BELGRADE: The landmines planted during the wars in the Balkans have proved lethal leftovers. They have killed hundreds, and maimed many more. The number of amputations carried out in Belgrade alone runs into thousands.
A new move began last week to clear 103 minefields along the border between Croatia and Serbia & Montenegro. But some 11,000 mines that have to be dismantled along the 40-kilometre border mean there is a long way to go.
“Minefields are the deadliest remnant of wars in former Yugoslavia, they were set up to cause maximum casualties,” Petar Mihajlovic, head of the Belgrade Centre for Dismantling of Mines and Unexploded Ordnance told IPS. “The wars ended eight years ago, but people still get killed and maimed.”
Thousands of minefields were planted by all warring sides in former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The wars left about a quarter of a million people dead.
At least 3,000 were reported killed by anti-personnel mines during the wars. More than 800 have died since 1995 over mines scattered along hundreds of kilometres of former front lines, in woods and in fields, on roadsides and sometimes in and around abandoned houses.
“The mines have changed the lives of hundreds of families,” says Damir Gorseta, head of the Croatian De-mining Centre. “A total of 410 people were killed since 1995 after they strayed into minefields, 108 of them under the age of 18.” And that is only in Croatia.
Warning signs have been put up in Croatia over an area of about 4,000 square kilometres where mines were planted. So far only about 400 square kilometres of this area has been cleared, says Gorseta.
The situation is similar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where minefields lie mostly along the line that separated the Muslim-Croatian from the Serb part of the country. About 400 have been killed by mines here since 1995, according to the De-Mining Commission of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“There were a total of 10,000 minefields over 2,145 square kilometres in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” says Zeljko Travar from the Commission. “We plan to solve this problem by 2010 at a cost of $350 million.”
But international funding has slowed down as the attention of donors turns to minefields in Afghanistan or Iraq. “Our de-mining experts are leaving for those countries now, as they are being paid well there,” says Travar.
It is a high-risk job. De-mining operations have killed 36 experts in Bosnia since 1995.
Over the past 10 years, orthopaedic surgeons in Belgrade have performed 4,000 amputations on people who stumbled on to minefields in former Yugoslavia. Many were injured or killed long after the wars ended. They were mostly ethnic Serb civilians who lived in the war zones of Croatia and Bosnia. International donors have funded 41 companies in Croatia and 23 in Bosnia for de-mining operations since 1995. A Mine Action Centre was set up with European Union support to coordinate the work of local de-mining commissions. The centre is supported also by the United Nations and by the International Trust Fund for De-Mining and Mine Victims Assistance.
“It was necessary to have a single body that would keep records for all countries at one place,” says Mihajlovic.
A particular problem in the Balkans remains the United Nations-administered south Serbian province Kosovo. In what was officially called “war against terrorism” the security forces of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic planted some 56,000 mines in Kosovo. The mines were planted to check an ethnic Albanian uprising.
The mines have been marked, but only a fraction have been cleared since the UN took over administration of Kosovo after the 11-week North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999.
That bombing has left another problem in Serbia. Unexploded cluster bombs still lie at 14 locations, while giant unexploded bombs lie at five places in Belgrade and in another eight cities in Serbia.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.