Becoming a humanitarian de-miner

December 12, 2007 1:54 PM

I am interested in becoming a humanitarian de-miner. This FPP reminded about my interest. A brief search has brought up a couple of organizations, but I was hoping some people here might be able to provide some practical insight. Is this foolish, feasable or just downright romantic thinking about making a real difference?

The idealistic side of me is concerned that I should be doing more for the good of mankind. I'm at a place in life where I could afford a long-term leave-of-absence and do something more significant than just putting money in the bank.

I've never been in the military, but I'm a resilient former farm boy with excellent mechanical aptitude, I'm quite comfortable working in aversive environments and doing without western comforts. I'm in great physical shape and I don't have any attachments that would be an impediment to such kind of service. Is this a realistic desire / pursuit or am I just being a quixotic dreamer about escaping the work-a-day world of the west for something more meaningful?

Preferably I would like to go the NGO route. What organizations should I contact as I begin my search for info? Anybody in the know - how would you go about this?

posted by isopraxis to society & culture (10 comments total)

A friend of mine (who was in the reserves with me for three years) looked into this. Generally speaking, they're looking for experienced ex-military people. He was told by a guy who was doing it: "Unless you've got some serious experience, you're well into middle age and you've got a minimum of attachments, no chance". Hearsay of course, but I'd say they've got all the 'crawl along on your belly and poke a rod into the sand' people they need already living there, who have probably been doing it for years, cost a fraction of what you would to pay and accommodate, and have to actually live there afterward.

There are lots of routes into NGO work, but I fear for you, this may not be the one.

Still, can't hurt to go and these people perhaps?
posted by Happy Dave at 2:27 PM on December 12, 2007

The best way available now to clear an old mine field is a machine that has a huge rotating barrel on one end on which are mounted big lengths of chains. The machine drives back and forth over the mine field and hammers the ground with its chains. The machine is armored and the driver sits well back and is protected from any detonations. Using such a machine, a one acre mine field can be cleared in a couple of hours.

They're known as "mine flails". (The Wikipedia article I just linked to emphasizes, and exaggerates, the unreliability. Based on what I've read elsewhere, mine flails are a lot more effective than this article implies.)

If you want to make a difference, help raise money to buy and operate those machines where they're needed. That'll make a lot more difference than you going out and probing the ground with a spike and manually placing C4 charges on every mine you find to set it off.

Which is extremely dangerous, and extremely slow, and not 100% guaranteed to find and remove all the mines.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:30 PM on December 12, 2007

(Context: Part of my job used to be designing low-tech tools in demining)

Researching the organizations is a good start, but you may find the most effective way to get into this is networking. More so than any normal job search. Behind the organizations are the personalities that shape them, and those are really strong personalities in this field! So, if you get serious about this and want a couple contacts to talk to who could give you the complete picture of the people and organizations, I could connect you wtih a couple.

As far as your quixotic tendencies or not, I wanted to throw a few things out there for you to chew on:
- Many of the non-local people I've met in this field end up doing some design, or eventually end up in project management. Those who run the show know how to demine but have moved up the ladder.
- Why's this? Well, among other things, in many parts of the world, humanitarian demining is being done in places with little to no economy or jobs. Demining is often the highest paying job around and to be a deminer is a huge matter of pride. It is a learnable skill, working with your hands, not literacy dependent... lots of advantages in that.
- It is sweaty, knee-and-shoulder-breaking work. Clearing by hand is mad-slow but it's (relatively) safe, (relatively) inexpensive, and (much more) thorough.
- One of the reasons that it is such tedious handwork is that there isn't always a product available for the preferred demining position (varies as much with organizational culture as it does with local culture), and even protective equipment is not optimized for this activity.
- When you look at organizations, look at how they demine. Remember that humanitarian clearance is very different from military clearance. This is a huge divide in deming; two totally separate planets of thought.
posted by whatzit at 2:35 PM on December 12, 2007

Just to comment on the things that appeared while I was writing...:

Hand-clearance is like archeology. Probing is done into the hard casings at an angle to the ground; anything you hit (mine or otherwise) is hit from the side, not at the pressure-sensitive top. Anything encountered is dug up slowly with tiny, tiny tools. You can't just detonate it in place at any time because you have other guys around you on your team.

Flails are super fast and have their proponents, but really cost more than most humanitarian demining orgs want to spend, and don't have the thoroughness that manual clearance does. Seriously, you need no failure on the part of the deminers: one mine gets left in, goes off, and that entire plot of land is considered useless again (though people will use it because they have to). Part of the expense with flails is that once you own one you have to ship it everywhere you work.

The military experience is indeed really common, but not a necessity.
posted by whatzit at 2:42 PM on December 12, 2007

A good friend of mine did military supervision of mine clearing. He was trained in the demining task himself and still has one of the probes, but the actual demining was done with local labor. His job was primarily to watch the workers and mark cleared areas. If you get involved, as suggested above, you may have to take such a role.
posted by fake at 2:51 PM on December 12, 2007

Just to make sure you really understand what you're talking about doing: if you get into this, you will see people get killed or get maimed. They'll be people you have gotten to know. If you're not emotionally prepared for that, then find some other way to "make a difference".
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:45 PM on December 12, 2007

Since you are a writer, and since you are recently aware of how one can be influenced to action by reading something inspiring, are you overlooking a potential area of contribution that you CAN do?

All of my experience with unexploded ordnance (UXO) types is from military contacts, and most of them are involved with IEDs. Does not look like an easy group to join, unless you are 19 and looking for a career. That doesn't mean you can't contribute, however, and you may find a more accessible path in researching, writing, advocating, fund raising, etc. to deal with this problem.

I have heard estimates that more than 800 million landmines are in the ground, awaiting the unsuspecting. Millions of acres of France are still off limits from World War 1 due to UXO. Perfectly functioning anti-ship mines still are anchored in the oceans of the world and every now and then, blow up a boat. A few years back, I read that France still suffers about 30 casualities a year to buried WW2 explosives.

A good book on the subject is Donovan Webster's book, Aftermath: Remnants of War . It's a good and fast read, kind of light on the bibliography, but about the only read in the popular press on the subject.

There is a lot of work being done on this. I just left a company that is deeply involved in it, and I am not impressed by the various approaches. One involves dogs, another pouched gambian rats trained to sniff for bombs. Another is the flail, which isn't 100% effective and isn't appropriate for all terrain types. Worse, exploding ordnance can lauch UXO into already cleared areas. Ground penetrating radar and conventional metal detectors are not 100% effective and the GPR stuff I have seen is not impressive. It can not discriminate well with widely varying soil types, mine orientations, and clutter. I think it won't ever be good enough. One of the more promising things I have heard about is genetically altered arabidopsis, a tiny plant, that turns red in the presence of TNT vapor. Seed a field and look for red spots in a month or two. But I digress.....

Anyway, consider doing what others have suggested... use your existing powers for good and raise money or awareness. It's probably much better use of your skills and you can still be a part of the solution.

Good luck...
posted by FauxScot at 5:19 PM on December 12, 2007

The UXO in France (and Belgium) left over from WWI is not minefields for the most part. Nearly all of it is unexploded artillery shells, and those are particularly deadly because many of them are loaded with mustard gas, which is still deadly. (It is quite stable.)

French military engineers have been dealing with unexploded chemical shells for decades.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:07 PM on December 12, 2007

I wouldn't go into this unless you watch Danger UXB, the British series with Anthony Edwards from the 1970s about a UXO team in London during World War II. Fiction, and about a different era and different ordnance, but much of the basic psychology probably valid. In the story, simply surviving pushed you into management, as your skills became too valuable to risk in hands-on situations. It also balances the aspects of personal challenge and teamwork against each other.

I also might go to the library to read The Internationals (the Atlantic, July/August 2002 issue), a somewhat skeptical portrait of the humanitarian/UN/NGO culture that develops in hotspots.
posted by dhartung at 9:42 PM on December 12, 2007

The Halo Trust are well regarded in this field although I understand that the bulk of their field staff are ex-military.
posted by dmt at 3:32 AM on December 13, 2007