A chara, - I wish, if I may, to offer a few comments on Kevin Myers' opinion of landmines, (August 13th). His article was journalistically eloquent, but displayed both an over-estimation and an under-estimation of the power of landmines. In terms of large-scale conventional warfare, landmines have nothing like the efficacy he seems to suggest. They are at best a support to defending troops, and in today's warfare could do little more than delay a determined advance, certainly not stop it. His image of the protective "ring of steel" saving the citizens of Srebrinice is evocative, but militarily meaningless. Modern mine clearing methods mean that while such minefields will certainly kill and maim numbers of advancing troops, paths can be cleared relatively quickly and, unless they were backed up by defending troops, mines would in all probability have served only to further enrage the attacking troops once they did break through.
In contrast, his ever-vigilant sentinels are lethal to the civilian population. They continue to perform their heroic function for decades after the conflict has ended, and do so mostly on women and children. The overwhelming tendency is for mines to be used not for defence against attacking troops, but as a weapon of terror against the civilian population. Having served in Lebanon, Bosnia and the Gulf I have seen at first hand the terrible toll taken by mines. From Africa to Cambodia mines are sown mostly in civilian areas, around villages, fields, footpaths, to deny their use to civilians and terrorise the population. In the context of modern mine usage, his "ring of steel" is far more likely to be used to keep the civilian population in, than to keep attacking troops out.
It is overwhelmingly civilians, and mostly women and children, who continue to pay the price for the dedication of Kevin Myers's silent sentries. It is they who daily lose hands, feet, legs, genitals and lives to them. The mine is not a weapon used in defence of the weak, it is overwhelmingly an instrument of terror used on the weak by the strong.
Mr Myers suggests that the Bosnian Moslems would have been better advised to invest their trust in landmines rather than the UN. That the UN failed miserably in Bosnia is undeniable, but where does the fault lie? Repeatedly, Britian, the US and other western "leaders" asserted that they would not become involved in Bosnia because they had no strategic interest there, (apparently preventing genocide is in nobody's strategic interest), and only became involved reluctantly and half-heartedly. Rather than knocking the UN and calling for a greater role for landmines, Mr. Myers should knock landmines and call for a stronger commitment to the UN. - Mise,
Brian MacGabhann,
Blessington, Co. Wicklow.