Fourteen years after the end of the war in Bosnia, landmines still threaten life and limb
By Emma Brewin
Responsible for killing and maiming around 40 people every year, landmines are proving to be one of the bitterest legacies of Bosnia-Herzegovina's (BiH) three year war. Yet despite the recent granting of a 10-year extension to its original mine-free deadline of March 2009, 3.6 percent (some 1,812 km²) of the country remains categorised as risk areas for landmine and explosive remnants of war (ERW). The terrible human cost of landmines/ERW through death and loss of limbs and livelihoods have been well-documented, most heartbreakingly in cases of curious children playing in abandoned shell-damaged houses. However, the environmental and economic problems associated with conflict-contaminated land are also equally damaging for communities trying to escape the shadow of war. Is such slow progress in BiH indicative of a lack of funding, a lack of political will, or simply an environmental threat that has dropped off the international radar?
Danger zone
Home to more than twice the estimated area of mine contamination than Afghanistan, BiH has the dubious honour of being named the most mine-affected country in Europe. Overseen by an international protectorate in a system of governance almost unrivalled in its complexity, the country's two main political entities are the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska, RS), and most minefields are concentrated in the vague zone that lies between them. During the 1990s conflict, frequent changes in the lines of confrontation in this zone, which measures up to four kilometres in width and meanders for roughly 1,100 kilometres through the length of present-day BiH, left behind a low-density jumble of mines and other ERW. Annual mine-related deaths and injuries in BiH have in fact decreased, from 632 incidents in 1996 to around 40 a year, but the impact of landmines/ERW on everyday life is still considerable 14 years after the conflict's conclusion. A survey conducted by the Bosnia-Herzegovina Mine Action Center (BHMAC) in 2007, identified 1,631 mine/ERW impacted communities and estimated that 921,513 people still suffer a direct influence.
Heavily reliant on food imports in normal circumstances because of its relatively mountainous terrain, BiH's fertile agricultural land in the northern Brcko region (which accounts for 30 percent in terms of land mass) was producing 85 percent of the country's wheat and 88 percent of its maize in 1982. It was also once a key location for livestock farming, producing 49 percent of the country's cattle, 75 percent of its pigs, and 74 percent of its poultry. Caught up between Croatian, Serbian and Bosniak troops, many of Brcko's farmers were reduced to dangerous DIY clearance of their fields once the troops had left their land to enable re-cultivation. Elsewhere, although many mines/ERW have finally been cleared, unworked land still requires considerable re-cultivation in order to return its productivity.
Costs and clearance
The country's spectacular natural beauty has recovered sufficiently to have hidden many of the scars of war; apart from derelict houses only noticeably younger stands of trees on the hillsides indicate the sites of explosions. Yet Alenka Savic, executive director at the Centre for Development and Support (CRP) BiH, believes that landmines are still one of Bosnia's most pressing environmental problems.
"Landmines are a sort of pollution, of water, of forests," says Savic. "Slow progress in mine clearance in Bosnia is due to both a lack of funding and also physical capacity and inefficiency in all sectors. Clearing itself is difficult because most mines were put in meadows and fields 16 years ago in 1992 and 1993 that have since been covered in bushes and trees. There is considerable commercial competition between demining companies to get jobs, so the price [of clearing] is extremely low. It now costs, for example, more to have a square metre of carpet cleaned than it does to clear a square metre of land of mines. There have also been a lot of injuries amongst demining employees, which has led to a shortage of workers. In addition, funding from the international community has declined, and there is a lack of internal funding from the state. Demining, although a priority, is only one of many in the country."
Bosnia and Herzegovina, blessed with both natural beauty and some of the most fascinatingly diverse history and cultural heritage in Europe, was once considered to have excellent tourism potential. Nowadays however, along with the city's beautiful mosques and churches, most tourist visits to Sarajevo take in its siege access tunnel, cemeteries and massacre sites as well. Host to the Winter Olympics in 1984, ski resorts in the mountains around the capital are open once again, but in terms of infrastructure little has changed since their original development some 20 years earlier. Landmines have considerably restricted both international and domestic tourism. According to Ramiz Becirovic, whilst the country as a whole has struggled to get back onto its feet after the war, the landmine/ERW survivors are having a harder time than most.
"At the Eighth Meeting of States Parties, BiH noted that the high general unemployment rate directly affected the economic reintegration opportunities of mine/ERW survivors," says the advocacy coordinator. "Most of the industries in BiH are either not working or are working with some small capacity, including also ones relying on agriculture and tourism. Major agricultural companies are not working the same as before the war, and it has been proven that it is smaller companies or even individuals that are achieving results. Landmine Survivors Network BiH has supported several dozen landmine survivors who expressed readiness to start greenhouse-based agricultural production, and who now sell their products at local markets or within their communities. Some of them have even joined forces and now function as unions of agricultural producers, thus being more able to respond to market demand."
In tackling just one square meter of ground, de-miners in BiH have to stab around 2,000 times at an angle of fifteen degrees, testing for mines as small as two inches in size. Designed as anti-personnel weapons, the most dangerous is the 'promdzije', whose secondary explosive charge is triggered only once an initial blast propels the mine to chest height to deliver maximum injury. A slow and dangerous job, the last push for mine/ERW clearance has been primarily hampered by a shortfall in funding. According to the Electronic Mine Information Network, by adopting mine clearance legislation and a National Mine Action Strategy and pledging financial support to rid the country of the threat by 2019, the Government has "demonstrated a clear commitment to addressing the mine problem." The Mine Action Group, a humanitarian organisation that with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines jointly received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the Mine Ban Treaty of the same year, conducted an assessment in Bosnia in 1997 but could not secure enough donor support to begin a programme there.
The environmental cost of war is an important consideration, but often one that is sidelined in favour of tackling the more obvious human impacts of conflict. Yet environmental recovery clearly ties into both social and economic revitalisation, and the continued presence of landmines/ERW in BiH remains a significant hurdle blocking the country's return to normality.
