Fwd: Safe Terrain
Robin Collins
Today is my 55th birthday, and my friends at United 24 and my fellow ambassador Mark Hamill have prepared a special gift: the chance to help lead Safe Terrain. This is a new campaign, starting right now, to help save Ukrainian lives during this terrible war by funding robots that can clear mines. Mines are one of the most insidious killers in this war. Russians have strewn millions of mines on Ukrainian territory. Even in places that Ukraine has deoccupied, such as the parts of Kherson region I visited last summer, sappers and others have to risk their lives to remove these mines. Otherwise the mines will maim and kill civilians years or even decades into the future. In Kherson I watched sappers move carefully through the fields under the hot sun. And in Kyiv I visited people in a rehabilitation center who had lost limbs. Here technology can help. Robots can do this work. In Safe Terrain, Mark Hamill and I are enlisting you to help raise $441,000 to fund thirty demining robots. These will clear Ukrainian lands of explosive ordnance, reducing risks for sappers, and allowing people to return to their businesses, their farms, and their lives
I am spending this 55th birthday on my family's farm. Whenever I am here, I think of the farmers in southern and eastern Ukraine who have to struggle with the aftermath of occupation: all of the mines in their fields. These are fields that, in good times, can feed half a billion people — fields on which hundreds of millions of Asians and Africans as well as tens of millions of Ukrainians depend for their food. I won't be asking for any other presents today: if you want to wish me well, please make a contribution today to Safe Terrain. The Safe Terrain fundraiser begins today at 11:00am eastern on August 18th, right as I am posting this note. Thank you! PS: If you want me to know about your contribution to Safe Terrain, feel free to mention it below, or to write me on timothysn...@gmail.com. PPS: And please share this message with friends of Ukraine who might also want to help. Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. © 2024 Timothy Snyder 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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Robert Keeley
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Andy Smith
Well done Bob. Succinct.
I know that I really should leave it at that...
- but Timothy might wonder, why does one word say it all"? ...and the community would disagree about the answer - because we have always disagreed about the detail of everything.
OK Timothy, first of all (and despite many millions having been spent on R&D) there are no robots that can both search and clear any ground at all. Some can kind-of search simple ground that is easy to traverse - but overgrown Ukrainian fields are not "simple ground" and almost nowhere else is.
Drones and robots can
be useful tools, yes, but only when assisting people because the
best detector has always been the human eye&brain, and the
only way to deal with what you find involves the dexterity and
intelligence/experience of people.
Yes, you can run your
pack of robots over an area far more quickly than conducting a
proper search - and they might even stumble across something
here and there. At the end, the land will not have been properly
searched (not searched to the best of our ability), not cleared,
and it will not be "as safe as is reasonably practicable". It
will not fit the description of your organisation "SAFE
TERRAIN". If people think that the land the robots went over is
safe, your robot search will increase their risk by encouraging
them to use the area, so leading to their injury/death. You are
advocating "Dirty Demining". This is the use of processes
(equipment and procedures) that cannot achieve the required end.
Sometimes those doing it are ignorant and believe it will work.
Sometimes they are supporting a high profile campaign that
serves an ego-boosting agenda outside mine action. And usually
it is done in order to be able to take the money and say that
you did something.
I have seen and been involved in Dirty Demining during conflict in Angola, Afghanistan, Lanka, Myanmar, Iraq, Libya, etc. I have seen it everywhere else I have worked (last in Lebanon a year ago) - and complained when it simply wasn't necessary. Some dirty demining is almost good enough. Some is just a scam (rats are the best known example). When it is all that can be done, I have not complained, but I have always resisted recording the land as searched and "cleared" (look in the IMAS for the definition of clearance). Removing "most" of the hazards is sometimes all you can do in the here&now context and that really is fine by me - as long as the limitations of the work are honestly recorded.
Yeah well. Donors pay for potatoes and want to get gold - so it should be no surprise when they get painted potatoes.
During conflict, higher risks are considered "tolerable" and the increasingly idealised rules set by the IMAS GiHAD are cast aside with a sigh because they have become stupidly impractical and show that the authors have never actually been hands-on in a post-conflict scenario, never mind a conflict scenario. Field people do the job in front of them with the assets they have to hand - knowing that the chair polishers may scream non-compliance and brand them mavericks... so they are often "economical with the truth".In Ukraine, where are you starting from? The conflict is still ongoing - and the front line areas are heavily mined.
Lets get real.
Many/most of the agricultural areas that are mined are crossed
by defensive lines of large AT mines (laid on the surface in
more-or-less patterns). Many were placed by the Ukrainian
defenders - in a hurry, so without keeping decent records. They
were surface laid to make it easy to lift and re-use them
somewhere else. And that is what is happening. The Ukrainian
military need all the mines they can get to try to stop any
Russian advance. It really is not HMA to re-use the mines found
- but these are AT mines so they are not covered by the Ottawa
Convention (and needs must).
The demining problem near the front line is complicated by the presence of a lot of booby-traps, factory made and improvised.
In all areas, the
presence of UXO and AXO present different hazards, and the
inclusion of cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines makes
the need for thorough search an imperative (as soon as that is
possible). These other hazards also mean that any simple robot
equipment deployed where they areis likely to get trashed - even
if the real-world undergrowth and terrain haven't wrecked it
first.
Silly robots aside, "dirty demining" is happening in Ukraine using a range of machines that cannot begin to destroy all the potential hazards but can reduce risk to the users of the land (who were going to use it anyway). When seeking mine-lines and withdrawing the machines after a line is located - using unproven machines can make sense. What you need then is money to pay for safe manual search and clearance along the mine-lines they help locate, not robot toys. If honest records were kept, the use of dirty methods could provide a foundation for thorough search at some time in the future - but our glorious leaders in the UNDP/UNMAS crew along with the GiHAD's Mullahs in the mountains have never been honest. For them, and unashamedly, the bottom line is to "please the donor"... always tell the donor what they want to hear (and thereby keep their own jobs and pensions safe). Dirty demining will be recorded as "cleared" and "safe". Subsequent accidents will not be their fault - and they will not allow them to be independently investigated to ensure this.
But hey, there's a war on! If Dirty Demining is the best we can do, fine.
I am told that the
Ukrainian army has no respect for, or confidence in the
UNDP/UNMAS/GICHD trinity out there. That's actually encouraging.
May they take control and oust those chair-polishers ASAP -
except that the donor system will take the money with them, so I
want the mercenaries to stay for the remote chance of a penny in
the pound being spent wisely.
Timothy, if you seriously want to fund demining in Ukraine, there are lots of local groups actually doing it - some with outside assistance. Two have contacted me and will have nothing to do with UNDP or most of the impractical IMAS rules. Alternatively, the big INGOs present will be doing useful work - even when they are not permitted to roll across farmland and destroy what they find. Fund them instead - but directly (not through UNDP/UNMAS).
If you want to fund the
war against Russia, that is a very different agenda and you
should contact the Ukrainian government which will always have a
use for your donation.
Funny old world.
*Sigh*
Andy
(Yes Bob, I am
deliberately "risking" a response, .)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/demining/E892F489-22DA-4670-A7FC-A960BD4B0BFA%40gmail.com.
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Rae McGrath
Sent: 19 August 2024 13:43
To: demi...@googlegroups.com <demi...@googlegroups.com>; Robert Keeley <rkconsu...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [HD] Fwd: Safe Terrain and Dirty Demining
Today is my 55th birthday, and my friends at United 24 and my fellow ambassador Mark Hamill have prepared a special gift: the chance to help lead Safe Terrain.
This is a new campaign, starting right now, to help save Ukrainian lives during this terrible war by funding robots that can clear mines.
Mines are one of the most insidious killers in this war. Russians have strewn millions of mines on Ukrainian territory. Even in places that Ukraine has deoccupied, such as the parts of Kherson region I visited last summer, sappers and others have to risk their lives to remove these mines. Otherwise the mines will maim and kill civilians years or even decades into the future.
In Kherson I watched sappers move carefully through the fields under the hot sun. And in Kyiv I visited people in a rehabilitation camp center who had lost limbs.