“There are no mines now in El
Salvador,” said Mauricio Granillo Barrera, El Salvador’s Ambassador
to the Organization of American States in Washington,
D.C.[1] Though over 20,000
antipersonnel landmines still threatened the country after its twelve-year civil
war ended in 1992, El Salvador, today, exemplifies a successful mine clearing
program, as the country’s terrain is, by all accounts, mine free.
Mine Ban Policy
El Salvador signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty on 4
December 1997. It deposited its instrument of ratification with the United
Nations in New York on 27 January 1999. El Salvador has not yet passed any
domestic legislation implementing the ban treaty.
After clearing its own terrain of mines, El Salvador has played an active
role in backing the international effort to ban landmines. In September 1996,
El Salvador joined with other Central American nations in declaring the region a
mine free zone in a joint statement signed by each nation’s foreign
minister, committing to no production, trade or use of antipersonnel mines.
During the Ottawa Process, El Salvador endorsed the pro-ban treaty June 1997
Brussels Declaration, and was a full participant in the Oslo negotiations in
September. El Salvador also voted in favor of all three pro-ban U.N. General
Assembly resolutions in 1996, 1997 and 1998, as well as the pro-ban resolutions
of the Organization of American States (OAS). It is one of the few hemispheric
countries that has reported to the Landmine Register of the OAS.
El Salvador is not a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW),
nor is it a member of the Conference on Disarmament.
Production
Though the government of El Salvador extensively
used U.S.-provided landmines during its 12-year-war against leftist guerrillas,
it never produced its own landmines. The guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN) made significant numbers of homemade
antipersonnel landmines throughout the war. Most were made of homemade or
store-bought materials including plastic construction tubing, potassium nitrate
and sulphur (to make gunpowder) and flashlight batteries. Though some of the
FMLN’s devices such as minas abanicos or “fan mines”
operated similar to Claymore mines and were detonated by remote control in
ambushes, other devices such as minas de chuchitos or clothespin mines
along with minas de pateos or “foot removers” were detonated
indiscriminately either by a trip wire or by the pressure of a
foot.[2]
Transfer
The Salvadoran military imported from the United
States about 37,000 antipersonnel mines including M18A1 Claymore mines and M14
blast mines during the
conflict.[3] El Salvador has
never exported antipersonnel mines. Most of the FMLN’s mines were
homemade, but they may have received mines from other sources as well.
Stockpiling
El Salvador apparently has no antipersonnel mines.
From March 1993 though January 1994, El Salvador’s Division of Arms and
Explosives of the Civil National Police destroyed the remaining antipersonnel
landmines that were in the stocks of the Salvadoran armed forces. El Salvador
reported the destruction of these mines to the Secretary General of the
Organization of American States in April
1997.[4] It is not certain if
Claymore mines were included in the destruction.
Use
Throughout the conflict, both the Salvadoran
military and the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front
used landmines, though the FMLN used them far more. The Salvadoran military
used antipersonnel landmines for perimeter defense of military bases. Military
units also sometimes used landmines to protect temporary field positions and
encampments. But the FMLN made much more widespread use of antipersonnel
landmines. While the FMLN used landmines not long after the beginning of the
civil war in 1980, the guerrillas greatly escalated their use of landmines in
the mid-1980s and continued to make use of them until the end of the war in
1992. The FMLN first changed tactics in the mid-1980s to heavily rely on
landmines in order to deter massive counterinsurgency sweeps involving thousands
of Salvadoran military troops at a time through guerrilla-dominated terrain.
Landmine Problem
Today, El Salvador is mine free. There is still a
slight danger from unexploded ordnance in some remote areas of the country.
When El Salvador’s twelve-year irregular war finally ended in December
1992, an estimated 20,000 landmines were still in the ground. The FMLN used
mines in over two-thirds of the country, mainly on volcanos, in the provinces of
Chalatenango, Morazan, Usulutan, San Miguel, San Vicente, Cabanas, Cuscatlan and
San Salvador and Santa Ana. The most densely mined areas included the Guazapa
volcano and the San Miguel volcano. The United Nations Department of
Humanitarian Affairs identified 19 specific mined areas comprising 425
minefields and covering 436 square kilometers of
land.[5]
Mine Clearance and Mine Awareness
In May 1992, before the civil war even ended,
representatives of the Salvadoran military and the FMLN agreed under the
auspices of the United Nations to establish a joint committee to begin a
demining and mine awareness projects. UNICEF spent U.S.$287,000 on an extensive
mine action campaign involving posters, advertisements and other forms of
outreach as well as training. Fourteen UNICEF educators trained over 3,600
teachers, health care personnel and community leaders to reach an estimated
300,000 people or about 44 percent of the population at greatest risk of
landmines.[6]
In 1993, the government of El Salvador hired a private Belgian firm,
International Danger and Disaster Assistance. At a cost of $4.8 million provided
by foreign donors, the firm, in coordination with the United Nations, trained a
joint team of 210 deminers comprised of former FMLN combatants and Salvadoran
military engineers.[7] The firm
handed over its mine detection gear to the Salvadoran military upon fulfillment
of its contract. A total of 1,240 Salvadoran military engineers and 240 former
FMLN combatants executed the
demining.[8] Many former
combatants identified mines that they had each previously planted. By January
1994, the joint effort had cleared 9,511 mines from 425 different
minefields.
Landmine Casualties
No accidents involving landmines have been reported
since 1994, though some accidents from unexploded ordnance have occurred. From
January 1994 through mid-1995, 271 people including 42 children were injured
from unexploded ordnance.[9]
There are to date no comprehensive estimates of the number of landmines
casualties from El Salvador’s civil war, though at least 75,000 people
were killed during the war. According to one estimate, over 300,000 young
children and adolescents were left
disabled.[10] Landmines began to
take a serious toll on combatants and civilians alike by the mid-1980s. In just
the first of 1986, for example, the Salvadoran military suffered between 64 and
125 casualties each month from landmines, while civilians casualties were
running slightly lower at between 19 and 25 victims a
month.[11] During the final
year of the war at least 576 people were injured from either landmines or
unexploded ordnance in 107 separate
incidents.[12] Most soldiers
and civilians alike were injured by mines planted by the
FMLN.[13]
Survivor Assistance
El Salvador has only recently requested assistance
from outside donors as well as from multilateral organizations to develop a
comprehensive landmine victims’ assistance program. On 11 January 1999 in
Mexico City, representatives of Canada, Mexico and the Pan-American Health
Organization signed a Memorandum of Understanding on a Joint Program for the
Rehabilitation of Mine Victims in Central
America.[14] The initiative
includes a comprehensive effort by the Pan-American Health Organization, which
is being financed by an initial grant of 3.5 million Canadian dollars, to assess
the needs of war victims and to begin to address them in Nicaragua, Honduras and
El Salvador. According to Hernan Rosenberg of the Pan-American Health
Organization, the program will unfold in each country in four stages: assessing
the number of victims; assessing individual’s specific prosthetics and
rehabilitation needs; providing for treatment and rehabilitation; and promoting
victims reincorporation back into the
workforce.[15]
A number of private groups have long attempted to address these concerns.
They include the Association of Mine Victims and the General Secretary of the
Family. In 1992, a German non-governmental organization, Medico International,
and the Los Angeles-based Medical Aid to El Salvador founded Promoter of the
Organization of Disabled Persons in El Salvador (PODES) “to provide job
training and rehabilitation to those disabled during the
war.”[16] A U.S.-based
NGO, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, also supports PODES with
technical support, training and
funding.[17] PODES currently
serves more than 900 patients, produces approximately 200 orthopaedic devices
each year and services a similar number. PODES employs 23 people, 19 of whom are
disabled.
One small craft shop that began while the civil war was still being waged in
the late 1980s was founded by David Wiesenfeld, a former firefighter from
California. The shop employed, at first, wounded soldiers, nearly all of whom
were landmine victims, to make commemorative plaques for retail sale primarily
to embassies. In 1992, shortly before the war ended, Wiesenfeld was among the
first to reach out to the FMLN. Soon his shop was the one of the first anywhere
in El Salvador to begin integrating ex-guerrillas with ex-soldiers. Within a
year, more than a dozen war victims from both sides were fully employed at the
shop. Unfortunately, while the work of the shop went on, its founder, David
Wiesenfeld, was later murdered in a car-jacking in San Salvador. This tragic
event only underscores the post-war problem which persists in El Salvador even
after its successful mine clearance and awareness campaign: the proliferation of
small arms.[18]
[1]Interview with Mauricio
Granillo Barrera, Ambassador of El Salvador to the Organization of American
States, Washington, D.C., 16 February 1999.
[2]Land Mines in El
Salvador and Nicaragua: The Civilian Victims, Americas Watch, December 1986,
p. 25-16.
[3]Landmines: A Deadly
Legacy, The Human Rights Watch Arms Project and Physicians for Human Rights,
New York, October 1993, p. 185-186.
[4] Seguridad Hemisferica,
Cuadro Resumen: Minas Terrestres Antipersonales, Al 1 de mayo de 1998, “El
Hemisferico Occidental como Zona Libre de Minas Terrestres
Antipersonales,” AG/RES. 1411 (XXVI-O/96) y AG/RES. 1496 (XXVII_O?97)
parrafo resolutivo 4, Organizacion de los Estados Ameicanos, Washington, D.C. de
los Estados Ameicanos, Washington, D.C.
[5] Antipersonnel Mines in
Central America: Conflict and post-conflict, International Committee of the
Red Cross, Geneva, January 1996, p. 13.
[10] United Nations, Landmine
Country Report for El Salvador, May 1995.
[11]Land Mines in El
Salvador and Nicaragua, p. 22.
[12] “Clearing the
Minefields,” UNICEF, May 1995, in Antipersonnel Mines in Central
America, p. 13.
[13] Land Mines in El
Salvador and Nicaragua, p. 2.
[14] Carta de la Mision
Permanente de Mexico y la Mision Permanente de Canada al Presidente del Consejo
Permanente de la Organizacio de los Estados Ameicanos, Washington, D.C., a 3 de
febrero de 1999. This letter builds upon the Organization of American States
resolution, AG/RES. 1568 (XXVIII-O/98), “Support for the Mine-Clearing
Program in Central America,” adopted on 2 June 1998.
[15] LM Researcher interview
with Hernan Rosenberg, Pan-American Health Organization, Washington, D.C., 18
February 1999.
[16] “VVAF and PODES:
Working Together in El Salvador”, VVAF Web Site, see
http://www.vvaf.org/assistance/elsalvador.html
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