CRUSADE AGAINST MINES

By Terry McCarthy

Crouched in the undergrowth around the village of Samaki in northern Cambodia are several dozen men wearing protective vests and visors, looking like alien invaders. They skim the ground in front of them with metal detectors, and occasionally one raises an arm, a whistle is blown, and everyone moves back carefully. The land mine just discovered is detonated remotely, an explosion jogs the ground, and the field officer gives the all-clear. Then the Cambodians, who work for a British-based de-mining organization called Halo Trust, resume methodically clearing the heavily mined land around the village, one square foot at a time.

Lou Doeum, 45, a villager whose right hand was blown off several years ago when he tried to pick up a mine, smiles at the Halo de-miners. Five villagers have stepped on mines in the past three years. "We have to go into the forest to get bamboo shoots and wood," he says. "Everyone is scared of mines, but if we don't go, the pot is empty. So it is good that they come here to take away mines. Next we want them to clear a way to the water." He points with the stump of his arm at a pool surrounded by a thick necklace of mines.

Last week President Clinton, feeling the pressure of mounting public opinion, ventured into an area once declared off-limits by his Joint Chiefs. He announced that next month the U.S. will join Canadian-sponsored talks in Oslo on a worldwide ban of land mines. Clinton had been reluctant to go against the advice of the Pentagon, which says it still needs mines for defense reasons, but a highly visible campaign that included such figures as Princess Diana, General Norman Schwarzkopf and Elizabeth Dole persuaded the President to change his mind. A treaty is scheduled to be signed in Ottawa at the end of the year. Its effectiveness, however, is far from assured: two of the world's largest mine producers, China and Russia, will not take part in the talks, and the U.S. is demanding that an exception be made to allow it to continue using mines on the border between North and South Korea. Also, the Pentagon wants a major exception that would permit the military to continue intermingling antipersonnel mines with antitank mines to prevent enemy troops from approaching and easily disabling the larger mines. Clinton's decision to join the Ottawa process came abruptly, less than a week after the Pentagon was patiently explaining that the U.S. wouldn't join because the talks "do not involve other countries that have huge inventories and which actually export them." Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who has assembled 60 votes for his proposal to outlaw land-mine deployment by the year 2000, praised the switch, even with its caveats. "The Administration's come a long way toward my position in the last couple of days," he said.

Few people argue against the fundamental rightness of stigmatizing and ultimately trying to rid the planet of a weapon that maims and kills more than 2,000 people every month. But experts on the ground fear that the high-profile diplomatic campaign for a ban may detract from the less glamorous work of removing some of the millions of mines already planted.

"The problem is not land mines; the problem is casualties," says Paul Jefferson, a British mine clearer who was badly injured in a mine accident. "Princess Di and the like say it's very simple: ban land mines. I have every reason to hate mines, but I know it's not that simple." He says the key to reducing casualties is clearance. "De-mining can be done. It is not a black art."

Tore Skedsmo, who leads the de-mining unit of the U.N.'s Peacekeeping Operations and fully supports the ban, says that despite all the publicity, there is still a "desperate need" for more money for de-mining. "Sometimes I am frustrated at being among all these people who have made theoretical de-mining a nice way of living." Fewer than 10,000 de-miners are working around the world, the U.N. estimates.

Statistics inflated for their shock value have not helped the cause of mine clearing. The widely quoted figure of 100 million land mines worldwide would take 1,000 years to clear at current work rates, tempting many to think clearance is like counting grains of sand. But recent surveys are causing a drastic downward revision: in Bosnia the estimate has been reduced from 3 million to fewer than 1 million; in Cambodia estimates have dropped from 8 million to 4 million, and are expected to fall further. This does not mean minefields are less of a problem. On the contrary: unless mine clearance is given higher priority, treaty or no treaty, civilians in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique will continue clearing mines on their own, one leg at a time.