title: Land mine

text: A land mine is an explosive device concealed under or on the ground and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets, ranging from combatants to vehicles and tanks, as they pass over or near it. Such a device is typically detonated automatically by way of pressure when a target steps on it or drives over it, although other detonation mechanisms are also sometimes used. A land mine may cause damage by direct blast effect, by fragments that are thrown by the blast, or by both. Landmines are typically laid throughout an area, creating a "minefield" which is dangerous to cross.


title: Land mine

text: The use of land mines is controversial because of their potential as indiscriminate weapons. They can remain dangerous many years after a conflict has ended, harming civilians and the economy. Seventy-eight countries are contaminated with land mines and 15,000–20,000 people are killed every year while many more are injured. Approximately 80% of land mine casualties are civilians, with children as the most affected age group. Most killings occur in times of peace. With pressure from a number of campaign groups organised through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global movement to prohibit their use led to the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, also known as the "Ottawa Treaty". To date, 164 nations have signed the treaty, but these do not include China, the Russian Federation, or the United States.


title: Land mine

text: In the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (also known as the "Ottawa Treaty") and the "Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices", a "mine" is defined as a "munition designed to be placed under, on or near the ground or other surface area and to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person or vehicle". Similar in function is the "booby-trap", which the protocol defines as "any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act". Such actions might include opening a door or picking up an object. Normally, mines are mass-produced and placed in groups, while booby traps are improvised and deployed one at a time. Also, booby traps can be non-explosive devices such as punji sticks. Overlapping both categories is the "improvised explosive device" (IED), which is "a device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating explosive material, destructive, lethal, noxious, incendiary, pyrotechnic materials or chemicals designed to destroy, disfigure, distract or harass. They may incorporate military stores, but are normally devised from non-military components." Some meet the definition of mines or booby traps and are also referred to as "improvised", "artisanal" or "locally manufactured" mines. Other types of IED are remotely activated, so are not considered mines.


title: Land mine

text: "Remotely delivered mines" are dropped from aircraft or carried by devices such as artillery shells or rockets. Another type of remotely delivered explosive is the "cluster munition", a device that releases several sub munitions ("bomblets") over a large area. The use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions is prohibited by the international CCM treaty. If bomblets do not explode, they are referred to as "unexploded ordnance" (UXO), along with unexploded artillery shells and other explosive devices that were not manually placed (that is, mines and booby traps are not UXOs). "Explosive remnants of war" (ERW) include UXOs and "abandoned explosive ordnance" (AXO), devices that were never used and were left behind after a conflict.


title: Land mine

text: Land mines are divided into two types: anti-tank mines, which are designed to disable tanks or other vehicles; and anti-personnel mines, which are designed to injure or kill people.


title: Land mine

text: The history of land mines can be divided into three main phases: In the ancient world, buried spikes provided many of the same functions as modern mines. Mines using gunpowder as the explosive were used from the Ming dynasty to the American Civil War. Subsequently, high explosives were developed and used in land mines.


title: Land mine

text: Some fortifications in the Roman Empire were surrounded by a series of hazards buried in the ground. These included "goads", foot-long pieces of wood with iron hooks on their ends; "lilia" (lilies, so named after their appearance), which were pits in which sharpened logs were arranged in a five-point pattern; and "abatis", fallen trees with sharpened branches facing outwards. As with modern land mines, they were "victim-operated", often concealed, and formed zones that were wide enough so that the enemy could not do much harm from outside, but were under fire (from spear throws, in this case) if they attempted to remove the obstacles. A notable use of these defenses was by Julius Caesar in the Battle of Alesia. His forces were besieging Vercingetorix, the leader of the Gauls, but Vercingetorix managed to send for reinforcements. To maintain the siege and defend against the reinforcements, Caesar formed a line of fortifications on both sides, and they played an important role in his victory. Lilies were also used by Scots against the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and by Germans at the Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War.


title: Land mine

text: A more easily deployed defense used by the Romans was the caltrop, a weapon 12–15 cm across with four sharp spikes that are oriented so that when it is thrown on the ground, one spike always points up. As with modern antipersonnel mines, caltrops are designed to disable soldiers rather than kill them; they are also more effective in stopping mounted forces, who lack the advantage of being able to carefully scrutinize each step they take (though forcing foot-mounted forces to take the time to do so has benefits in and of itself). They were used by the Jin dynasty in China at the Battle of Zhongdu to slow down the advance of Genghis Khan's army; Joan of Arc was wounded by one in the Siege of Orléans; in Japan they are known as "tetsu-bishu" and were used by ninjas from the fourteenth century onward. Caltrops are still strung together and used as roadblocks in some modern conflicts.


title: Land mine

text: Starting in the ninth century, the Chinese began centuries of experiments that resulted in gunpowder, an explosive mixture of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. Gunpowder was first used in battle in the thirteenth century. An "enormous bomb", credited to Lou Qianxia, was used in 1277 by the Chinese at the Battle of Zhongdu, although it probably had little effect. Gunpowder was difficult to use in mines because it is hygroscopic, easily absorbing water from the atmosphere, and when wet it is no longer explosive.


title: Land mine

text: A 14th-century military treatise, the "Huolongjing" (fire dragon manual), describes hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder. The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole. These fuses were long and lit by hand, so they required carefully timed calculations of enemy movements.


title: Land mine

text: The "Huolongjing" also describes land mines that were set off by enemy movement. A nine-foot length of bamboo was waterproofed by wrapping it in cowhide and covering it with oil. It was filled with compressed gunpowder and lead or iron pellets, sealed with wax and concealed in a trench. The triggering mechanism was not fully described until the early 17th century. When the enemy stepped onto hidden boards, they dislodged a pin, causing a weight to fall. A cord attached to the weight was wrapped around a drum attached to two steel wheels; when the weight fell, the wheels struck sparks against flint, igniting a set of fuses leading to multiple mines. A similar mechanism was used in the first wheellock musket in Europe as sketched by Leonardo da Vinci around 1500 AD.


title: Land mine

text: Another victim-operated device was the "underground sky-soaring thunder", which lured bounty hunters with halberds, pikes, and lances planted in the ground. If they pulled on one of these weapons, the butt end disturbed a bowl underneath and a slow-burning incandescent material in the bowl ignited the fuses.


title: Land mine

text: The fuse mechanisms for the above devices were cumbersome and unreliable. By the time Europeans arrived in China, landmines were largely forgotten.


title: Land mine

text: At Augsburg in 1573, three centuries after the Chinese invented the first pressure-operated mine, a German military engineer by the name of Samuel Zimmermann invented the "Fladdermine" (flying mine). It consisted of a few pounds of black powder buried near the surface and was activated by stepping on it or tripping a wire that made a flintlock fire. Such mines were deployed on the slope in front of a fort. They were used during the Franco-Prussian War, but were probably not very effective because a flintlock does not work for long when left untended.


title: Land mine

text: Another device, the fougasse, was not victim-operated or mass-produced, but it was a precursor of modern fragmentation mines and the claymore mine. It consisted of a cone-shape hole with gunpowder at the bottom, covered either by rocks and scrap iron ("stone fougasse") or mortar shells, similar to large black powder hand grenades ("shell fougasse"). It was triggered by a flintlock connected to a tripwire on the surface. It could sometimes cause heavy casualties but required high maintenance due to the susceptibility of black powder to dampness. Consequently, it was mainly employed in the defenses of major fortifications, in which role it used in several European wars of the eighteenth century and the American Revolution.


title: Land mine

text: One of the greatest limitations of early land mines was the unreliable fuses and their susceptibility to dampness. This changed with the invention of the safety fuse. Later, "command initiation", the ability to detonate a charge immediately instead of waiting several minutes for a fuse to burn, became possible after electricity was developed. An electrical current sent down a wire could ignite the charge with a spark. The Russians claim first use of this technology in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, and with it the fougasse remained useful until it was superseded by the claymore in the 1960s.


title: Land mine

text: Victim-activated mines were also unreliable because they relied on a flintlock to ignite the explosive. The percussion cap, developed in the early 19th century, made them much more reliable, and pressure-operated mines were deployed on land and sea in the Crimean War (1853–1856).


title: Land mine

text: During the American Civil War, the Confederate brigadier general Gabriel J. Rains deployed thousands of "torpedoes" consisting of artillery shells with pressure caps, beginning with the Battle of Yorktown in 1862. As a captain, Rains had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840. Over the course of the war, mines only caused a few hundred casualties, but they had a large effect on morale and slowed down the advance of Union troops. Many on both sides considered the use of mines barbaric, and in response, generals in the Union Army forced Confederate prisoners to remove the mines.


title: Land mine

text: Starting in the 19th century, more powerful explosives than gunpowder were developed, often for non-military reasons such as blasting train tunnels in the Alps and Rockies. Guncotton, up to four times more powerful than gunpowder, was invented by Christian Schonbein in 1846. It was dangerous to make until Frederick Augustus Abel developed a safe method in 1865. From the 1870s to the First World War, it was the standard explosive used by the British military.


title: Land mine

text: In 1847, Ascanio Sobrero invented nitroglycerine to treat angina pectoris and it turned out to be a much more powerful explosive than guncotton. It was very dangerous to use until Alfred Nobel found a way to incorporate it in a solid mixture called dynamite and developed a safe detonator. Even then, dynamite needed to be stored carefully or it could form crystals that detonated easily. Thus, the military still preferred guncotton.


title: Land mine

text: In 1863, the German chemical industry developed trinitrotoluene (TNT). This had the advantage that it was difficult to detonate, so it could withstand the shock of firing by artillery pieces. It was also advantageous for land mines for several reasons: it was not detonated by the shock of shells landing nearby; it was lightweight, unaffected by damp, and stable under a wide range of conditions; it could be melted to fill a container of any shape, and it was cheap to make. Thus, it became the standard explosive in mines after the First World War.


title: Land mine

text: The British used mines in the Siege of Khartoum. A Sudanese Mahdist force much larger than British strength was held off for ten months, but the town was ultimately taken and the British massacred. In the Boer War (1899–1903), they succeeded in holding Mafeking against Boer forces with the help of a mixture of real and fake minefields; and they laid mines alongside railroad tracks to discourage sabotage.


title: Land mine

text: In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, both sides used land and sea mines, although the effect on land mainly affected morale. The naval mines were far more effective, destroying several battleships.


title: Land mine

text: One sign of the increasing power of explosives used in land mines was that, by the First World War, they burst into about 1,000 high-velocity fragments; in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), it had only been 20 to 30 fragments. Nevertheless, antipersonnel mines were not a big factor in the war because machine guns, barbed wire and rapid-fire artillery were far more effective defenses. An exception was in Africa (now Tanzania and Namibia) where the warfare was much more mobile.


title: Land mine

text: Towards the end of the war, the British started to use tanks to break through trench defenses. The Germans responded with anti-tank guns and mines. Improvised mines gave way to mass-produced mines consisting of wooden boxes filled with guncotton, and minefields were standardized to stop masses of tanks from advancing.


title: Land mine

text: Between world wars, the future Allies did little work on land mines, but the Germans developed a series of anti-tank mines, the "Tellermines" (plate mines). They also developed the "Schrapnell mine" (also known as the S-mine), the first bounding mine. When triggered, this jumped up to about waist height and exploded, sending thousands of steel balls in all directions. Triggered by pressure, trip wires or electronics, it could harm soldiers within an area of about 2,800 square feet.


title: Land mine

text: Tens of millions of mines were laid in the Second World War, particularly in the deserts of North Africa and the steppes of Eastern Europe, where the open ground favored tanks. However, the first country to use them was Finland. They were defending against a much larger Soviet force with over 6,000 tanks, twenty times the number the Finns had; but they had terrain that was broken up by lakes and forests, so tank movement was restricted to roads and tracks. Their defensive line, the Mannerheim Line, integrated these natural defenses with mines, including simple fragmentation mines mounted on stakes.


title: Land mine

text: While the Germans were advancing rapidly using "blitzkrieg" tactics, they did not make much use of mines. After 1942, however, they were on the defensive and became the most inventive and systematic users of mines. Their production shot up and they began inventing new types of mines as the Allies found ways to counter the existing ones. To make it more difficult to remove antitank mines, they surrounded them with S-mines and added anti-handling devices that would explode when soldiers tried to lift them. They also took a formal approach to laying mines and they kept detailed records of the locations of mines.


title: Land mine

text: In the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the Germans prepared for an Allied attack by laying about half a million mines in two fields running across the entire battlefield and five miles deep. Nicknamed the "Devil's gardens", they were covered by 88 mm anti-tank guns and small-arms fire. The Allies prevailed, but at the cost of over half their tanks; 20 percent of the losses were caused by mines.


title: Land mine

text: The Soviets learned the value of mines from their war with Finland, and when Germany invaded they made heavy use of them, manufacturing over 67 million. At the Battle of Kursk, which put an end to the German advance, they laid over a million mines in eight belts with an overall depth of 35 kilometres.


title: Land mine

text: Mines forced tanks to slow down and wait for soldiers to go ahead and remove the mines. The main method of breaching minefields involved prodding the dirt with a bayonet or stick at an angle of 30 degrees (to avoid putting pressure on the top of the mine and detonating it). Since all mines at the beginning of the war had metal casings, metal detectors could be used to speed up the locating of mines. A Polish officer, Józef Kosacki, developed a portable mine detector known as the Polish mine detector. To counter the detector, Germans developed mines with wooden casings, the Schu-mine 42 (antipersonnel) and Holzmine 42 (anti-tank). Effective, cheap and easy to make, the "schu" mine became the most common mine in the war. Mine casings were also made of glass, concrete and clay. The Russians developed a mine with a pressed-cardboard casing, the PMK40, and the Italians made an anti-tank mine out of bakelite. In 1944, the Germans created the Topfmine, an entirely non-metallic mine. They ensured that they could detect their own mines by covering them with radioactive sand; the Allies did not find this out until after the war.


title: Land mine

text: Several mechanical methods for clearing mines were tried. Heavy rollers were attached to tanks or cargo trucks, but they did not last long and their weight made the tanks considerably slower. Tanks and bulldozers pushed ploughs that pushed aside any mines to a depth of 30 cm. The Bangalore torpedo, a long thin tube filled with explosives, was invented in 1912 and used to clear barbed wire; larger versions such as the Snake and the Conger were developed for clearing mines, but were not very effective. One of the best options was the flail, which had weights attached by chains to rotating drums. The first version, the Scorpion, was attached to the Matilda tank and used in the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Crab, attached to the Sherman tank, was faster, at 2 kilometers per hour; it was used during D-Day and the aftermath.


title: Land mine

text: During the Cold War, the members of NATO were concerned about massive armored attacks by the Soviet Union. They planned for a minefield stretching across the entire West German border, and developed new types of mine. The British designed an anti-tank mine, the Mark 7, to defeat rollers by detonating the second time it was pressed. It also had a 0.7-second delay so the tank would be directly over the mine. They also developed the first scatterable mine, the No. 7 ("Dingbat"). The Americans used the M6 antitank mine and tripwire-operated bounding antipersonnel mines such as the M2 and M16.


title: Land mine

text: In the Korean War, land mine use was dictated by the steep terrain, narrow valleys, forest cover and lack of developed roads. This made tanks less effective and more easily stopped by mines. However, mines laid near roads were often easy to spot. In response to this problem, the US developed the M24, a mine that was placed off to the side of the road. When triggered by a tripwire, it fired a rocket. However, the mine was not available until after the war.


title: Land mine

text: The Chinese had a lot of success with massed infantry attacks. The extensive forest cover limited the range of machine guns, but anti-personnel mines were effective. However, mines were poorly recorded and marked, often becoming as much a hazard to allies as enemies. Tripwire-operated mines were not defended by pressure mines; the Chinese were often able to disable them and reuse them against UN forces.


title: Land mine

text: Looking for more destructive mines, the Americans developed the Claymore, a directional fragmentation mine that hurls steel balls in a 60-degree arc at a lethal speed of 1,200 metres per second. They also developed a pressure-operated mine, the M14 ("toe-popper"). These, too, were ready too late for the Korean war.


title: Land mine

text: In 1948, the British developed the No. 6 antipersonnel mine, a minimum-metal mine with a narrow diameter, making it difficult to detect with metal detectors or prodding. Its three-pronged pressure piece inspired the nickname "carrot mine". However, it was unreliable in wet conditions. In the 1960s the Canadians developed a similar, but more reliable mine, the C3A1 ("Elsie") and the British army adopted it. The British also developed the L9 bar mine, a wide anti-tank mine with a rectangular shape, which covered more area, allowing a minefield to be laid four times as fast as previous mines. They also upgraded the Dingbat to the Ranger, a plastic mine that was fired from a truck-mounted discharger that could fire 72 mines at a time.


title: Land mine

text: In the 1950s, the US Operation Doan Brook studied the feasibility of delivering mines by air. This led to three types of air-delivered mine. "Wide area anti-personnel mines" ("WAAPMs") were small steel spheres that discharged tripwires when they hit the ground; each dispenser held 540 mines. The BLU-43 Dragontooth was small and had a flattened "W" shape to slow its descent, while the gravel mine was larger. Both were packed by the thousand into bombs. All three were designed to inactivate after a period of time, but any that failed to activate presented a safety challenge. Over 37 million Gravel mines were produced between 1967 and 1968, and when they were dropped in places like Vietnam their locations were unmarked and unrecorded. A similar problem was presented by unexploded cluster munitions.


title: Land mine

text: The next generation of scatterable mines arose in response to the increasing mobility of war. The Germans developed the Skorpion system, which scattered AT2 mines from a tracked vehicle. The Italians developed a helicopter delivery system that could rapidly switch between SB-33 anti-personnel mines and SB-81 anti-tank mines. The US developed a range of systems called the Family of Scatterable Mines (FASCAM) that could deliver mines by fast jet, artillery, helicopter and ground launcher.


title: Land mine

text: The Iraq-Iran War, the Gulf War, and the Islamic State have all contributed to land mine saturation in Iraq from the 1980s through 2020. Iraq is now the most saturated country in the world with landmines. Countries that provided land mines during the Iran-Iraq War included Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Italy, Romania, Singapore, the former Soviet Union and the U.S., and were concentrated in the Kurdish areas in the northern area of Iraq. During the Gulf War, the U.S. deployed 117,634 mines, with 27,967 being anti-personnel mines and 89,667 being anti-vehicle mines. The U.S. did not use land mines during the Iraq War.


title: Land mine

text: During the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used land mines. Ukrainian officials claim Russian forces planted thousands of land mines or other explosive devices during their withdrawal from Ukrainian cities, including in civilian areas. Russian forces have also utilized remotely delivered anti-personnel mines such as the POM-3


title: Land mine

text: In the First World War, the Germans developed a device, nicknamed the "Yperite Mine" by the British, that they left behind in abandoned trenches and bunkers. It was detonated by a delayed charge, spreading mustard gas ("Yperite"). In the Second World War they developed a modern chemical mine, the Sprüh-Büchse 37 (Bounding Gas Mine 37), but never used it. The United States developed the M1 chemical mine , which used mustard gas, in 1939; and the M23 chemical mine, which used the VX nerve agent, in 1960. The Soviets developed the KhF, a "bounding chemical mine". The French had chemical mines and the Iraqis were believed to have them before the invasion of Kuwait. In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force, prohibiting the use of chemical weapons and mandating their destruction. As of April 30, 2019, 97% of the declared stockpiles of chemical weapons were destroyed.


title: Land mine

text: For a few decades during the Cold War, the U.S. developed atomic demolition munitions, often referred to as nuclear land mines. These were portable nuclear bombs that could be placed by hand, and could be detonated remotely or with a timer. Some of these were deployed in Europe. Governments in West Germany, Turkey and Greece wanted to have nuclear minefields as a defense against attack from the Warsaw Pact. However, such weapons were politically and tactically infeasible, and by 1989 the last of these munitions was retired. The British also had a project, codenamed Blue Peacock, to develop nuclear mines to be buried in Germany; the project was cancelled in 1958.


title: Land mine

text: A conventional land mine consists of a casing that is mostly filled with the main charge. It has a firing mechanism such as a pressure plate; this triggers a detonator or igniter, which in turn sets off a booster charge. There may be additional firing mechanisms in anti-handling devices.


title: Land mine

text: A land mine can be triggered by a number of things including pressure, movement, sound, magnetism and vibration. Anti-personnel mines commonly use the pressure of a person's foot as a trigger, but tripwires are also frequently employed. Most modern anti-vehicle mines use a magnetic trigger to enable it to detonate even if the tires or tracks did not touch it. Advanced mines are able to sense the difference between friendly and enemy types of vehicles by way of a built-in signature catalog. This will theoretically enable friendly forces to use the mined area while denying the enemy access.


title: Land mine

text: Many mines combine the main trigger with a touch or tilt trigger to prevent enemy engineers from defusing it. Land mine designs tend to use as little metal as possible to make searching with a metal detector more difficult; land mines made mostly of plastic have the added advantage of being very inexpensive.


title: Land mine

text: Some types of modern mines are designed to self-destruct, or chemically render themselves inert after a period of weeks or months to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties at the conflict's end. These self-destruct mechanisms are not absolutely reliable, and most land mines laid historically are not equipped in this manner.


title: Land mine

text: There is a common misperception that a landmine is armed by stepping on it and only triggered by stepping off, providing tension in movies. In fact the initial pressure trigger will detonate the mine, as they are designed to kill or maim, not to make someone stand very still until it can be disarmed.


title: Land mine

text: Anti-handling devices detonate the mine if someone attempts to lift, shift or disarm it. The intention is to hinder deminers by discouraging any attempts to clear minefields. There is a degree of overlap between the function of a boobytrap and an anti-handling device insofar as some mines have optional fuze pockets into which standard pull or pressure-release boobytrap firing devices can be screwed. Alternatively, some mines may mimic a standard design, but actually be specifically intended to kill deminers, such as the MC-3 and PMN-3 variants of the PMN mine. Anti-handling devices can be found on both anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines, either as an integral part of their design or as improvised add-ons. For this reason, the standard render safe procedure for mines is often to destroy them on site without attempting to lift them.


title: Land mine

text: "Smart mines" utilize a number of advanced technologies developed in the late 20th and early 21st century. Most commonly, this includes mechanisms to deactivate or self-destruct the mine after a preset period of time. This is intended to reduce civilian casualties and simplify demining.


title: Land mine

text: Other innovations include "self-healing" minefields, which detect gaps in the field and can direct the mines to rearrange their positions and eliminate it.


title: Land mine

text: Anti-tank mines were created not long after the invention of the tank in the First World War. At first improvised, purpose-built designs were developed. Set off when a tank passes, they attack the tank at one of its weaker areas – the tracks. They are designed to immobilize or destroy vehicles and their occupants. In U.S. military terminology destroying the vehicles is referred to as a catastrophic kill while only disabling its movement is referred to as a mobility kill.


title: Land mine

text: Anti-tank mines are typically larger than anti-personnel mines and require more pressure to detonate. The high trigger pressure, normally requiring prevents them from being set off by infantry or smaller vehicles of lesser importance. More modern anti-tank mines use shaped charges to focus and increase the armor penetration of the explosives.


title: Land mine

text: Anti-personnel mines are designed primarily to kill or injure people, as opposed to vehicles. They are often designed to injure rather than kill to increase the logistical support (evacuation, medical) burden on the opposing force. Some types of anti-personnel mines can also damage the tracks or wheels of armored vehicles.


title: Land mine

text: In the asymmetric warfare conflicts and civil wars of the 21st century, improvised explosives, known as IEDs, have partially supplanted conventional landmines as the source of injury to dismounted (pedestrian) soldiers and civilians. IEDs are used mainly by insurgents and terrorists against regular armed forces and civilians. The injuries from the anti-personnel IED were recently reported in BMJ Open to be far worse than with landmines resulting in multiple limb amputations and lower body mutilation.


title: Land mine

text: Land mines are currently used in large quantities mostly for this first purpose, thus their widespread use in the demilitarized zones (DMZs) of likely flashpoints such as Cyprus, Afghanistan and Korea. As of 2013, the only governments that still laid land mines were Myanmar in its internal conflict, and Syria in its civil war.


title: Land mine

text: In military science, minefields are considered a defensive or harassing weapon, used to slow the enemy down, to help deny certain terrain to the enemy, to focus enemy movement into kill zones, or to reduce morale by randomly attacking material and personnel. In some engagements during World War II, anti-tank mines accounted for half of all vehicles disabled.


title: Land mine

text: Since combat engineers with mine-clearing equipment can clear a path through a minefield relatively quickly, mines are usually considered effective only if covered by fire.


title: Land mine

text: The extents of minefields are often marked with warning signs and cloth tape, to prevent friendly troops and non-combatants from entering them. Of course, sometimes terrain can be denied using dummy minefields. Most forces carefully record the location and disposition of their own minefields, because warning signs can be destroyed or removed, and minefields should eventually be cleared. Minefields may also have marked or unmarked safe routes to allow friendly movement through them.


title: Land mine

text: Placing minefields without marking and recording them for later removal is considered a war crime under Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which is itself an annex to the Geneva Conventions.


title: Land mine

text: Artillery and aircraft scatterable mines allow minefields to be placed in front of moving formations of enemy units, including the reinforcement of minefields or other obstacles that have been breached by enemy engineers. They can also be used to cover the retreat of forces disengaging from the enemy, or for interdiction of supporting units to isolate front line units from resupply. In most cases these minefields consist of a combination of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, with the anti-personnel mines making removal of the anti-tank mines more difficult. Mines of this type used by the United States are designed to self-destruct after a preset period of time, reducing the requirement for mine clearing to only those mines whose self-destruct system did not function. Some designs of these scatterable mines require an electrical charge (capacitor or battery) to detonate. After a certain period of time, either the charge dissipates, leaving them effectively inert or the circuitry is designed such that upon reaching a low level, the device is triggered, thus destroying the mine.


title: Land mine

text: None of the conventional tactics and norms of mine warfare applies when they are employed in a guerrilla role:


title: Land mine

text: Land mines were commonly deployed by insurgents during the South African Border War, leading directly to the development of the first dedicated mine-protected armoured vehicles in South Africa. Namibian insurgents used anti-tank mines to throw South African military convoys into disarray before attacking them. To discourage detection and removal efforts, they also laid anti-personnel mines directly parallel to the anti-tank mines. This initially resulted in heavy South African military and police casualties, as the vast distances of road network vulnerable to insurgent sappers every day made comprehensive detection and clearance efforts impractical. The only other viable option was the adoption of mine-protected vehicles which could remain mobile on the roads with little risk to their passengers even if a mine was detonated. South Africa is widely credited with inventing the v-hull, a vee-shaped hull for armoured vehicles which deflects mine blasts away from the passenger compartment.


title: Land mine

text: During the ongoing Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017) and Yemeni Civil War (2015–present) landmines have been used for both defensive and guerrilla purposes.


title: Land mine

text: Minefields may be laid by several means. The preferred, but most labour-intensive, way is to have engineers bury the mines, since this will make the mines practically invisible and reduce the number of mines needed to deny the enemy an area. Mines can be laid by specialized mine-laying vehicles. Mine-scattering shells may be fired by artillery from a distance of several tens of kilometers.


title: Land mine

text: Mines may be dropped from helicopters or airplanes, or ejected from cluster bombs or cruise missiles.


title: Land mine

text: Anti-tank minefields can be scattered with anti-personnel mines to make clearing them manually more time-consuming; and anti-personnel minefields are scattered with anti-tank mines to prevent the use of armored vehicles to clear them quickly. Some anti-tank mine types are also able to be triggered by infantry, giving them a dual purpose even though their main and official intention is to work as anti-tank weapons.


title: Land mine

text: Some minefields are specifically booby-trapped to make clearing them more dangerous. Mixed anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields, anti-personnel mines "under" anti-tank mines, and fuses separated from mines have all been used for this purpose. Often, single mines are backed by a secondary device, designed to kill or maim personnel tasked with clearing the mine.


title: Land mine

text: Multiple anti-tank mines have been buried in stacks of two or three with the bottom mine fuzed, to multiply the penetrating power. Since the mines are buried, the ground directs the energy of the blast in a single direction—through the bottom of the target vehicle or on the track.


title: Land mine

text: Another specific use is to mine an aircraft runway immediately after it has been bombed to delay or discourage repair. Some cluster bombs combine these functions. One example was the British JP233 cluster bomb which includes munitions to damage (crater) the runway as well as anti-personnel mines in the same cluster bomb. As a result of the anti-personnel mine ban it was withdrawn from British Royal Air Force service, and the last stockpiles of the mine were destroyed on October 19, 1999.


title: Land mine

text: Metal detectors were first used for demining, after their invention by the Polish officer Józef Kosacki. His invention, known as the Polish mine detector, was used by the Allies alongside mechanical methods, to clear the German mine fields during the Second Battle of El Alamein when 500 units were shipped to Field Marshal Montgomery's Eighth Army.


title: Land mine

text: The Nazis used captured civilians who were chased across minefields to detonate the explosives. According to Laurence Rees "Curt von Gottberg, the SS-Obergruppenführer who, during 1943, conducted another huge anti-partisan action called Operation Kottbus on the eastern border of Belarus, reported that 'approximately two to three thousand local people were blown up in the clearing of the minefields'."


title: Land mine

text: Whereas the placing and arming of mines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the process of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous. This is especially true of irregular warfare where mines were used on an ad hoc basis in unmarked and undocumented areas. Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, due to their small size and many being made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to evade metal detectors.


title: Land mine

text: Manual clearing remains the most effective technique for clearing mine fields, although hybrid techniques involving the use of animals and robots are being developed. Many animals are desirable due to having a strong sense of smell capable of detecting a land mine. Animals such as rats and dogs can be trained to detect the explosive agent.


title: Land mine

text: Other techniques involve the use of geolocation technologies. a joint team of researchers at the University of New South Wales and Ohio State University was working to develop a system based on multi-sensor integration.


title: Land mine

text: The laying of land mines has inadvertently led to a positive development in the Falkland Islands. Minefields laid near the sea during the Falklands War have become favorite places for penguins, which do not weigh enough to detonate the mines. Therefore, they can breed safely, free of human intrusion. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that efforts existed to prevent removal of the mines, but the area has since been demined.


title: Land mine

text: The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow. These facts pose serious difficulties in many developing nations where the presence of mines hampers resettlement, agriculture, and tourism. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines campaigned successfully to prohibit their use, culminating in the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty.


title: Land mine

text: The Treaty came into force on March 1, 1999. The treaty was the result of the leadership of the Governments of Canada, Norway, South Africa and Mozambique working with the "International Campaign to Ban Landmines", launched in 1992. The campaign and its leader, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts.


title: Land mine

text: The treaty does not include anti-tank mines, cluster bombs or claymore-type mines operated in command mode and focuses specifically on anti-personnel mines, because these pose the greatest long term (post-conflict) risk to humans and animals since they are typically designed to be triggered by any movement or pressure of only a few kilograms, whereas anti-tank mines require much more weight (or a combination of factors that would exclude humans). Existing stocks must be destroyed within four years of signing the treaty.


title: Land mine

text: Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty agree that they will not use, produce, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel land mines. In 1997, there were 122 signatories; as of early 2016, 162 countries have joined the Treaty. Thirty-six countries, including the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the United States, which together may hold tens of millions of stockpiled antipersonnel mines, are not party to the Convention. Another 34 have yet to sign on. The United States did not sign because the treaty lacks an exception for the Korean Demilitarized Zone.


title: Land mine

text: There is a clause in the treaty, Article 3, which permits countries to retain land mines for use in training or development of countermeasures. Sixty-four countries have taken this option.


title: Land mine

text: As an alternative to an outright ban, 10 countries follow regulations that are contained in a 1996 amendment of Protocol II of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). The countries are China, Finland, India, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea and the United States. Sri Lanka, which had adhered to this regulation, announced in 2016 that it would join the Ottawa Treaty.


title: Land mine

text: Submunitions and Unexploded ordnance from cluster munitions can also function as landmines, in that they continue to kill and maim indiscriminately long after conflicts have ended. The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is an international treaty that prohibits the use, distribution, or manufacture of cluster munitions. The CCM entered into force in 2010, and has been ratified by over 100 countries.


title: Land mine

text: Before the Ottawa Treaty was adopted, the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch identified "almost 100 companies and government agencies in 48 countries" that had manufactured "more than 340 types of antipersonnel landmines in recent decades." Five to ten million mines were produced per year with a value of $50 to $200 million. The largest producers were probably China, Italy and the Soviet Union. The companies involved included giants such as Daimler-Benz, the Fiat Group, the Daewoo Group, RCA and General Electric.


title: Land mine

text: As of 2017, the "Landmine & Cluster Munition Monitor" identified four countries that were "likely to be actively producing" land mines: India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea. Another seven states reserved the right to make them but were probably not doing so: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Singapore, and Vietnam.


title: Land mine

text: From 1999 to 2017, the "Landmine Monitor" has recorded over 120,000 casualties from mines, IEDs and explosive remnants of war; it estimates that another 1,000 per year go unrecorded. The estimate for all time is over half a million. In 2017, at least 2,793 were killed and 4,431 injured. 87% of the casualties were civilians and 47% were children (less than 18 years old). The largest numbers of casualties were in Afghanistan (2,300), Syria (1,906), and Ukraine (429).


title: Land mine

text: Natural disasters can have a significant impact on efforts to demine areas of land. For example, the floods that occurred in Mozambique in 1999 and 2000 may have displaced hundreds of thousands of land mines left from the war. Uncertainty about their locations delayed recovery efforts.


title: Land mine

text: From a study by Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, land degradation caused by land mines "can be classified into five groups: access denial, loss of biodiversity, micro-relief disruption, chemical composition, and loss of productivity". The effects of an explosion depend on: "(i) the objectives and methodological approaches of the investigation; (ii) concentration of mines in a unit area; (iii) chemical composition and toxicity of the mines; (iv) previous uses of the land and (v) alternatives that are available for the affected populations."


title: Land mine

text: The most prominent ecological issue associated with landmines (or fear of them) is denial of access to vital resources (where "access" refers to the ability to use resources, in contrast to "property", the right to use them). The presence and fear of presence of even a single landmine can discourage access for agriculture, water supplies and possibly conservation measures. Reconstruction and development of important structures such as schools and hospitals are likely to be delayed, and populations may shift to urban areas, increasing overcrowding and the risk of spreading diseases.


title: Land mine

text: Access denial can have positive effects on the environment. When a mined area becomes a "no-man's land", plants and vegetation have a chance to grow and recover. For example, formerly arable lands in Nicaragua returned to forests and remained undisturbed after the establishment of landmines. Similarly, the penguins of the Falkland Islands have benefited because they are not heavy enough to trigger the mines present. However, these benefits can only last as long as animals, tree limbs, etc. do not detonate the mines. In addition, long idle periods could "potentially end up creating or exacerbating loss of productivity", particularly within land of low quality.


title: Land mine

text: Landmines can threaten biodiversity by wiping out vegetation and wildlife during explosions or demining. This extra burden can push threatened and endangered species to extinction. They have also been used by poachers to target endangered species. Displace people refugees hunt animals for food and destroy habitat by making shelters.


title: Land mine

text: Shrapnel, or abrasions of bark or roots caused by detonated mines, can cause the slow death of trees and provide entry sites for wood-rotting fungi. When landmines make land unavailable for farming, residents resort to the forests to meet all of their survival needs. This exploitation furthers the loss of biodiversity.


title: Land mine

text: Near mines that have exploded or decayed, soils tend to be contaminated, particularly with heavy metals. Products produced from the explosives, both organic and inorganic substances, are most likely to be "long lasting, water-soluble and toxic even in small amounts". They can be implemented either "directly or indirectly into soil, water bodies, microorganisms and plants with drinking water, food products or during respiration".


title: Land mine

text: Toxic compounds can also find their way into bodies of water and accumulate in land animals, fish and plants. They can act "as a nerve poison to hamper growth", with deadly effect.


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is "ahimsa" (to do no harm), which is a core philosophy in Indian Religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.


title: Pacifism

text: In modern times, interest was revived by Leo Tolstoy in his late works, particularly in "The Kingdom of God Is Within You". Mahatma Gandhi propounded the practice of steadfast nonviolent opposition which he called "satyagraha", instrumental in its role in the Indian Independence Movement. Its effectiveness served as inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., James Lawson, Mary and Charles Beard, James Bevel, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many others in the civil rights movement.


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifism covers a spectrum of views, including the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war, opposition to any organization of society through governmental force (anarchist or libertarian pacifism), rejection of the use of physical violence to obtain political, economic or social goals, the obliteration of force, and opposition to violence under any circumstance, even defence of self and others. Historians of pacifism Peter Brock and Thomas Paul Socknat define pacifism "in the sense generally accepted in English-speaking areas" as "an unconditional rejection of all forms of warfare". Philosopher Jenny Teichman defines the main form of pacifism as "anti-warism", the rejection of all forms of warfare. Teichman's beliefs have been summarized by Brian Orend as "... A pacifist rejects war and believes there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. War, for the pacifist, is always wrong." In a sense the philosophy is based on the idea that the ends do not justify the means. The word "pacific" denotes conciliatory.


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifism may be based on moral principles (a deontological view) or pragmatism (a consequentialist view). Principled pacifism holds that at some point along the spectrum from war to interpersonal physical violence, such violence becomes morally wrong. Pragmatic pacifism holds that the costs of war and interpersonal violence are so substantial that better ways of resolving disputes must be found.


title: Pacifism

text: Some pacifists follow principles of nonviolence, believing that nonviolent action is morally superior and/or most effective. Some however, support physical violence for emergency defence of self or others. Others support destruction of property in such emergencies or for conducting symbolic acts of resistance like pouring red paint to represent blood on the outside of military recruiting offices or entering air force bases and hammering on military aircraft.


title: Pacifism

text: Not all nonviolent resistance (sometimes also called civil resistance) is based on a fundamental rejection of all violence in all circumstances. Many leaders and participants in such movements, while recognizing the importance of using non-violent methods in particular circumstances, have not been absolute pacifists. Sometimes, as with the civil rights movement's march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, they have called for armed protection. The interconnections between civil resistance and factors of force are numerous and complex.


title: Pacifism

text: An absolute pacifist is generally described by the BBC as one who believes that human life is so valuable, that a human should never be killed and war should never be conducted, even in self-defense. The principle is described as difficult to abide by consistently, due to violence not being available as a tool to aid a person who is being harmed or killed. It is further claimed that such a pacifist could logically argue that violence leads to more undesirable results than non-violence.


title: Pacifism

text: Tapping into just war theory "conditional pacifism" represents a spectrum of positions departing from positions of absolute pacifism. One such conditional pacifism is the common pacificism, which may allow defense but is not advocating a default defensivism or even interventionism.


title: Pacifism

text: Although all pacifists are opposed to war between nation states, there have been occasions where pacifists have supported military conflict in the case of civil war or revolution. For instance, during the American Civil War, both the American Peace Society and some former members of the Non-Resistance Society supported the Union's military campaign, arguing they were carrying out a "police action" against the Confederacy, whose act of Secession they regarded as criminal. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, French pacifist René Gérin urged support for the Spanish Republic. Gérin argued that the Spanish Nationalists were "comparable to an individual enemy" and the Republic's war effort was equivalent to the action of a domestic police force suppressing crime.


title: Pacifism

text: In the 1960s, some pacifists associated with the New Left supported wars of national liberation and supported groups such as the Viet Cong and the Algerian FLN, arguing peaceful attempts to liberate such nations were no longer viable, and war was thus the only option.


title: Pacifism

text: During the Warring States period, the pacifist Mohist School opposed aggressive war between the feudal states. They took this belief into action by using their famed defensive strategies to defend smaller states from invasion from larger states, hoping to dissuade feudal lords from costly warfare. The Seven Military Classics of ancient China view warfare negatively, and as a last resort. For example, the "Three Strategies of Huang Shigong" says: "As for the military, it is not an auspicious instrument; it is the way of heaven to despise it", and the "Wei Liaozi" writes: "As for the military, it is an inauspicious instrument; as for conflict and contention, it runs counter to virtue".


title: Pacifism

text: The Taoist scripture ""Classic of Great Peace" ("Taiping jing")" foretells "the coming Age of Great Peace ("Taiping")". The "Taiping Jing" advocates "a world full of peace".


title: Pacifism

text: The Lemba religion of southern French Congo, along with its symbolic herb, is named for pacifism : ""lemba, lemba"" (peace, peace), describes the action of the plant "lemba-lemba" ("Brillantaisia patula T. Anders"). Likewise in Cabinda, ""Lemba" is the spirit of peace, as its name indicates."


title: Pacifism

text: The Moriori, of the Chatham Islands, practiced pacifism by order of their ancestor Nunuku-whenua. This enabled the Moriori to preserve what limited resources they had in their harsh climate, avoiding waste through warfare. In turn, this led to their almost complete annihilation in 1835 by invading Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama Māori from the Taranaki region of the North Island of New Zealand. The invading Māori killed, enslaved and cannibalised the Moriori. A Moriori survivor recalled : "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep ... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately."


title: Pacifism

text: In Ancient Greece, pacifism seems not to have existed except as a broad moral guideline against violence between individuals. No philosophical program of rejecting violence between states, or rejecting all forms of violence, seems to have existed. Aristophanes, in his play Lysistrata, creates the scenario of an Athenian woman's anti-war sex strike during the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BC, and the play has gained an international reputation for its anti-war message. Nevertheless, it is both fictional and comical, and though it offers a pragmatic opposition to the destructiveness of war, its message seems to stem from frustration with the existing conflict (then in its twentieth year) rather than from a philosophical position against violence or war. Equally fictional is the nonviolent protest of Hegetorides of Thasos. Euripides also expressed strong anti-war ideas in his work, especially "The Trojan Women".


title: Pacifism

text: Several Roman writers rejected the militarism of Roman society and gave voice to anti-war sentiments,


title: Pacifism

text: including Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. The Stoic Seneca the Younger criticised warfare in his book "Naturales quaestiones" (circa 65 AD).


title: Pacifism

text: Maximilian of Tebessa was a Christian conscientious objector. He was killed for refusing to be conscripted.


title: Pacifism

text: Throughout history many have understood Jesus of Nazareth to have been a pacifist, drawing on his Sermon on the Mount. In the sermon Jesus stated that one should "not resist an evildoer" and promoted his turn the other cheek philosophy. "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well ... Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." The New Testament story is of Jesus, besides preaching these words, surrendering himself freely to an enemy intent on having him killed and proscribing his followers from defending him.


title: Pacifism

text: There are those, however, who deny that Jesus was a pacifist and state that Jesus never said not to fight, citing examples from the New Testament. One such instance portrays an angry Jesus driving dishonest market traders from the temple. A frequently quoted passage is Luke 22:36: "He said to them, 'But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.'" Pacifists have typically explained that verse as Jesus fulfilling prophecy, since in the next verse, Jesus continues to say: "It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." Others have interpreted the non-pacifist statements in the New Testament to be related to self-defense or to be metaphorical and state that on no occasion did Jesus shed blood or urge others to shed blood.


title: Pacifism

text: Beginning in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation gave rise to a variety of new Christian sects, including the historic peace churches. Foremost among them were the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and Church of the Brethren. The humanist writer Desiderius Erasmus was one of the most outspoken pacifists of the Renaissance, arguing strongly against warfare in his essays "The Praise of Folly" (1509) and "The Complaint of Peace" (1517).


title: Pacifism

text: The Quakers were prominent advocates of pacifism, who as early as 1660 had repudiated violence in all forms and adhered to a strictly pacifist interpretation of Christianity. They stated their beliefs in a declaration to King Charles II:


title: Pacifism

text: Throughout the many 18th century wars in which Great Britain participated, the Quakers maintained a principled commitment not to serve in the army and militia or even to pay the alternative £10 fine.


title: Pacifism

text: The English Quaker William Penn, who founded the Province of Pennsylvania, employed an anti-militarist public policy. Unlike residents of many of the colonies, Quakers chose to trade peacefully with the Indians, including for land. The colonial province was, for the 75 years from 1681 to 1756, essentially unarmed and experienced little or no warfare in that period.


title: Pacifism

text: From the 16th to the 18th centuries, a number of thinkers devised plans for an international organisation that would promote peace, and reduce or even eliminate the occurrence of war. These included the French politician Duc de Sully, the philosophers Émeric Crucé and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and the English Quakers William Penn and John Bellers.


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifist ideals emerged from two strands of thought that coalesced at the end of the 18th century. One, rooted in the secular Enlightenment, promoted peace as the rational antidote to the world's ills, while the other was a part of the evangelical religious revival that had played an important part in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Representatives of the former included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in "Extrait du Projet de Paix Perpetuelle de Monsieur l'Abbe Saint-Pierre" (1756), Immanuel Kant, in his "Thoughts on Perpetual Peace", and Jeremy Bentham who proposed the formation of a peace association in 1789. Representative of the latter, was William Wilberforce who thought that strict limits should be imposed on British involvement in the French Revolutionary Wars based on Christian ideals of peace and brotherhood. Bohemian Bernard Bolzano taught about the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war. He urged a total reform of the educational, social, and economic systems that would direct the nation's interests toward peace rather than toward armed conflict between nations.


title: Pacifism

text: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pacifism was not entirely frowned upon throughout Europe. It was considered a political stance against costly capitalist-imperialist wars, a notion particularly popular in the British Liberal Party of the twentieth century. However, during the eras of World War One and especially World War Two, public opinion on the ideology split. Those against the Second World War, some argued, were not fighting against unnecessary wars of imperialism but instead acquiescing to the fascists of Germany, Italy and Japan.


title: Pacifism

text: During the period of the Napoleonic Wars, although no formal peace movement was established until the end of hostilities, a significant peace movement animated by universalist ideals did emerge, due to the perception of Britain fighting in a reactionary role and the increasingly visible impact of the war on the welfare of the nation in the form of higher taxation levels and high casualty rates. Sixteen peace petitions to Parliament were signed by members of the public, anti-war and anti-Pitt demonstrations convened and peace literature was widely published and disseminated.


title: Pacifism

text: The first peace movements appeared in 1815–16. In the United States the first such movement was the New York Peace Society, founded in 1815 by the theologian David Low Dodge, and the Massachusetts Peace Society. It became an active organization, holding regular weekly meetings, and producing literature which was spread as far as Gibraltar and Malta, describing the horrors of war and advocating pacificism on Christian grounds. The London Peace Society (also known as the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace) was formed in 1816 to promote permanent and universal peace by the philanthropist William Allen. In the 1840s, British women formed "Olive Leaf Circles", groups of around 15 to 20 women, to discuss and promote pacifist ideas.


title: Pacifism

text: The peace movement began to grow in influence by the mid-nineteenth century. The London Peace Society, under the initiative of American consul Elihu Burritt and the reverend Henry Richard, convened the first International Peace Congress in London in 1843. The congress decided on two aims: the ideal of peaceable arbitration in the affairs of nations and the creation of an international institution to achieve that. Richard became the secretary of the Peace Society in 1850 on a full-time basis, a position which he would keep for the next 40 years, earning himself a reputation as the 'Apostle of Peace'. He helped secure one of the earliest victories for the peace movement by securing a commitment from the Great Powers in the Treaty of Paris (1856) at the end of the Crimean War, in favour of arbitration. On the European continent, wracked by social upheaval, the first peace congress was held in Brussels in 1848 followed by Paris a year later.


title: Pacifism

text: After experiencing a recession in support due to the resurgence of militarism during the American Civil War and Crimean War, the movement began to spread across Europe and began to infiltrate the new socialist movements. In 1870, Randal Cremer formed the Workman's Peace Association in London. Cremer, alongside the French economist Frédéric Passy was also the founding father of the first international organisation for the arbitration of conflicts in 1889, the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The National Peace Council was founded in after the 17th Universal Peace Congress in London (July August 1908).


title: Pacifism

text: An important thinker who contributed to pacifist ideology was Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. In one of his latter works, "The Kingdom of God is Within You", Tolstoy provides a detailed history, account and defense of pacifism. Tolstoy's work inspired a movement named after him advocating pacifism to arise in Russia and elsewhere. The book was a major early influence on Mahatma Gandhi, and the two engaged in regular correspondence while Gandhi was active in South Africa.


title: Pacifism

text: Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her novel, "Die Waffen nieder!" ("Lay Down Your Arms!") in 1889 and founded an Austrian pacifist organization in 1891.


title: Pacifism

text: In colonial New Zealand, during the latter half of the 19th century Pākehā settlers used numerous tactics to confiscate land from the indigenous Māori, including warfare. In the 1870s and 1880s, Parihaka, then reported to be the largest Māori settlement in New Zealand, became the centre of a major campaign of non-violent resistance to land confiscations. One Māori leader, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, quickly became the leading figure in the movement, stating in a speech that "Though some, in darkness of heart, seeing their land ravished, might wish to take arms and kill the aggressors, I say it must not be. Let not the Pakehas think to succeed by reason of their guns... I want not war". Te Whiti-o-Rongomai achieved renown for his non-violent tactics among the Māori, which proved more successful in preventing land confiscations than acts of violent resistance.


title: Pacifism

text: Mahatma Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India, instrumental in the Indian independence movement. The Nobel prize winning great poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was also an Indian, gave him the honorific "Mahatma", usually translated "Great Soul". He was the pioneer of a brand of nonviolence (or "ahimsa") which he called "satyagraha"translated literally as "truth force". This was the resistance of tyranny through civil disobedience that was not only nonviolent but also sought to change the heart of the opponent. He contrasted this with "duragraha", "resistant force", which sought only to change behaviour with stubborn protest. During his 30 years of work (1917–1947) for the independence of his country from British colonial rule, Gandhi led dozens of nonviolent campaigns, spent over seven years in prison, and fasted nearly to the death on several occasions to obtain British compliance with a demand or to stop inter-communal violence. His efforts helped lead India to independence in 1947, and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom worldwide.


title: Pacifism

text: Peace movements became active in the Western world after 1900, often focusing on treaties that would settle disputes through arbitration, and efforts to support the Hague conventions.


title: Pacifism

text: The sudden outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 dismayed the peace movement. Socialist parties in every industrial nation had committed themselves to antiwar policies, but when the war came, all of them, except in Russia and the United States, supported their own governments. There were highly publicized dissidents, some of whom were imprisoned for opposing draft laws, such as Eugene Debs in the U.S. In Britain, the prominent activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse was jailed for refusing military service, citing his convictions as a "socialist and a Christian". Many socialist groups and movements were antimilitarist, arguing that war by its nature was a type of governmental coercion of the working class for the benefit of capitalist elites. The French socialist pacifist leader Jean Jaurès was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on July 31, 1914. The national parties in the Second International increasingly supported their respective nations in war, and the International was dissolved in 1916.


title: Pacifism

text: In 1915, the League of Nations Society was formed by British liberal leaders to promote a strong international organisation that could enforce the peaceful resolution of conflict. Later that year, the League to Enforce Peace was established in the U.S. to promote similar goals. Hamilton Holt published a September 28, 1914, editorial in his magazine the "Independent" called "The Way to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" that called for an international organization to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member. The ensuing debate among prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former British ambassador to the United States. These and other initiatives were pivotal in the change in attitudes that gave birth to the League of Nations after the war.


title: Pacifism

text: In addition to the traditional peace churches, some of the many groups that protested against the war were the Woman's Peace Party (which was organized in 1915 and led by noted reformer Jane Addams), the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) (also organized in 1915), the American Union Against Militarism, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was another fierce advocate of pacifism, the only person to vote against American entrance into both wars.


title: Pacifism

text: After the immense loss of nearly ten million men to trench warfare, a sweeping change of attitude toward militarism crashed over Europe, particularly in nations such as Great Britain, where many questioned its involvement in the war. After World War I's official end in 1918, peace movements across the continent and the United States renewed, gradually gaining popularity among young Europeans who grew up in the shadow of Europe's trauma over the Great War. Organizations formed in this period included the War Resisters' International, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the No More War Movement, the Service Civil International and the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). The League of Nations also convened several disarmament conferences in the interbellum period such as the Geneva Conference, though the support that pacifist policy and idealism received varied across European nations. These organizations and movements attracted tens of thousands of Europeans, spanning most professions including "scientists, artists, musicians, politicians, clerks, students, activists and thinkers."


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifism and revulsion with war were very popular sentiments in 1920s Britain. Novels and poems on the theme of the futility of war and the slaughter of the youth by old fools were published, including, Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington, Erich Remarque's translated All Quiet on the Western Front and Beverley Nichols's expose "Cry Havoc". A debate at the University of Oxford in 1933 on the motion 'one must fight for King and country' captured the changed mood when the motion was resoundingly defeated. Dick Sheppard established the Peace Pledge Union in 1934, which totally renounced war and aggression. The idea of collective security was also popular; instead of outright pacifism, the public generally exhibited a determination to stand up to aggression, but preferably with the use of economic sanctions and multilateral negotiations. Many members of the Peace Pledge Union later joined the Bruderhof during its period of residence in the Cotswolds, where Englishmen and Germans, many of whom were Jewish, lived side by side despite local persecution.


title: Pacifism

text: The British Labour Party had a strong pacifist wing in the early 1930s, and between 1931 and 1935 it was led by George Lansbury, a Christian pacifist who later chaired the No More War Movement and was president of the PPU. The 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to "pledge itself to take no part in war". Researcher Richard Toye writes that "Labour's official position, however, although based on the aspiration towards a world socialist commonwealth and the outlawing of war, did not imply a renunciation of force under all circumstances, but rather support for the ill-defined concept of 'collective security' under the League of Nations. At the same time, on the party's left, Stafford Cripps's small but vocal Socialist League opposed the official policy, on the non-pacifist ground that the League of Nations was 'nothing but the tool of the satiated imperialist powers'."


title: Pacifism

text: Lansbury was eventually persuaded to resign as Labour leader by the non-pacifist wing of the party and was replaced by Clement Attlee. As the threat from Nazi Germany increased in the 1930s, the Labour Party abandoned its pacifist position and supported rearmament, largely as the result of the efforts of Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton, who by 1937 had also persuaded the party to oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.


title: Pacifism

text: The League of Nations attempted to play its role in ensuring world peace in the 1920s and 1930s. However, with the increasingly revisionist and aggressive behaviour of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, it ultimately failed to maintain such a world order. Economic sanctions were used against states that committed aggression, such as those against Italy when it invaded Abyssinia, but there was no will on the part of the principal League powers, Britain and France, to subordinate their interests to a multilateral process or to disarm at all themselves.


title: Pacifism

text: The Spanish Civil War proved a major test for international pacifism, and the work of pacifist organisations (such as War Resisters' International and the Fellowship of Reconciliation) and individuals (such as José Brocca and Amparo Poch) in that arena has until recently been ignored or forgotten by historians, overshadowed by the memory of the International Brigades and other militaristic interventions. Shortly after the war ended, Simone Weil, despite having volunteered for service on the republican side, went on to publish "The Iliad or the Poem of Force", a work that has been described as a pacifist manifesto. In response to the threat of fascism, some pacifist thinkers, such as Richard B. Gregg, devised plans for a campaign of nonviolent resistance in the event of a fascist invasion or takeover.


title: Pacifism

text: As the prospect of a second major war began to seem increasingly inevitable, much of France adopted pacifist views, though some historians argue that France felt more war anxiety than a moral objection to a second war. Hitler's spreading influence and territory posed an enormous threat to French livelihood from their neighbors. The French countryside had been devastated during World War I and the entire nation was reluctant to subject its territory to the same treatment. Though all countries in the First World War had suffered great losses, France was one of the most devastated and many did not want a second war.


title: Pacifism

text: As Germany dealt with the burdens of the Treaty of Versailles, a conflict arose in the 1930s between German Christianity and German nationalism. Many Germans found the terms of the treaty debilitating and humiliating, so German nationalism offered a way to regain the country's pride. German Christianity warned against the risks of entering a war similar to the previous one. As the German depression worsened and fascism began to rise in Germany, a greater tide of Germans began to sway toward Hitler's brand of nationalism that would come to crush pacifism.


title: Pacifism

text: With the start of World War II, pacifist and antiwar sentiment declined in nations affected by the war. Even the communist-controlled American Peace Mobilization reversed its antiwar activism once Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the non-interventionist America First Committee dropped its opposition to American involvement in the war and disbanded, but many smaller religious and socialist groups continued their opposition to war.


title: Pacifism

text: Bertrand Russell argued that the necessity of defeating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis was a unique circumstance in which war was not the worst of the possible evils; he called his position "relative pacifism". Shortly before the outbreak of war, British writers such as E. M. Forster, Leonard Woolf, David Garnett and Storm Jameson all rejected their earlier pacifism and endorsed military action against Nazism. Similarly, Albert Einstein wrote: "I loathe all armies and any kind of violence; yet I'm firmly convinced that at present these hateful weapons offer the only effective protection." The British pacifists Reginald Sorensen and C. J. Cadoux, while bitterly disappointed by the outbreak of war, nevertheless urged their fellow pacifists "not to obstruct the war effort."


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifists across Great Britain further struggled to uphold their anti-military values during the Blitz, a coordinated, long-term attack by the "Luftwaffe" on Great Britain. As the country was ravaged nightly by German bombing raids, pacifists had to seriously weigh the importance of their political and moral values against the desire to protect their nation.


title: Pacifism

text: Some scholars theorize that pacifism was the cause of France's rapid fall to the Germans after it was invaded by the Nazis in June 1940, resulting in a takeover of the government by the German military. Whether or not pacifism weakened French defenses against the Germans, there was no hope of sustaining a real pacifist movement after Paris fell. Just as peaceful Germans succumbed to violent nationalism, the pacifist French were muzzled by the totality of German control over nearly all of France.


title: Pacifism

text: The French pacifists André and Magda Trocmé helped conceal hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. After the war, the Trocmés were declared Righteous Among the Nations.


title: Pacifism

text: Pacifists in Nazi Germany were dealt with harshly, reducing the movement into almost nonexistence; those who continued to advocate for the end of the war and violence were often sent to labor camps; German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky and Olaf Kullmann, a Norwegian pacifist active during the Nazi occupation, were both imprisoned in concentration camps and died as a result of their mistreatment there. Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter was executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht.


title: Pacifism

text: German nationalism consumed even the most peaceful of Christians, who may have believed that Hitler was acting in the good faith of Germany or who may have been so suppressed by the Nazi regime that they were content to act as bystanders to the violence occurring around them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi German pastor who later died in 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, once wrote in a letter to his grandmother: "The issue really is: Germanism or Christianity."


title: Pacifism

text: After the end of the war, it was discovered that "The Black Book" or "Sonderfahndungsliste G.B.", a list of Britons to be arrested in the event of a successful German invasion of Britain, included three active pacifists: Vera Brittain, Sybil Thorndike and Aldous Huxley (who had left the country).


title: Pacifism

text: There were conscientious objectors and war tax resisters in both World War I and World War II. The United States government allowed sincere objectors to serve in noncombatant military roles. However, those draft resisters who refused any cooperation with the war effort often spent much of the wars in federal prisons. During World War II, pacifist leaders such as Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic Worker Movement urged young Americans not to enlist in military service.


title: Pacifism

text: During the two world wars, young men conscripted into the military, but who refused to take up arms, were called conscientious objectors. Though these men had to either answer their conscription or face prison time, their status as conscientious objectors permitted them to refuse to take part in battle using weapons, and the military was forced to find a different use for them. Often, these men were assigned various tasks close to battle such as medical duties, though some were assigned various civilian jobs including farming, forestry, hospital work and mining. Conscientious objectors were often viewed by soldiers as cowards and liars, and they were sometimes accused of shirking military duty out of fear rather than as the result of conscience. In Great Britain during World War II, the majority of the public did not approve of moral objection by soldiers but supported their right to abstain from direct combat. On the more extreme sides of public opinion were those who fully supported the objectors and those who believed they should be executed as traitors. The World War II objectors were often scorned as fascist sympathizers and traitors, though many of them cited the influence of World War I and their shell shocked fathers as major reasons for refusing to participate.


title: Pacifism

text: Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights movement in the U.S., employing Gandhian nonviolent resistance to repeal laws enforcing racial segregation and to work for integration of schools, businesses and government. In 1957, his wife Coretta Scott King, along with Albert Schweitzer, Benjamin Spock and others, formed the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (now Peace Action) to resist the nuclear arms race. In 1958 British activists formed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament with Bertrand Russell as its president.


title: Pacifism

text: In 1960, Thich Nhat Hanh came to the U.S. to study comparative religion at Princeton University and was subsequently appointed a lecturer in Buddhism at Columbia University. Nhất Hạnh had written a letter to King in 1965 entitled "Searching for the Enemy of Man" and met with King in 1966 to urge him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War. In a famous 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, King publicly questioned the U.S. involvement in Vietnam for the first time.


title: Pacifism

text: Other examples from this period include the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines led by Corazon Aquino and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, with the broadly publicized "Tank Man" incident as its indelible image.


title: Pacifism

text: On December 1, 1948, President José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica abolished the Costa Rican military. In 1949, the abolition of the military was introduced in Article 12 of the Costa Rican constitution. The budget previously dedicated to the military is now dedicated to providing healthcare services and education.


title: Pacifism

text: Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith abolished holy war and emphasized its abolition as a central teaching of his faith. However, the Baháʼí Faith does not have an absolute pacifistic position. For example, Baháʼís are advised to do social service instead of active army service, but when this is not possible because of obligations in certain countries, the Baháʼí law of "loyalty to one's government" is preferred and the individual should perform the army service. Shoghi Effendi, the head of the Baháʼí Faith in the first half of the 20th century, noted that in the Baháʼí view, absolute pacifists are anti-social and exalt the individual over society which could lead to anarchy; instead he noted that the Baháʼí conception of social life follows a moderate view where the individual is not suppressed or exalted.


title: Pacifism

text: On the level of society, Bahá'u'lláh promotes the principle of collective security, which does not abolish the use of force, but prescribes "a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice". The idea of collective security from the Bahá'í teachings states that if a government violates a fundamental norm of international law or provision of a future world constitution which Bahá'ís believe will be established by all nations, then the other governments should step in.


title: Pacifism

text: Ahimsa (do no harm), is a primary virtue in Buddhism (as well as other Indian religions such as Hinduism and Jainism). This leads to a misconception that Buddhism is a religion based solely on peace; however, like all religions, there is a long history of violence in various Buddhist traditions and many examples of prolonged violence in its 2,500-year existence. Like many religious scholars and believers of other religions, many Buddhists disavow any connection between their religion and the violence committed in its name or by its followers, and find various ways of dealing with problematic texts.


title: Pacifism

text: Notable pacifists or peace activists within Buddhist traditions include Thích Nhất Hạnh who advocated for peace in response to the Vietnam War, founded the Plum Village Tradition, and helped popularize engaged Buddhism, Robert Baker Aitken and Anne Hopkins Aitken who founded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Cheng Yen founder of the Tzu Chi Foundation, Daisaku Ikeda who is a Japanese Buddhist leader, writer, president of Soka Gakkai International, and founder of multiple educational and peace research institutions, Bhikkhu Bodhi American Theravada Buddhist monk and founder of Buddhist Global Relief, Thai activist and author Sulak Sivaraksa, Cambodian activist Preah Maha Ghosananda. and Japanese activist and peace pagoda builder Nichidatsu Fujii


title: Pacifism

text: Peace churches are Christian denominations explicitly advocating pacifism. The term "historic peace churches" refers specifically to three church traditions: the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites (and other Anabaptists, such as the Amish, Hutterites and Apostolic Christian Church), as well as the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends). The historic peace churches have, from their origins as far back as the 16th century, always taken the position that Jesus was himself a pacifist who explicitly taught and practiced pacifism, and that his followers must do likewise. Pacifist churches vary on whether physical force can ever be justified in self-defense or protecting others, as many adhere strictly to nonresistance when confronted by violence. But all agree that violence on behalf of a country or a government is prohibited for Christians.


title: Pacifism

text: The Emmanuel Association of Churches, Immanuel Missionary Church, Church of God (Guthrie, Oklahoma), First Bible Holiness Church, and Christ's Sanctified Holy Church are denominations in the holiness movement (which is largely Methodist with a minority from other backgrounds such as Quaker, Anabaptist and Restorationist) known for their opposition to war today; they are known as "holiness pacifists". The Emmanuel Association teaches:


title: Pacifism

text: Jay Beaman's thesis states that 13 of 21, or 62% of American Pentecostal groups formed by 1917 show evidence of being pacifist sometime in their history. Furthermore, Jay Beaman has shown in his thesis that there has been a shift away from pacifism in the American Pentecostal churches to more a style of military support and chaplaincy. The major organisation for Pentecostal Christians who believe in pacifism is the PCPF, the Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship.


title: Pacifism

text: The United Pentecostal Church, the largest Apostolic/Oneness denomination, takes an official stand of conscientious objection: its Articles of Faith read, "We are constrained to declare against participating in combatant service in war, armed insurrection ... aiding or abetting in or the actual destruction of human life. We believe that we can be consistent in serving our Government in certain noncombatant capacities, but not in the bearing of arms."


title: Pacifism

text: The Peace Pledge Union is a pacifist organisation from which the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship (APF) later emerged within the Anglican Church. The APF succeeded in gaining ratification of the pacifist position at two successive Lambeth Conferences, but many Anglicans would not regard themselves as pacifists. South African Bishop Desmond Tutu is the most prominent Anglican pacifist. Rowan Williams led an almost united Anglican Church in Britain in opposition to the 2003 Iraq War. In Australia Peter Carnley similarly led a front of bishops opposed to the Government of Australia's involvement in the invasion of Iraq.


title: Pacifism

text: The Catholic Worker Movement is concerned with both social justice and pacifist issues, and voiced consistent opposition to the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Many of its early members were imprisoned for their opposition to conscription. Within the Roman Catholic Church, the Pax Christi organisation is the premier pacifist lobby group. It holds positions similar to APF, and the two organisations are known to work together on ecumenical projects. Within Roman Catholicism there has been a discernible move towards a more pacifist position through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Popes Benedict XV, John XXIII and John Paul II were all vocal in their opposition to specific wars. By taking the name Benedict XVI, some suspected that Joseph Ratzinger would continue the strong emphasis upon nonviolent conflict resolution of his predecessor. However, the Roman Catholic Church officially maintains the legitimacy of Just War, which is rejected by some pacifists.


title: Pacifism

text: In the twentieth century there was a notable trend among prominent Roman Catholics towards pacifism. Individuals such as Dorothy Day and Henri Nouwen stand out among them. The monk and mystic Thomas Merton was noted for his commitment to pacifism during the Vietnam War era. Murdered Salvadoran Bishop Óscar Romero was notable for using non-violent resistance tactics and wrote meditative sermons focusing on the power of prayer and peace. School of the Americas Watch was founded by Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois in 1990 and uses strictly pacifist principles to protest the training of Latin American military officers by United States Army officers at the School of the Americas in the state of Georgia.


title: Pacifism

text: The Southern Baptist Convention has stated in the Baptist Faith and Message, "It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war."


title: Pacifism

text: The United Methodist Church explicitly supports conscientious objection by its members "as an ethically valid position" while simultaneously allowing for differences of opinion and belief for those who do not object to military service.


title: Pacifism

text: Members of the Rastafari Movement's Mansion Nyabinghi are specifically noted for having a large population of Pacifist members, though not all of them are.


title: Pacifism

text: Non violence, or ahimsa, is a central part of Hinduism and is one of the fundamental Yamas – self restraints needed to live a proper life. The concept of ahimsa grew gradually within Hinduism, one of the signs being the discouragement of ritual animal sacrifice. Many Hindus today have a vegetarian diet. The classical texts of Hinduism devote numerous chapters discussing what people who practice the virtue of Ahimsa, can and must do when they are faced with war, violent threat or need to sentence someone convicted of a crime. These discussions have led to theories of just war, theories of reasonable self-defence and theories of proportionate punishment. Arthashastra discusses, among other things, why and what constitutes proportionate response and punishment.


title: Pacifism

text: The precepts of Ahimsa under Hinduism require that war must be avoided, with sincere and truthful dialogue. Force must be the last resort. If war becomes necessary, its cause must be just, its purpose virtuous, its objective to restrain the wicked, its aim peace, its method lawful. While the war is in progress, sincere dialogue for peace must continue.


title: Pacifism

text: Different Muslim movements through history had linked pacifism with Muslim theology. However, warfare has been integral part of Islamic history both for the defense and the spread of the faith since the time of Muhammad.


title: Pacifism

text: Peace is an important aspect of Islam, and Muslims are encouraged to strive for peace and peaceful solutions to all problems. However, most Muslims are generally not pacifists, as the teachings in the Qur'an and Hadith allow for wars to be fought if they are justified.


title: Pacifism

text: Prior to the Hijra travel, Muhammad struggled non-violently against his opposition in Mecca, providing a basis for Islamic pacifist schools of thought such as some Sufi orders.


title: Pacifism

text: In the 13th century, Salim Suwari a philosopher in Islam, came up with a peaceful approach to Islam known as the Suwarian tradition.


title: Pacifism

text: The earliest massive non-violent implementation of civil disobedience was brought about by Egyptians against the British in the Egyptian Revolution of 1919.


title: Pacifism

text: Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān was a Pashtun independence activist against British colonial rule. He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition, and a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim. A close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Bacha Khan was nicknamed the "Frontier Gandhi" in British India. Bacha Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") movement in 1929, whose success triggered severe crackdowns by the colonial government against Khan and his supporters, and they experienced some of strongest repression of the Indian independence movement.


title: Pacifism

text: According to the Ahmadiyya understanding of Islam, pacifism is a strong current, and jihad is one's personal inner struggle and should not be used violently for political motives. Violence is the last option only to be used to protect religion and one's own life in extreme situations of persecution. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, said that in contrary to the current views, Islam "does not allow the use of sword in religion, except in the case of defensive wars, wars waged to punish a tyrant, or those meant to uphold freedom".


title: Pacifism

text: Ahmadiyya claims its objective to be the peaceful propagation of Islam with special emphasis on spreading the true message of Islam by the pen. Ahmadis point out that as per prophecy, who they believe was the promised messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, rendered the concept of violent jihad unnecessary in modern times. They believe that the answer of hate should be given by love. Many Muslims consider Ahmadi Muslims as either "kafirs" or heretics, an animosity sometimes resulting in murder.


title: Pacifism

text: Absolute Non-violence and compassion for all life is central to Jainism. Human life is valued as a unique, rare opportunity to reach enlightenment. Killing any person or living creature seen or unseen, no matter what crime may have committed, is considered unimaginably terrible. It is a religion that requires monks, from all its sects and traditions, to be vegetarian. Most or all jains are pure vegetarians. Some Indian regions, such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh have been strongly influenced by Jains and often the majority of the local Hindus of every denomination are also vegetarian.


title: Pacifism

text: Although Judaism is not a pacifist religion, it does believe that peace is highly desirable. Most Jews will hope to limit or minimise conflict and violence but they accept that, given human nature and the situations which arise from time to time in the world, there will be occasions when violence and war may be justified.


title: Pacifism

text: The Jewish Peace Fellowship is a New-York based nonprofit, nondenominational organization set up to provide a Jewish voice in the peace movement. The organization was founded in 1941 in order to support Jewish conscientious objectors who sought exemption from combatant military service. It is affiliated to the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The small Neturei Karta group of anti-Zionist, ultra-orthodox Jews, supposedly take a pacifist line, saying that "Jews are not allowed to dominate, kill, harm or demean another people and are not allowed to have anything to do with the Zionist enterprise, their political meddling and their wars." However, the Neturei Karta group do support groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas that are violent towards Israel. The Hebrew Bible is full of examples when Jews were told to go and war against enemy lands or within the Israelite community as well as instances where God, as destroyer and protector, goes to war for non-participant Jews. The Holocaust Remembrance Day (called Yom Hashoah in Hebrew) is a day a remembrance for many Jews as they honor those who fought to end the Hitler government which starved, shot, gassed and burned over six million Jews to death. It is observed on the day corresponding to the 27th day of the month of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar.


title: Pacifism

text: While many governments have tolerated pacifist views and even accommodated pacifists' refusal to fight in wars, others at times have outlawed pacifist and anti-war activity. In 1918, The United States Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918. During the periods between World Wars I and World War II, pacifist literature and public advocacy was banned in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler, Spain under Francisco Franco, and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In these nations, pacifism was denounced as cowardice; indeed, Mussolini referred to pacifist writings as the "propaganda of cowardice".