It is unlikely that many of the New Yorkers driving the 195,000 vehicles that cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge each day realize that up to 14,000 live anti-aircraft rounds may lie submerged just below them, in only 20 feet of water. The bridge, the longest in the Americas, spans the Narrows channel that passes from Gravesend Bay between Brooklyn and Staten Island and into the New York Harbor. In an academic article published in this month’s Marine Technology Society Journal, I look at how the risk of these munitions has played out in New York City’s political context.

Risk and its management are social phenomena, constructed through dynamic political, cultural, and economic systems. Those wishing to publicize and manage the risk posed by legacy underwater munitions would benefit from an awareness of the political context in which they work. The interaction of various local, national, and global political interests will enable certain kinds of risk management action while also constraining others. This article examines such issues through a case study of politics of underwater munitions in New York City’s Gravesend Bay and Narrows. The impetus to deal with these munitions has largely come from their politicization by local civilians: politicians, environmental activists, lawyers, and journalists. By contrast, risk management actions by national-level military institutions have consistently functioned to depoliticize the issue by framing it technocratically. This illustrates a common political tension in risk management. Public mobilization raises awareness of risk but may sensationalize it. Technocrats have the budgetary and technical wherewithal to deal with it professionally but resist politicization of risk and try to channel and defuse mobilization through existing institutions and programs.

The literature and campaigning on landmines and unexploded/abandoned/discarded ordnance focuses on current and former conflict zones. However, in looking at the politics of discarded munitions in New York City, I am trying to illustrate how clearing up munitions is not just a problem ‘Over There’ for Americans. The appearance of such munitions in the heart of metropolitan American displays the residual corrosive impact of militarism, ‘Here’, on the domestic front. Though hidden, the explosive threat of violence we ourselves created to deploy against our communal enemies lies submerged in our domestic spaces — on our beaches, campuses, reefs and even inside our homes. (Click here for a listing of UXO-contaminated sites in the USA or here for an EPA report on UXO accidents in the United States). My hope is that publicizing munitions problem here in the US offers an opportunity to raise awareness among Americans of the impact of landmines, cluster munitions and UXO in other parts of the world.

In the decade since the signing of the Ottawa Treaty, which banned the production and use of anti-personnel mines, governments have spent over $3 billion on clearing up and mitigating the security threat of mines, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance in the world’s current and former war zones. However, this flow of cash into regions dominated by violent social structures raises numerous political issues. Through detailed archival and field research, this book explores the politics behind the allocation and implementation of foreign aid by the US and Norway for demining in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan. It is an essential resource for practitioners and policymakers working in the field of landmine clearance and for students and researchers of development studies and post-war reconstruction.

The book has already gained critical acclaim from some high-profile academics:

‘This important book shows how foreign aid can help build human security in the aftermath of war – or, unfortunately, make the situation worse. It also demonstrates how partnerships between ‘middle powers’, like Norway, and global civil society can play a key role in building collective security through developing international law. This is an ideal text for policymakers involved in post-conflict reconstruction, as well as students of international relations.’ –Mary Kaldor CBE, Professor of Global Governance, London School of Economics

‘Matthew Bolton sheds crucial light on how foreign aid in general and demining programs in particular make compromises with power structures. He shows that links between demining agencies and the defense industry or military factions can skew attention away from vulnerable civilians most affected by mines. It should be required reading for professionals in the mine action sector.’ –Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)

‘This is a high-quality piece of work, well written, with interesting analysis rooted in on-the-ground fieldwork. The reservations about the involvement of private security companies in demining are extremely important, as is the discussion of the dangers of short-term contracts and ‘cut-throat’ competition in reconstruction tendering.’ –David Keen, Professor of Complex Emergencies, London School of Economics

If you are a mine action professional, the publisher IB Tauris has arranged a special 30% discount (not including shipping). To take advantage of this deal, fill out this form with the discount code 3LA and send it to IB Tauris.

As one of the many people who was involved in compiling this year’s Landmine Monitor report on Somalia, I can say with confidence that mine action professionals in Somalia, particularly in the south central region, face one of the most difficult operating environments in the world. They face ongoing conflict, complex logistics, political disorder and a lack of sufficient funding.

For more information on the impact of landmines in South Korea, click here.

In the decade since the signing of the Ottawa Treaty, which banned the production and use of anti-personnel mines, governments have spent over $3 billion on clearing up and mitigating the security threat of mines, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance in the world’s current and former war zones. However, this flow of cash into regions dominated by violent social structures raises numerous political issues. Through detailed archival and field research, this book explores the politics behind the allocation and implementation of foreign aid by the US and Norway for demining in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan. It is an essential resource for practitioners and policymakers working in the field of landmine clearance and for students and researchers of Development Studies and post-war reconstruction.

The book is also available on Amazon USA, but at a much higher price. Click here if you want to buy it from there anyway.

“We are doing this alone when there were 11 or 12 different armies that mined our country,” he told Reuters.

His statement was somewhat misleading, given that Angola has received $19.8 million for mine action in 2007, $4.6 million of which was from the USA. In contrast, the Angola reported no contribution of its own to the mine action budget in 2007. Just a couple weeks ago, the EU promised Euro 20 million over four years for Angolan demining.  So Angola is hardly on its own.

Nonetheless, Angola still has a major mine and UXO problem, with over 200 casualties between 2005 and 2007. (For more recent information on Angola’s demining program, click here). And Kussuma brings up a valid point: Why is it that Russia and South Africa, both major contributers to the landmine crisis in Africa in the 1980s, are not stumping up cash to clear them up? 

People, including myself sometimes, like to point an accusing finger at the US for its unhelpful mine and cluster munitions policy.  But at least the US contributed nearly $70 million to mine action in 2007, more than any other country. Russia gave no such funding in 2007 and a piddly $107,000 in 2006. It’s time countries like Russia accepted their responsibility and provided compensation to countries suffering the impact of mines they exported or transfered.

“Each new ratification brings us one step closer to the life-saving promises of this treaty and each new signature increases the stigma against this weapon making it harder for any country to even contemplate future use,” said Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch. “We call on all countries that have not done so to sign and ratify the Convention without delay.”

Four other countries have ratified the treaty, the Holy See, Ireland, Sierra Leone, and Norway.

The ratification occured at an event on the Cluster Munitions Convention at the UN in New York, attended by some 75 countries.  The Democratic Republic of the Congo signed the treaty at the event and Iraq announced an intention to join.

In an indicator of the severity of Laos’ cluster munitions problem, in 2008 31 people were killed and 69 people injured by US ordnance dropped during the Vietnam War.  Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped an average of a plane load of bombs on Laos every eight minutes.  Almost the entire population of the Laotian Plain of Jars had to evacuate and a US Information Service refugee survey at the time found that 80% of the victims of the bombing there and the surrounding Xieng Khouang province were civilians. In 1996, the UN estimated that about 500,000 tons of UXO remained in the ground.

For more details on the contamination of Laos by cluster munitions and other unexploded remnants of war, click here.

For a history of how the terrible contamination of Laos occured, either click here go to the Mennonite Central Committee’s website or read my paper on the history of efforts to ban and mitigate the impact of mines and cluster munitions since the Indochinese Wars.

The report found that all these banks, except HBOS, had loaned money to companies producing cluster munitions, including GenCorp, Lockheed Martin, Textron, Raytheon and Thales. Barclays — by far the largest investor in the arms trade — and HSBC had investments in such firms.

Among British banks, only the Cooperative Bank was free from association with the arms trade. Indeed the Coop Bank has funded and supported the campaigns to against landmines, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance.

To read the entire War on Want report, click here.

Back in 2007, Netwerk Vlaanderen, a Belgian NGO promoting socially responsible use of money, found 68 banks worldwide that had provided a total of $ 12.6 billion in three years to cluster munitions producers.  Major participating banks included Bank of America, Bank of New York, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of Nova Scotia, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. To read this report, click here.

Governance & Post-Statist Security:
The Politics of US and Norwegian Foreign Aid for Demining in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan

Abstract of PhD dissertation in the Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science

(c) Matthew Bolton 2008

While governance has traditionally been the realm of states, new “Emerging Political Complexes,” as Mark Duffield calls them, incorporate networks of public and private actors. These networks of governance come in two competing ideal types:

a) strategic-commercial complexes, shaped largely by the interests of a privileged few, in which militarized and securitized public bodies contract out significant authority to commercial contractors. Security is derived from the fortification of private enclaves – a division of the world into ‘Green’ and ‘Red’ Zones, and

b) human security-civil society complexes, shaped by humanitarian norms and a more global understanding of interest, in which public and multilateral agencies form partnerships with NGOs and social movements. They aim to diffuse protection out from the secure core to the insecure periphery through aid, advocacy, persuasion and the development of legal norms.

This PhD examines the effects and impact of these two approaches in managing and neutralizing the threat of landmines and unexploded ordnance. At the donor level, it compares the US and Norway, arguing that Norway, working with NGOs, churches and other small states, has been at the forefront of efforts to ban landmines and cluster munitions, whereas the US has resisted tight regulation. Moreover, US funding of clearance and mitigation programs often was shaped by narrow strategic interests and favored a commercially-driven process. In contrast, Norway’s programs, implemented through international NGOs, were shaped more by more global conceptions of interest and normative commitments to humanitarianism, multilateralism and international law.

At the level of implementation in mine and ordnance-affected countries – Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan – the PhD argues that Norwegian long-term grants to international NGOs produced demining that, while more expensive and slower, was better targeted on humanitarian priorities, safer and of better quality. Such programs also attempted to build inclusive institutions and resist the politics of violence. In contrast, US efforts, often driven by strategic concerns and tendered out to commercial companies, were cheaper and faster but also less safe and of lower quality. These companies were also embedded in the political economy of war and may have contributed to the fragmentation of the public monopoly on force.

“We don’t want to be there. We have decided to pull out because the authorities have made our work impossible,” said Petter Eide, NPA’s General Secretary.

NPA had already suspended its mine action program for one year, partly as a result of government insinuations that NPA was too close to the ‘Tamil Tiger’ rebels, a claim NPA forcefully denies. To read an earlier article on the conflict between NPA and the Sri Lankan government, click here. 

NPA’s withdrawl occurs in the context of an increasingly difficult environment for demining NGOs in Sri Lanka, a worsening human rights situation and a deterioration in security.

NPA’s mine clearance program in Sri Lanka has assisted with the clearance of 30,000 mines and 9,500 peices of unexploded ordnance from 18 million square meters of land.