Landmines are an ever present issue in Cambodia. My neighbor found two unexploded grenades on her property recently. This is quite common in Cambodia, however she has a horse and I have bread and loved horses for many years - the image that flashed through my mind when she told me about the grenades is not worth describing!
What is tragic even my overactive imagination pales in comparison to the damage and misery actively caused by landmines all over the world! It goes on in Cambodia today and to injure the poor and profit the rich.
Anti personnel landmines are an abomination and their effects are appalling - we shall be looking at this shortly. However what is always interesting is to look at who is manufacturing, dealing and ultimately profiting from the production of these weapons of destruction.
Landmines: Past, Present & Future...
The first use of landmines can apparently be traced back to 1277 by the Song dynasty in China against the Mongols. The first landmines in Europe were in the 1500s. These explosives have been around a long time and are still being used. Surely in 2018 we can ban the production and use of these appalling weapons in warfare.
Landmines kill indiscriminately. Once they are laid even the people who placed them often can't remember where they are. Clearing the land from landmines is slow and expensive. Sounds like a good auxiliary income for those producing the mines in the first place - but perhaps this is just my cynical side? However with an expenditure of $479.5 million (much managed by international organizations)to clear mines in 2016 this is not small change! How about half a billion spent in one year on a global campaign to completely eradicate landmine production. That might change things!
Although figures are hard to get and not current it is widely estimated that the number of casualties from landmines globally is in the hundreds of thousands. The vast majority of these victims were civilians, many of them children. Studies have shown that males are more inclined to handle unexploded devices and young males account for a significant portion of landmine victims.
Landmines explode using various methods. Antitank mines even spew jets of molten metal. A child or young adult who has his limbs blown off by landmines has little or no recourse to the producers and dealers of these mines - who have all profited from blood money.
Landmines In Cambodia
It would be remiss of me not to discuss Cambodia when talking about landmines. The situation here is one of the worst in the world and has wreaked devastating consequences for thousands. Cambodia has the highest rate of amputees from landmines in the world with an estimated 40,000! 😢
There are still an estimated 6 million landmines and other pieces of unexploded ordinance in Cambodia. How many more amputees can Cambodian doctors expect with those kind of figures. The majority of the victims in Cambodia are from rural areas and usually financially disadvantaged. It can sometimes take days to get to hospital after a landmine injury. In 2002 it was estimated that 20% of Cambodian villages were still contaminated by minefields and/or cluster bomb areas. These poor people can't even go about daily village life without worrying about being blown up.
In countries that have developing economies most families survive by working together to support each other. There are mostly no pension or insurance funds. The elderly are looked after by their children. With such a high rate of landmine injuries for young Cambodian men the lasting socioeconomic impacts of landmines reach far into the future beyond the initial explosion.
Countries in blue have ratified or acceded to the Ottawa Treaty.
What Is Happening About This Situation?
Obviously the use of landmines is immoral because it represents indiscriminate killing of civilians and children. Sadly these are now referred to in war as collateral damage. I don't believe that view point and I am completely against any production or sale of landmines.
Fortunately I am not the only one who feels this way. Currently 164 states have ratified or acceded to the Ottawa Treaty which is The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction. The full list of who has ratified or acceded to the treaty can be found here but what is most interesting is the countries which have not joined at the bottom!
Lets have a look at some of them!
Who Profits & Conspires To Continue The Production & Sales Of Landmines?
Right, this is the nub of the conversation. There is a lot of money being made by governments, military manufacturers and arms dealers at the expense of the poor. For their suffering they eat in the best restaurants and travel in private jets.
A look at the countries which have not implemented the Ottawa Treaty is very telling and can be found on this page but here they are anyway:
Statistics on the value of the global landmine industry are hard to get but needless to say it is worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars! There is big money in maiming civilians! In 1997 Human Rights Watch reported that:
"Human Rights Watch has identified many electronics companies that have sold millions of tiny components for use in antipersonnel mines. Many of these components can also be used in any number of consumer appliances and products, from pagers to refrigerators. Human Rights Watch has asked U.S. companies to make every effort toinsure that their products are not used in antipersonnel mines, so that the same chips that power children's computers in the U.S. do not end up in landmines that might one day blow up children in another country."
"The forty-seven companies are located in twenty-three states. Six of the companies are foreign-owned. Individual companies have profited from landmine contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Alliant Techsystems, in Hopkins, Minnesota, appears to be the largest recipient of landmine production contracts. DoD records show that Alliant won $336,480,000 in antipersonnel and antitank landmine production contracts from 1985 to 1995. Alliant is also the parent company of Accudyne Corporation, in Janesville, Wisconsin, which reaped an estimated $150 million in landmine production contracts in the same time period."
With the majority of the world trying to ban the use of these barbaric weapons that kill and maim civilians and children, the countries that are not joining this movement are likely to have some hand in the profit from this industry. These countries should be shamed into changing their policies. More information on the industry should be made available to the public. After all it is the public who is maimed and killed!
The US has been notably slow moving on this issue. President Clinton began talking about it in 1994 but until now nothing seems to have happened. Perhaps the military industrial complex is objecting or maybe they just need time to move into more profitable industries! Either way that would be a conspiracy to stop the US joining the Ottawa Treaty even if the majority of the population was in favor of it - which I suspect they might be.
Sadly again and again we see the same thing. The actions of the few are conducted in the dark for enormous profit while the many poor suffer and die. The issue of land mines is notable in this respect. Hundreds of millions are spent to kill and maim civilians and then hundreds of millions more are spent through international organizations to clean them up. Seems to me to be running on the spot with a small group of people profiting! Even the internet provides woefully dated information on this subject. We need more information and more action internationally.
Research more & write more! 😃
Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Jockey votes 4: @teamsteem, @ausbitbank, @aggroed, @timcliff, @drakos.
