since roads and installations which are civilian in peacetime become military targets in wartime. Military action against infrastructure of considerable military value is seen as legitimate. The problem is that by choosing mines as the instrument, the military action is effective after the conditions for legitimacy have passed. In internal wars, it is not uncommon that civilian property without any military relevance, such as living quarters, agricultural fields and irrigation systems, are mined. Parallel to their effect on civilian infrastructure, landmines can become an environmental problem, making large areas of land inaccessible.15 In Libya, explosive remnants of war, mainly landmines, have prevented the use of valuable agricultural land to the extent that it has significantly impeded development. In Afghanistan, the presence of landmines has forced nomads to alter their old migration routes, resulting in overgrazing and irreparable environmental damage. As is now well demonstrated in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mozambique and elsewhere, the presence of landmines is an evident obstacle to repatriation. The most heavily mined countries in the world also happen to be among the poorest. In addition to the direct infrastructural damage from the presence of landmines, there is strain on health care institutions from mine victims and on the resources that clearance operations demand. All this adds up to a severe obstacle to development.

Ideally, as suggested by the existing Inhumane Weapons Convention, mines laid should be properly marked and cleared soon after the termination of the conflict. In practice, this has proved to be an unrealistic expectation.16 Humanitarian mine-clearance is a time-consuming task, and there are no cases of extensive and prolonged landmine use where the problem has been solved.17 The United Nations estimates that one mine, which costs USD 3 to deploy, costs USD 300-1,000 to remove.18 There is also a considerable human cost involved -mine-clearance experience demonstrates that there will be people injured and killed while doing the job.

Clearly, then, the effects of landmines are indiscriminate. Landmines are most often applied in direct contravention of existing conventions, not rarely in a strategy whereby civilians or civilian property constitutes the main target. However, even when applied within constraints, landmines have proved to constitute an unacceptable threat to civilians. The indiscriminate effects of landmines in particular stem from the fact that they are activated by the victim, and have the potential to kill long after they were initially laid. But are the military arguments in favour of landmines so strong that these costs should be accepted?

The proportionality principle imposes general restraints on warfare. The military advantage gained by an action must clearly exceed the human costs associated with it. It is, however, not easy to compare currencies as different as military gains and human costs. If the proportionality principle is to offer any guidance, it requires a clear definition of the military utility of landmines, which then can be held against an assessment of the human costs.

An attempt to compare the military utility and the human costs of any weapon raises unavoidable problems. One of them is that the assessment will depend on which time-frame one uses. This is an aspect of the general problem of evaluating the consequences of a policy or an act. The assessment of an act might, for instance, be positive within a restricted time-frame, while the negative effects become visible only in the longer term. This difficulty of comparisons of short-term and long-term effects is especially clear in the case of landmines, since military benefits of landmine use will be relatively short term, while the bulk of the human cost will be long term.

A. P. V. Rogers, a prominent expert on international law, suggests that this problem can be solved by applying the same time-frame when estimating the pros and cons of an act, independently of the time-frame.19 This solution, however, is vulnerable to manipulation, since by restricting the time-frame, one downplays negative effects. Alternatively, one could aim to include all known effects in the assessment of an act, so that the time-frame is not defined a priori, but is derived from the effects relevant to the act under assessment. The latter position implies that a moral assessment of landmines will apply a longer time horizon than the one deduced from military strategy.

One way to reduce the problem of comparing human costs and military utility is to explore the utility of landmines at the most fundamental level - by examining the degree to which they have any military utility at all. The utility of anti-personnel landmines is, of course, a debated issue. The military have often argued that landmines serve as force-multipliers, greatly increasing the effectiveness of other means and strategies. Richard H. Johnson, whose military career includes weapons research, argues that mines have been a successful instrument of war, claiming that they provide a means to achieve economy of force, surprise, and security'.20 Contrary to these views, we will argue that the military advantages of landmines are very dubious.

4.1 Landmines for Regular Forces

The factors that restrain the effectiveness of landmines have tended to be underestimated. First, regular military units possess the capacity to breach minefields. As has been demonstrated in recent regular wars, for example in Kuwait in 1991, breaching a minefield delays advance less than was earlier assumed. While this is primarily related to the existence of advanced minebreaching equipment, it has also become apparent that if forces are sufficiently committed, they will advance through minefields knowingly accepting the casualties (e.g. the Iranians in the war against Iraq in the 1980s). Second, regular wars are rarely static, and with the mobility of the modern battlefield there is a high likelihood of becoming a victim of 'friendly' mines. Third, the costs of maintaining minefields are underestimated. Minefields should be covered by fire. A minefield requires surveillance and eventual replacing of mines when disrupted, with casualties among one's own forces ('friendly casualties') being likely. Thus, the final reason why the military utility of landmines should be questioned is that landmines pose a serious threat to one's own forces. For several military commanders, this has been the decisive point in arguing against their continued use.21

These factors downplaying the military utility of landmines are confirmed by several recent surveys. In a newly published report, a group of military officers engaged by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) discredits their utility. The report's conclusions, so far endorsed by 41 military officers from 17 countries, raise substantial doubt about the military value of antipersonnel landmines. New research on the military utility of anti-personnel mines also invalidates the force-multiplication thesis, and even casts serious doubt on the assumption that landmines play any significant military role. For example, in a report commissioned by the Pentagon, the Institute for Defense Analysis concludes that landmines are effective only under very specific circumstances which are very hard to sustain.22

4.2 Landmines for Irregular Forces

It is clear that landmines, also called the poor man's arms, are a weapon of choice for many insurgency forces, primarily because they are cheap and easily available. However, in internal wars the battlefield is even more mobile than in conventional wars, and what is stated above about the risk of friendly casualties is at least as relevant here. The crucial difference is that regular armies consist of formally trained soldiers with routines and equipment to tackle the problem, while insurgency armies do not. Therefore, casualties happen more frequently to the fighters of internal wars, and mine warfare has proven relatively efficient when applied by regular forces in counterinsurgency operations. The least prepared of all are the civilians, who often continue to live in the areas where the fighting is going on; they often become the major targets of war, and landmines constitute an efficient way of terrorizing them. Landmines can also be efficient in undermining popular support, which is a crucial factor in all internal wars. Reportedly, the Philippine government has abstained from responding to the landmine strategy of opposition forces with similar means, because it feared decreased popularity.23

The conclusion for irregular forces is that landmines are rarely of significant utility. They have negative effects through friendly casualties and by affecting civilian support. The net result in terms of efficiency might become negative. The situation where landmines best demonstrate military utility is their use by regular forces in a counterinsurgency strategy.

4.3 The Bottom Line

Our discussion about whether or not landmines have proportional effects has been based on recent assessments of their military effectiveness. It is argued that the positive effects of landmines are marginal at best, and in certain instances might cause friendly casualties to the extent that their net effect must be regarded as negative. In internal wars, landmines might be more effective, but this is so because they are intentionally applied in violation of the discrimination principle. Furthermore, the calculus of their effects is altered once the damage done to popular support is considered. Hence, the case for landmines can be refuted with the proportionality argument. This position is furthermore enforced by what is said above about the soldier's obligation to minimize harm to civilians. Even if the effectiveness of landmines were so high that the proportionality clause was fulfilled, the indiscriminate effects of landmines should compel a military decision-maker to do everything possible to fulfil the mission with other, less indiscriminate means, even if that implied greater risk to his or her own forces.

The above discussion has attempted to apply concepts from the just War tradition to assess morally the case for a specific weapon, landmines. We believe the just War tradition offers guidance which may have a wider analytical application than has hitherto been appreciated. This has been demonstrated in the above discussion centred on the concepts of discrimination and proportionality.

The Just War concepts have potential for informing principled discussions on the battlefield. But for decisions to be principled, they need to be raised above the logic of the battlefield alone. This is what the Just War concepts try to do: They do not ignore the exigencies of military warfare, but attempt to place them within a general moral framework.

Much evidence points to the indiscriminate effects of landmines, both on civilian life and on civilian property and the environment. This applies to all wars where large-scale landmine operations have been used, whether by regular armies or by irregular forces. In internal conflicts, landmines have been used as an instrument to terrorize the civilian population. Although the indiscriminate effects of landmines in war are grave, an extension of the time horizon reinforces these effects. Landmines are special arms because they continue to operate after the termination of war, independently of the intention behind their placement. Their major indiscriminate effect relates to their delayed action.

Given that the extent of indiscriminate effects is large, landmines must have an enormous military utility to be justified. In this article, we have tried to confirm that such a utility does not exist. From a Just War point of view, however, that does not necessarily settle the matter. Two important questions remain: First of all, if it should turn out, in some specific situation, that the military utility of landmines can be confirmed - for instance, some especially dangerous enemy troops can be eliminated with the aid of a minefield, and other means are not available (an unlikely scenario, but not unthinkable) = can the use of landmines then be defended? Or are they as such unmoral and unjust? Our position is that the just War tradition all but outlaws landmines as such, since the grave side-effects seem to be impossible to eliminate completely. We therefore recommend a total outlawing of mines. Doing so would involve little or no loss of military utility and great gain to just warfare.

But another question remains: What if a war with a just cause and a just intention - the two most important ius ad bellum principles in the Just War tradition - has been fought with the aid of landmines or other clearly unjust means? In other words, one might ask whether a war which is fought by unjust means should not in retrospect be judged as unjust. One of the principles in ius ad bellum is the principle of proportionality. Much like the principle of proportionality in ius in bello, it asks whether the war does more good than harm. Should, for instance, a war fought in self-defence, one of the most widely accepted reasons for resorting to war, be judged just if the war is fought largely by unjust means? Like the proportionality criterion for the conduct of war, this criterion for the justice of resort to war runs into the problem of comparison. How should one compare the value of, for instance, liberty or self-determination with the human costs incurred by unjust means of war? Although such a comparison is extremely difficult, if not impossible, the question boils down to how much suffering one should accept before deeming the whole war morally wrong. We are prone to think that extensive use of landmines undermines the good a war might do.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

*The authors would .like to thank Dan Smith and Henrik Syse for helpful comments. Kristian Berg Harpviken acknowledges the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) for financing research underlying this article.

** Kristian Berg Harpviken is a Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Human. Geography, University of Oslo. He is also associated with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). Mona Fixdal works at PRIG on the project Ethics in International Affairs.

1 The full name of the protocol concerned with landmines is Amended Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices (Amended Protocol II), CCWCONF.I/14, Geneva, 1 May 1996.

2 Critics describe these changes as cosmetic. By permitting unmapped use of self-destructing or self-neutralizing mines, the protocol can be seen to condone the development of new equipment for the remote delivery of mines, which would greatly increase the minelaying capability of conventional armies. Furthermore, by including in its definition only those weapons which are designed 'primarily' to be released by the victim, the convention opens the way for the development of new types of dual-purpose arms whose landmine function is only 'secondary'.

3 Against efforts to ban particular means of war, it has often been argued that banning contributes to legitimization of other means. However, to say that landmines are worse than most other types of weaponry is not to say that other types of weaponry are good. We would argue that if the current effort to delegitimize landmines succeeds, it will be a major breakthrough for arms control in general, as it would be the first time that a weapon with a wide application has been ruled out.

4 It is common to distinguish between anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines. This article applies mainly to anti-personnel mines, and it is those whose banning has been recently proposed in the context of a revision of the Inhumane Weapons Convention and the ongoing Ottawa Process. Recent trends in mine warfare, such as the development of hybrid mines (anti-tank mines that can be adjusted for release by a person) and minelaying equipment combining both types of mines, make the distinction increasingly blurred. Furthermore, weapons which are effectively landmines are sometimes categorized otherwise, such as the 'sub-munitions' used by the US army in Laos. See Rae McGrath, Landmines: The Legacy of Conflict (Oxford: Oxfam, 1994), p. 6.

5 It is disputed whether the Just War tradition provides arguments against developing or including a particular weapon in a military strategy. On one side are those who argue that specific types of weapons are intrinsically bad and should therefore be prohibited from use. An extreme variety of this argument is that modern war, with its technological sophistication, has consequences so severe that war must be avoided at any price. On the opposite side are those who argue that no weapon is intrinsically bad; only certain uses of weapons are. The latter position has informed most efforts at arms control, including the international, regulations on nuclear arms and incendiary weapons. Few available technologies have been banned from all use; the exceptions are dumdum bullets and chemical and biological weapons.

6 The Just War tradition is commonly seen as Western, dating back to the writings of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. The tradition was further developed by Vitoria and SuArez in the 16th century and Grotius, often regarded as the father of international law, in the 17th century. We will not discuss the history of the tradition here. However, a major reason for using it as a starting point in analysing the ethical side of landmines is that it can be seen as representing a nearly universal debate about the ethics of war, summing up key aspects of war ethics in Western and non-Western societies.

Furthermore, the principles of just War become increasingly relevant through the ongoing global. diffusion of international law.

7 For the first argument, see, for example, William O'Brian, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981). The views of the Catholic Bishops are found in The US Catholic Bishops, 'The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. The Pastoral Letters on War and Peace', in Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., just War Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

8 See Nicholas Fotion & Gerard Elfstom, Military Ethics (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 200.

9 While we are here applying the concept of internal wars, so as to include both insurgency and counterinsurgency operations, others have made the distinction between regular armies and insurgent forces. One example of the latter is the US Department of State, which applies the terms 'Standard Usage' and 'Terror Mining', implying that the latter is a strategy used only by guerrillas and terrorists in anti-government campaigns (US Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines, Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1993, pp. 13-14). Practice reveals that this distinction is flawed.

10 Richard H. Johnson, 'Why Mines? A Military Perspective', in Kevin M. Cahill, ed., Clearing the Fields: Solutions to the Global Land Mines Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 33.

11 The International Committee of the Red Cross has recently investigated the use of antipersonnel (AP) landmine use in 26 conflicts from 1940 to the present, and concludes: 'Although the continued use of AP landmines is justified by the belief that they can be used "correctly", publicly available historical records do not support that case. On the contrary, such evidence as is available is most often of "incorrect" use, whether by intention or inadvertence or because of the impracticability of observing specific rules in the heat of battle. Nor do such sources provide analytical evidence of the military utility of AP mines in actual battle.' International Committee of the Red Cross, Antipersonnel Landmines: Friend or Foe? A Study of the Military Use and Effectiveness of Antipersonnel Mines (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1996), p. 26.

12 Kristian Berg Harpviken, 'Landmines in Southern Africa: Regional Initiatives for Clearance and Control', Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 18, no. 1, April 1997, pp. 83108.

13 US Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1994), p. 1.

14 Shawn Roberts & Jody Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Lnndmines (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 1995Y.

15 Rogers has argued that landmines and other remnants of war do not always constitute an environmental threat, and may even contribute to preservation by hindering human access; see A. P. V. Rogers, Law on the Battlefield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 118. Rogers might be able to find cases that substantiate his point, but, in general, landmines do constitute a serious post-conflict environmental problem. Furthermore, who wants landmines to be an instrument of environmental protection?

16 Until recently minimal attention has been paid to humanitarian mine-clearance, while more has been invested in military clearance. Military and humanitarian clearance have different requirements, and equipment from the former is rarely applicable to the latter. In contrast to military operations, humanitarian ones (1) require that whole areas be cleared (not only a lane); (2) have a clearance rate approaching 100°10 (military clearance, down to 80%); and (3) require that costs be restrained. In addition, tempo is less crucial in humanitarian operations.

17 A partial exception is Kuwait, where Iraqi forces placed an estimated 9 million mines, most of which are now cleared. The Kuwait operation was facilitated by systematic and predictable patterns of landmines, easy terrain and plentiful financial resources. Even so, up to 500 civilians and 50 mine-clearers had been killed by April 1993. See Brian Haliwell & Lance Malin, 'Demining - An Operator's View', in International Committee of the Red Cross, Symposium on Anti-personnel Mines, Report (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1993).

18 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 'The Land Mine Crisis: A Humanitarian Disaster', Foreign Affairs, vol. 73., no. 5, September /October 1994, p. 11.

19 Rogers, note 15, p. 18.

20 Johnson, note 10, p. 25.

21 Former US Marine Corps Commandant Alfred Gray, Jr., is one example: 'We kill more Americans with our mines than we do anybody else. We never killed many enemy with the mines .... What the hell is the use of sowing all this if you're going to move through it next week or next month?... 1 know of no situation in the Korean War, nor in the five years I served in Southeast Asia, nor in Panama, nor in Desert Shield-Desert Storm where our use of mine warfare truly channelized the enemy and brought them into a destructive pattern.' Human Rights Watch Arms Project & Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 339.

22 Stephen D. Biddle, Julia L. Mare & Jaeson Rosenfeld, The Military Utility of Landmines: Implications for Arms Control (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses 1994), pp. 70-71. The doubt about the effectiveness of landmines raises a question about why regular armies have proven so hesitant in accepting stronger restrictions on their use. The limitations to their effectiveness seem to be so strong that even a unilateral ban should be acceptable to many countries. If the limited utility of landmines is accepted, we see three possible reasons for the hesitation. First, it might reflect a general resistance to respond to public pressure by abstaining from certain means of warfare, with the perception that this could lead to increased pressure on other types of weapons. Second, there might be a certain inertia operating - insight into the human costs of landmines is relatively new, and insight into the limitation of military utility is even more recent. Third, there is a lack of alternatives with a proven battle record.

23 International Committee of the Red Cross, note 11, p. 32.