Mrs Kylie Russell, widow of SAS Sargent Andrew Russeli - the only Australian killed in the Afghan deployment at the Australian War memorial where she placed a pansy beside her husbands name. PICTURE: Courtesy of Uniting Church.

26th November, 2004

DAVID ADAMS

SAS Sergeant Andrew Russell was only 33-years-old when an anti-tank mine left over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan exploded beneath his Land Rover as drove in February, 2001.

In Canberra last week to sign a petition by anti-landmine activists, his widow Kylie Russell added her voice to those calling for a ban on anti-vehicle mines.

“Anti-vehicle mines are indiscriminate killers,” she said. “I do not want any other family anywhere to have to suffer the same loss as my family has.”

The lethal weapons are estimated to have claimed at least 159 lives - including that of Sergeant Russell - in the two years between January 2001 and January 2003 alone with the latest victims including two Save the Children workers who were killed when they were blown up by an anti-vehicle mine in Darfur, Sudan last month.

While under the Ottawa Convention - signed by 152 countries - the use, stockpile and manufacture of victim-activated anti-personnel mines is banned, there are no global conventions dealing specifically with anti-vehicle mines.

It is, according to Dr Mark Zirnsak, director of the Justice and International Mission unit of the Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania and national co-ordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines Australian Network, an untenable situation - after all “dead is dead”.

He believes the omission is a loophole which needs to be closed and is calling on the Australian Government to pave the way for a future without landmines by amending existing landmine legislation to include anti-vehicle mines.

Dr Zirnsak says that while the international treaty banning the use of anti-personnel mines has “made a real difference” with a reduction in the number of countries where there are landmine manufacturers and a significant drop in the annual number of deaths from landmines - to about 8,000 last year - the lack of a convention concerning anti-vehicle mines remains a concern.

“What we’re concerned about is that we’ve got some states including Australia - and this is a reversal of Australia’s previous position - that they’re basically saying ‘Well if you call a mine an anti-vehicle mine and that’s what it’s designed for, then it’s not banned under the treaty even if a person steps on it and it goes off’.”

While it has been estimated only four per cent of mines in the ground are anti-vehicle mines - Angola is a country noted for them - Dr Zirnsak says the network was seeing a disturbing trend in more recent conflicts in which the proportion of anti-vehicle mines was rising.

“So, for example, mine clearance from Iraq and mine clearance from Kuwait itself shows us that 35 per cent of mines laid there were anti-vehicle mines. In the Kosovo conflict, 60 per cent of mines dug up were.”

Dr Zirnsak recently co-authored a report with Kerryn Clarke which contained the results of a survey of government attitudes to anti-vehicle mines. Sent to 141, 45 nations responded including Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and most Scandinavian countries.

Of those countries that responded, only five - Seychelles, the Philippines, Malta, Costa Rica and the Czech Republic - indicated they would support or be willing to consider supporting a ban on anti-vehicle mines while a further 13 - including Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden - said they would support restrictions.

Dr Zirnsak says the results were disappointing to some degree. “There were some countries we would have hoped might have written back to us and added their voices to that line because they had been very positive in previous public forums - for example countries like Brazil and Mexico.”

But he says those countries that did respond positively would help to keep the pressure on other nations and the negotiations taking place in government forums.

“It’s a small sign of hope. It was fairly similar I guess when the whole issue of starting a ban of anti-personnel mines came up.”

While the death-toll from landmines is shocking enough, Dr Zirnsak says the bigger impact are their indirect effects. “It is the closing of roads, the stopping of aid operations - those sorts of humanitarian impacts. Most people would say that the number of people who die from the indirect effects of landmines is many, many times greater than the number of people directly killed.”

“I’ve heard the argument made that ‘Well, the number of people killed directly by anti-vehicle mines is a fraction of the road toll sort of stuff’. That’s true but the indirect effects are much greater and the other thing of course is if you’re one of the people that is killed by them, it’s no consolation that more people die on the road.”

Then there is the fact that mines can claim innocent victims well after a conflict is ended. Dr Zirnsak says that one of the proposals from the United States is that anti-vehicle mines be developed with a self-destruct or self-deactivation mechanism.

He says that while it’s a “step-forward”, these were the same arguments put forward at the time when the ban on anti-personnel mines was discussed.

“The reason that was defeated on anti-personnel mines applies the same for anti-vehicle mines - no self-destruction...mechanism is 100 per cent effective.”

Not only that, but those clearing minefields may not be able to tell the difference between a live and a deactivated mine, meaning the same level of resources is required.

“All the costs and time involved is the same in clearing it,” he says. “It can still mean people won’t farm their land until it’s cleared.”