Demilitarizing disarmament with mine detection rats

ABSTRACT

This paper considers a new technology for mine action in Cambodia: the mine detection rat. Used successfully in Africa for mine detection since 2003, the rats were implemented for the first time in 2015 in Cambodia by the international NGO, APOPO. APOPO entered a small-scale partnership with the state mine action organization, Cambodian Mine Action Centre. The partnership revealed a tension between APOPO’s aspiration to ‘demilitarize’ mine action and the highly militarized nature of mine action under the state. The rats were unique among militaristic structures and experiences and allowed the international NGO to promote an ideal of what demilitarized mine action should look like. But the rats also condition the possibilities for the demilitarization of mine action through their own biological and historical attributes. This paper will use observations from over 14 months of fieldwork among this partnership with mine detection rats, showing tensions between local militarized methods for disarmament and an NGO’s aspirations for global humanitarianism.

KEYWORDS:

• Militarism
• landmines
• animals
• technologies

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge APOPO and CMAC’s generosity in allowing me to observe this exciting moment in mine detection in Cambodia. Thanks also to my colleagues who have helped me with the early drafts of this paper, Philippe Messier, Doerte Bemme, Nicole D’Souza, Fiona Gedeon-Achi, Julianne Yip, and Adam Fleischmann. And thanks to Lisa Stevenson who saw the earliest draft of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The Gambian Pouched Rat, cricetomys gambianus, is only officially domesticated and trained by APOPO since its importation as a pet has been banned in the United States and restricted in many other countries where it is not native.

2 In some of the other provinces, CMAC is partnered with other NGOs like Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).

3 While Hamilton and McCabe (2016) show how chickens become ‘de-animalized’ (332) in order to be processed as protein sources in factories, by contrast, cutification allows the rats to become ‘animalized’ in order to counter their reputations as pests.

Additional information

Funding

I would also like to acknowledge the funders that made this research possible – the Centre for Khmer Studies (Dissertation Award), Media@McGill (Arts Fellowship), and the Merit Scholarship for International Students through Québec, Canada; Ministere de l’Education et l’Enseignement Superieur (Merit Scholarship).