(Originally published 1995)

Don't Walk too Close to the Ground
by Rick Grant

MEDUGORJE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Of all the horrors, the atrocities, the filth, that has washed through the Balkans in the last three or four years, nothing comes close to the lurking menace of millions of landmines and millions of unexploded bombs, rockets, shells and other finely manufactured instruments of death.

The countryside is awash in the little horrors and no one knows what to do aboutit. Officials with the United Nations have estimated that six million landmines alone are scattered about the countryand most of them are utterly lost. As for the unexploded munitions, well in the words of a Canadian relief worker here, "Even God would need a pretty nifty hand calculator to total them all up".

The effect has been to all but kill agriculture in many areas. In the Bihac region of northwestern Bosnia- Herzegovina, the region that was the scene of some of the nastiest and vicious fighting by so many armies, factions, guerrilla bands, army mutineers, and freelance killers that military historians will have a terrible time straightening it all out, the land is stone dead. Last summer's corncrop is still standing, twisted and dead crops of hay tangle the fields, all of the livestock has disappeared and so have the people.

On a recent trip through the surrounding Krajina region I drove for stretches of up to an hour past known minefields, and for much longer through deeply feared possible minefields. It's that uncertainty which has cleaned the people from the cornfields of the steep river valleys and the hilltop sheep farms.

Who can chance working a field that might have one, or a hundred, plastic cased beasties buried into the grass waiting patiently, ever awake, for that fateful footfall? Who, after having been forced from their home during the fighting, would dare go back into the house for fear that a network of tripwires might lace invisibly in the gloom or a pressure switch might sit just under a floorboard?

The cities, towns and villages are full of people on crutches. The clinics and hospitals are choked with children who've been horribly maimed. A large part of what's left of the people are looking after the injured. The dead don't need looking after and that's one of the central tenets of mine philosophy. That's why the main purpose of most mines is to maim, to injure, but not to kill.

Since the invention of the landmine the military mind has worked on the premise that it is better to injure your enemy than to kill, on the principle that an injured person will need the help of others who would otherwise be able to fight.

But a few of the 14 types of mines commonly found in Balkans are indeed designed to kill. The most savage is a direct copy of an American invention, the infamous Claymore. The MRUD as it's known in this part of the world, is a green plastic box about as long as a loaf of bread and half as thick. It is packed with ball bearings and explosive. Stumble across the stretched tripwire and it lets go with a blast that shreds a human body anywhere within the length of a hockey rink and causes serious injury within a distance of two football fields.

The most common mine is known as the Liver Box. It's so dangerous that the various armies which use it, and that's all of the warring sides, never dare attempt to recover it once it has been laid and armed. Millions of these shoe polish tin sized things are scattered about. About all that shows is a star shaped piece of green painted metal just at ground level. A toddler taking its first steps is heavy enough to set it off. Many have.

Children have also been among the many victims of the big brother of the Liver Box, the Beefmeat Box. This one looks like an oversized hockey puck. It also floats. The two characteristics are behind the fiendish technique of tossing it into a river and letting it float through a settled area where a kid can pick it up. This thing is so sensitive that a soft-footed cat will set it off.

The international troops who specialize in mine clearing say the Beefmeat Box is the one that worries them the most. One Danish engineer I talked with said he'd far rather deal with the huge monsters used to blow apart tanks and armored personnel carriers than the hockey puck lookalike that only gets more sensitive and unpreditable the longer it lies around.

No one has yet figured out what to do about the mine problem. Most of the different types are made of undetectable plastic. They can only be found by careful and delicate probing, inch by square inch. There are a lot of square inches in the Balkans.

For the moment. the international troops here, like the Danish engineer who specializes in the crafty art of mine defusing, make no attempt to clear any but those mines which are a direct and immediate threat to life. There's some vague talk about contracting the mine clearing operations out to private companies, (who said there are no jobs these days?), but the sheer scale of the problem is beyond fathoming.

Yet in a weird way, and weirdness is part of daily life in the Balkans. the vast and lost fields of mines put a kind of brake on thoughts of new military adventures by any side. If you don't know where you put your own mines, let alone where the enemy has theirs, then there's a good chance you'll lose a lot of men to your own weapons.

As for all those unexploded munitions, well that's utterly beyond dealing with at the moment. Like the WW1 battlefields of France, the City of Berlin, wherever there's been war, dormant explosives will continue to blow up long after anyone suspects they still exist.

I know of one unexploded rocket grenade that's bound to kill someone. I almost stepped on it myself yesterday as I crossed the swinging bridge across the gorge separating the city of Mostar in Bosnia. It's buried up to its tailfins in the pathway, right where you would want to put your foot. The local people know about it and step around. But come winter and if the mine engineers don't deal with it, mud is going to cover it over just enough so someone will forget where it is.

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