When was the last time the U.S. used landmines?
The U.S. last used landmines in the 1991 Gulf War by scattering 117,634 landmines in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. U.S. forces in recent combat operations in Afghanistan or Iraq did not use landmines. Protective minefields from the Soviet era are incorporated into the perimeter defense scheme at locations U.S. forces currently occupy in Afghanistan. Military advantage is derived from these minefields and the U.S. is obligated to comply with 1996 Amended Protocol II of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons to mark and monitor these minefields to ensure the effective exclusion of civilians. The US failed to report measures it has taken to protect civilians from the effects of these landmines in its annual national reports for this treaty submitted in December 2002 and November 2003. Do “smart” mines still pose a humanitarian threat? The time when the mines are armed and when they self-destruct or fully self-deactivate can be as long as nineteen weeks. In theoretically per
