Terror beneath the soil

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily.com international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido has traveled to some of the world's most land mine-infested areas. Based on his first-hand exploration of places like Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Korea and Southern Africa -- all beset with land mines -- LoBaido filed this exclusive report.

When this reporter traveled to Cambodia to investigate a story about Pol Pot's notorious "Killing Fields," the land mine issue was on the periphery of that dangerous adventure. That is -- until I met "Hoppy Boy."

Hoppy Boy had no arms or legs and hopped to and fro around the French caf? where I often sat organizing my notes. I put some money in Hoppy Boy's pocket, then watched with disbelief as some rowdy United Nations soldiers picked up the boy and placed him on their long table and made him hop around between their glasses of beer.

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"Hoppy Boy"

While the U.N. troops have spread AIDS and pedophilia in Cambodia, not to mention frequenting countless brothels, somehow this struck me as a new low, even for them. Yet they did give Hoppy Boy a good bit of money, and so while it was done in very poor taste, the whole spectacle was ultimately profitable for the boy.

Later that night I sat in my hotel and watched via satellite an outer-space science fiction movie called "Screamers." The film depicts a future battle on a planet far from Earth, where the "Alliance," a group of scientists and mining engineers, battle the "New Economy Block" for control of a new energy source. The Alliance is losing the war when members invent a new type of land mine called a "screamer." The mine is mobile and moves under the ground, tracking its victims. When it attacks, it saws off limbs with a sort of high-tech circular saw -- sort of like they sell at Sears. Alliance soldiers wear a special wrist "tab" which projects a signal that puts a particular soldier's heartbeat off by one beat. That way, the "screamer" is unable to detect Alliance soldiers.

So, while a sci-fi film depicts a fanciful "reinvention" of man's first weapon -- the sword -- into a mobile sword/land mine, the history of land mines is almost as fantastic. It is a story that stretches back to the American Civil War.

Back then, they were called "land torpedoes," while modern mines had their genesis during World War II. Land mines were deployed in North Africa and in the European theater and were also widely used during the Korean War. During Vietnam, mines were placed around villages and sometimes airdropped. India used mines during its wars with Pakistan (1947-48, 1965 and 1971), as well as in her border war with China in 1972. Other wars that have featured a liberal use of land mines include Chad, Central America (especially El Salvador), the Balkans, Desert Storm, the Iran-Iraq War, Arab-Israeli wars, Croatia, Bosnia (about 6 million mines deployed) and Afghanistan.

I thought about Hoppy Boy and wondered if he had been born deformed or crawled onto a set of land mines. Within days, I had traveled around Phnom Penh and witnessed countless amputees and others who had been stricken by the land mines. Even the magnificent Temples of Angkor Wat -- one of the wonders of the ancient world -- were ringed by scores of land mines. And so began a seemingly never-ending pantheon of land mine victims that flashed before my eyes, as I traveled throughout Korea, Angola, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq/Kurdistan and Lebanon.

A global epidemic

Among the war-torn countries most affected by mines today are Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bosnia, Croatia, Vietnam, Mozambique, Iraq, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Every 22 minutes a person is killed or maimed by a land mine. Land mines cannot discriminate between the footfall of a soldier and that of a child. Indeed, 80 percent of all land-mine victims are innocent civilians, and between 30 and 40 percent are children under the age of 15.

Compared to an adult land mine-victim amputee, who needs a new prosthesis every three to five years, a growing child needs a new artificial limb every six to 12 months. Fewer than one in four land-mine amputees is fitted with a proper prosthesis.

Today, in Angola, the land mine problem is scarcely believable. There are more land mines than soldiers. Farmers are scared to plow their fields, so there is famine. The late Princess Diana of Wales visited Angola, and her plea for a global land mine ban nearly succeeded, due the global outpouring of emotion over her death.

The Soviet anti-personnel mines are particularly nasty. Former South African Defense Force Commander Bobby Boyse, who fought in the border war against Soviet, Cuban and East German troops in the 1980s, told WorldNetDaily that the Soviet mines were "designed to maim and not kill. Thus, they were and remain both a physical and psychological instrument of terror."

In Zimbabwe, 1.5 million land mines were laid during the Rhodesian Bush War.

On the other side of the world, land mines have other uses. On the Burma-Thailand border, various drug armies lay land mines to protect their crops. Elephants, who are fed the drug YaBaa or speed, to make them work harder and faster while logging, sometimes step on the land mines. A few lucky elephants will later be fitted with metal shoes.

Sister Regina de los Santos, who works with the persecuted Karen hill tribes of Burma, told WND, "Land mines are the one thing that really scare me. The children are so afraid of them. Burma is an example of an economy that was once based on natural resources like jade, oil and rice -- turned over to things purely evil, like weapons sales and drugs."

In Cambodia, various Khmer Rouge generals, who are de facto warlords, lay mines around their gem quarries, timber-laden forests or arms caches to protect them from would-be interlopers, thieves and rival factions.

In Laos, ex-French Foreign Legion paratrooper and now Medicine Sans Frontiers doctor Marcel Lemaire told WorldNetDaily, "There is so much UXO [unexploded ordinance] in Laos from the American bombings of the Vietnam war era that it defies quantification. More bombs were dropped on Laos per capita during that war than any other nation in human history. Children hunt for scrap metal they will sell for a few cents with the hope of renting the latest Hollywood videos. Sometimes in their search they get blown to pieces. It's horrendous. We need more prosthetic limbs. More than that, we need increased funding for de-mining efforts."

Laotians find many creative uses for empty bomb casings, like fence posts and pigs troughs.

While touring Laos, WND found innumerable empty bomb casings used by the people as pig troughs, benches and fence posts.

The proliferation of UXO and land mines spreads far beyond Laos. An estimated 60-70 million anti-personnel land mines are deployed in 68 countries. Sadly, most of these mines are hidden beneath the soil of nations in the developing world.

The International Treaty to Ban Land Mines was signed by many nations, but not the United States. Then-President Bill Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen withstood tremendous pressure after the death of Princess Diana to de-mine the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea.

North Korea has 1.1 million troops on the North side of the DMZ, and Cohen was resolute in saying, "Seoul is indefensible without land mines."

"If and when North and South Korea reunify, then the DMZ will be turned into a sort of nature preserve -- only if we can dig up the land mines," South Korean Military Intelligence officer Choi Dong Min told WorldNetDaily.

"For now, the land mines must remain for the safety of the American troops based here and for all South Koreans. It is a sad fact of life. Who can say, `I am for land mines'? Land mines kill children. Land mines maim children. Yet they are a defense against the North Korean dictator and his masses of troops, until such time the North Koreans are ready to embrace capitalism. …"

Can U.S. help solve land mine problem?

Clinton said he "bitterly regretted" that the U.S. did not sign the land mine treaty in December 1997. He described his failure to prevail on the Canadian-led land mine-banning initiative as a major political defeat.

"It is one of the bitterest regrets of the last eight years that we didn't sign it," Clinton told the Ottawa Citizen in a recent interview.

Clinton blamed the way the land mine treaty landed on Congress' doorstep for its failure to pass: "Emotions were running high. It was in the wake of (Princess) Diana's death. The way it came up to Congress, there was no way."

"A group of countries wanted to put the blame on us," Clinton added, "countries that have never had to deal with land mines. But then, when it comes to a conflict, like Kosovo, they'll call on us to go in."

During Clinton's last month in office, 100 members of Congress released a letter expressing support for the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and asked him to take steps to move the U.S. to a comprehensive ban on antipersonnel mines. Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Jack Quinn, R-N.Y., and chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee, led the fight.

Members of Congress who signed the letter asked the White House to consider the following five steps to move the U.S. closer to joining the Mine Ban Treaty:

Announce a permanent ban or moratorium on the production of antipersonnel land mines;

Accelerate the production and deployment of the "Man-in-the-Loop" alternative mine system on the condition of removing a battle override feature that is inconsistent with the Convention;

Demand that the Pentagon identify and obtain other alternatives to antipersonnel land mines that are compliant with the 1997 Convention, setting a specific time frame for the Pentagon to field these alternatives;

Cease development and production of the RADAM (Remote Area Denial Artillery Munition) mixed-mine system, which is not compliant with the 1997 Convention;

Establish plans, procedures and timetables for destruction of the over 11 million antipersonnel land mines in the U.S. arsenal and place in inactive status the ADAM and other APLs immediately, with intent to destroy as soon as possible.

The Bush administration has thus far made no signal as to whether or not it will join up with the international land mine-ban effort.

"Make no mistake, America must take the lead in working on halting the spread of land mines on the global stage. A re-unified Korea would help immensely toward this goal," said Lemaire, who works in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in mobile clinics.

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.S. State Department, 137 countries signed "The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on Their Destruction" (The Mine Ban Treaty) which went into force on March 1, 1999. The United States, Russia and China did not sign the treaty. The United States has a stockpile of approximately 11 million anti-personnel mines -- the fourth largest anti-personnel land mine arsenal in the world.

In the years 1969 to 1992, the U.S. exported 4.4 million anti-personnel mines. The U.S. now bans the export of land mines, but is still one of 16 countries that refuse to halt production of anti-personnel mines. No less than 47 U.S. companies have been involved in the manufacture of anti-personnel mines. Nineteen of these companies have agreed to renounce future involvement.

"There are economic, social and agricultural problems that are directly caused by land mines and UXO," Lemaire told WND.

"What is needed is intense international training of de-mining units. The help of those who buried the mines in the first place would be of great help. I've been on both sides of this issue, and I can tell you, you don't want to have to look into the eyes of a child who's just lost a limb. It is the epitome of evil."