Approximately one out of every 256 Cambodians have lost one or more limbs to these devices. In Bosnia, George Focsaneanu, program manager for the U.N. Mine Action Center (MAC) at Sarajevo, estimates that it may take 20 years to remove all 1 to 3 million land mines in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In a recent talk in Washington on the global land mine problem, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Thomas McNamara said land mines from past wars "threaten the very processes of conflict resolution and democratization. A newly-formed government unable to show its people that it can improve their welfare and provide for their safety remains very fragile. Loss of confidence can threaten the stability of the peace process and potentially plunge the country back into conflict."
MOVING TOWARD A GLOBAL BAN
In 1996, the United States introduced a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for states to "pursue vigorously an effective, legally-binding international agreement to ban the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel land mines." Thirty-five other nations have since stopped the manufacture and export of these devices. By 1999, the more than four million remaining land mines in U.S. arsenals will be destroyed. The United States is also working through the United Nations to establish indigenous mine-clearance centers, and has contributed over $110 million for mine awareness and demining training programs in afflicted countries.
THE COST OF MINE CLEARANCE
The land mine threat is prolonged by the cost of eliminating them. These devices can be produced for $5 to $100. Finding and destroying them can cost 10 times that amount, depending on the concentration and type of mines in a given area, and the demining methods used. The more mines in a given area, the lower the individual cost of removal. Magellan Systems Director of Military Products Frank Houzvicka, who has trained mine-clearance teams in several countries, said some of these devices are nothing more than pipe bombs, grenades or old rockets wired for detonation. There are also the more powerful anti-tank mines.
Regardless of the type, finding and removing them, at least for humanitarian purposes, is largely dependent on conventional mine-clearing methods developed more than 50 years ago -- metal detectors and hand probes. The process is slow, labor-intensive and dangerous. It may be augmented by specially-equipped vehicles and dogs trained to sniff out explosives, said Houzvicka, "but it always comes down to the individual with a probe to actually go in and do the final clearance."
In his address, McNamara emphasized that countries devastated by years of conflict cannot pay the high cost of mine clearance. "If every cent of Cambodia's gross national product were spent only on mine clearance, it would still take at least five years to demine the country completely," he said.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Clearly, new technologies are needed to significantly reduce the cost of mine clearance and expedite the process with a greater margin of safety. The search for more advanced demining systems, said Focsaneanu, has become an international effort.
"Several countries are working on sensors that vary from the minimum metal-array detectors to ground-penetrating radar, infrared, and thermal-neutron sensors," he said. "The intent is to combine all of these technologies into a system that can distinguish mines from other objects in the ground. But this technology is at least five years away."
Whatever methods are developed, GIS and GPS -- now in use in Cambodia and other afflicted countries -- will be part of the solution.
BOSNIA
In Bosnia, demining is an essential element of the Dayton Peace Accords, and a requisite for the return and resettlement of refugees. The U.N. MAC at Sarajevo is responsible for supervising the program and coordinating all mine awareness, training and demining programs with the host government and other international agencies.
Opened in July 1996, the center is supported by World Bank loans, contributions from the European community and from bilateral donations, including a $15 million U.S. program for equipment, salary, training and operational costs of local deminers. Actual mine clearance is carried out by trained locals, usually demobilized soldiers. Since the intent is to develop an indigenous mine-clearing capacity as soon as possible, the U.N. Secretary General has charged the center with completing training within one year. At that time, the government of Bosnian-Herzegovina will take over all MAC programs, with continued financial and technical support from the international community.
GIS/GPS APPLICATIONS
Although GIS and GPS are already in use in other countries, GIS has just recently become available in Bosnia, with a U.S. donation of 50 MapInfo Professional GIS units. However, it will take time for the MAC to develop full GIS capability. Other than the accompanying manuals and information gleaned from the Internet, local personnel have no access to GIS training. "They are totally on their own," said MapInfo Vice President John Haller. In spite of this, local MAC personnel have already built an application to meet their needs.
Focsaneanu said the first task has been developing a complete GIS mine database. This involves collecting information from a wide range of sources -- conducting preliminary surveys based on talks with municipalities, demobilized soldiers and local citizens.
"Minefield records provided by the warring factions are usually not very good and not positioned properly on maps," he said. "We have about 50 percent of the records, which include 17,500 minefields. About 12,000 of these contain less than 10 mines." Some minefields are also found
when people inadvertently walk into mined areas.
As GIS skills progress, local MAC personnel will need to raster-scan maps and convert elevation contours, forestry, agricultural and industrial lands and transportation infrastructure to vectors; produce overlays of suspected, known, and cleared minefields, including the number, location and types of mines; and print specialized maps for mine-clearance personnel, as well as maps for education and mine-awareness programs. For base maps, the center is using DMA 1:50,000 scale maps and some of the international data provided on MapInfo CD-ROMs -- road networks, city locations, census polygons and political boundaries -- included with Professional GIS.
MAPPING MINEFIELDS
MAC is currently mapping minefield perimeters using Magellan 1000 Series GPS receivers. Individual mines, however, are marked with tape stakes. Once a suspected minefield is located, the center sends in a survey team to identify the general area using conventional minefield clearing techniques -- magnetometers (metal detectors), hand probes and dogs, if they have them.
The deminers look for disturbed ground, and in some cases probe with a bayonet or non-metallic stick. After the team locates and marks the exact positions of the mines with tape stakes, they walk the boundary of the area with the GPS, recording data in a mobile file, and staking the perimeter with field tape. The file goes through differential post processing, producing an accuracy of 1-2 meters, and is loaded into the GIS mine database to be used as an overlay on a topographic or local-area detail map.
"A mine-clearing team then decides whether or not they are going to go in and recover the mines -- always an interesting activity -- where you dig it out and hope it's not booby-trapped, or put detonation charges on them and blow them in place," Houzvicka said. The process is dangerous, time-consuming and requires total concentration; teams can work safely only for a few hours at a time. After an area is cleared, the database is revised to produce a cleared-area overlay.
CENTIMETER ACCURACY
When survey-grade GPS units with realtime differential correction become available, mine-clearance teams will be able to mark and map individual mine positions with centimeter precision. Whether this will expedite mine-clearing operations with a greater margin of safety remains to be seen. For mapping minefield perimeters, survey teams can use the less expensive GPS units with sub-meter accuracies and still have a wide margin of safety. Systems now en route to the Bosnia MAC include survey-grade GPS field units and base stations from Trimble Navigation and sub-meter GPS units and base stations from Magellan Systems.
PROBLEMS
According to Focsaneanu, most of the problems associated with mine clearance are financial. "We encourage donors to put money into the program and get it in place as quickly as possible," he said. "Land mines tend to stay lethal in the ground for up to 75 years, creating an environment of war long after the fighting has stopped, so there is an urgency to remove them. A problem we have in Bosnia and Herzegovina that is different from those in other countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Laos and Cambodia is the weather. There, they can work 12 months of the year. We can work only seven to eight months because of the winter. Also, we're in Europe, where demining is much more expensive. The average salary for deminers is $700 - $800 per month, compared to $100 - $150 per month in those other countries."
GIS and GPS will eventually become familiar tools in the demining process, but their most effective application will undoubtedly be as integrated elements in advanced technologies designed specifically for land-mine detection. The sooner such systems are developed, the sooner people in afflicted countries will be able to put the war behind them and get on with rebuilding their lives and communities.
Bill McGarigle is a freelance writer specializing in communication and information technologies. E-mail:
*
