In an incredible, bittersweet success story, Croatia has announced it has freed itself from the scourge of landmines, 31 years after the country’s civil war.
Not to nitpick, but 31 years is more than 3 decades.
To nitpick, a government organised effort to remove the mines did not begin immediarely after the war. The croatian parliament enacted a demining act in 1996 (almost but not quite 30 years ago) and the publically funded and organised deming efforts started in 1998.
Also, “more than three decades ago” is also more than two decades ago.
Eh fair enough.
It is extremely unlikely we’re literally free of mines. You can clean up an area, and yet miss a few mines. Mines can sink under ground through time, and reappear again as the soil moves around. People have died in supposedly mine-free areas. Thankfully the numbers have been minimised, but you can never be 100% sure.
In Germany they find and defuse ww2 bombs in lots of city’s every year until today. It’s not even big news.
Came to say exactly this. It is good to see however. Croatia is a beautiful country and people should definitely check it out if they haven’t.
Yeah, the german article I originally read mentioned that, too. But tbh, I was a bit lazy and didn’t want to translate bit by bit with Deepl’s free version 😅
On one hand, that’s good.
On the other hand, it does provide some very sobering perspective on how hard it will be to demine Ukraine, a much larger task.
I choose to view this as good news. At least because I need good news.
Another positive perspective: it might take a long time but it’s possible to do it! It doesn’t have to lead to permanent scars.
IIRC modern mines automatically deactivate after some time?
It sounds like there’s a variant of the PFM-1, the small “butterfly” mine, that does self-destruct (the PFM-1S). I don’t believe that the larger ones generally do, though, and if so, a search doesn’t turn up material on them.
My understanding is that the mine designs that Russia (and Ukraine) have in inventory tend to date to the Cold War, too.
EDIT: And to be clear, even that mine is apparently on a maximum 40 hour timer. That is, that variant is going to be something used when you specifically want fairly short-term area denial, which isn’t going to be what most of the fortifications built are going to have set up.
Aw that’s a bummer, thanks for the info though.
(453 (sq mi)) / 1,500,000 = 0.19328 acres
For visualisation, that’s one landmine per median-sized suburban lot over an area a little less than than 1/3 of Rhode Island.
Dude, this is c/Europe. “Rhode Island” and “Suburban Lot” are not comparisons that work here in any capacity 😂
Didn’t pay attention to what community I was in! In fairness, the original post mentioned square miles.
For the Europeans: in a parking lot of 238 million Fiat Pandas (1995 model year) packed bumper-to-bumper and mirror to mirror, there’s a landmine under every 158th car.
They were useful for me, an American happy to see fewer landmines in the world. 🤷♂️
no country of mine
