Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
Oh, I have no presumptions about the macro-rationality of donor assistance!

It does seem to me there are some aspects in which demining may have a certain "strategic" significance. Given the frequency with which transport routes, abandoned housing, economic infrastructure, etc. is mined, demining becomes essential for a range of related imperatives (refugee return, agricultural production, economic growth). Moreover, mines and UXO can be a major source of explosives, and so there is a military/counterterrorism implication here too.

None of which invalidates looking at IEDs as posing different sorts of challenges, as you propose to do.
My organization has conducted something called Landmine Impact Surveys for several years - these efforts werre actually the original reason our team was brought together in late-1998. Our last serious one was in 13 of Iraq's 18 governorates. For the most part, the major contaminated countries with real need for these expensive, time-consuming projects have been completed or are underway. I think there's a rathional tendency now to exampine the same kind of infratructure blockages/impacts that these surveys specifically look at, and that you mention above, but cull the data from a wider variety (read: cheaper) range of alternate sources, and there are more and more tools out there that allow this.

Here is the first of the four principles of humanitarian response to IEDs that I developed, and that I think addresses your point about explosives supply:

1. In most, if not all countries where IEDs are employed, Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) on former or current battlefields are a foundational component of the IED assembly line. Humanitarian efforts to eliminate landmines, UXO and Abandoned and Hazardous Ordnance (AO/HO) should include the impacts of IEDs upon civilians when prioritizing ERW mitigation. IEDs that are “fed” by abandoned caches, depots and other ERW sources are NOT a threat distinct from currently accepted HMA parameters.

Cheers,