Post-War Kosovo Becomes Hub for Mine-Clearance Expertise - Balkan Insight

Yugoslav-era mines lie scattered across the ground in an area marked off with sticks. In the middle of the area, the remains of a dead animal can be seen.

To the left, another zone is marked as ‘contaminated’ with unexploded ordnance, although no mines are visible to the eye. Instead they are covered by vegetation, even deadlier than if they were in plain sight.

This is a mocked-up minefield at the MAT Kosovo training centre in the town of Peja/Pec, intended to simulate the kind of treacherous terrain that deminers will find when they are working in the field. The only difference is that the mines here at the training centre have been deactivated.

Kosovo was widely contaminated with unexploded devices during the war in 1999, and until the UN declared it free from mines in 2001, the country was the epicentre of humanitarian mine action.

The rapid success in clearing Kosovo of mines has helped to establish its reputation as a good location for training.

“Would you be trained in mine-clearing in Geneva or in a country that has a successful background in establishing safety on the ground?” asked Mohammad Hassan from Syria, one of the trainees at MAT Kosovo.

MAT Kosovo is a sister organisation of Praedium Consulting Malta, a risk management company dealing with the clearing of unexploded ordnance, and started out as a charitable organisation called the Mine Awareness Trust.

In 2010, it established its training centre in Peja/Pec, and has since taught thousands of people mine disposal techniques and explosives risk management skills.

Over the past four years, around 500 people have been certified in the courses held in Kosovo, and some 650 more have been trained on the ground amid the conflict in Syria.

Ben Remfrey, the explosive remnants of war risk manager at Praedium Consulting Malta and MAT Kosovo, is a former British soldier who first came to Kosovo in 1999 as a NATO consultant.

Remfrey told BIRN that the UN’s post-war mine-clearing operation in Kosovo included “minefields, the remnants of the bombs dropped by NATO during the bombing, abandoned ammunition, and confrontation lines where the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] and NATO were fighting against the Serbian paramilitary forces”.

After the war, Yugoslav maps of 600 minefields laid by the Yugoslav Army across Kosovo were available to the UN and NATO to aid the mine-clearing process. However, there were no records of mines laid by Serbian special police forces and paramilitaries or by the KLA.

Meanwhile, bombs dropped by NATO during its air raids had an estimated 10 to 20 per cent failure rate, creating further potential hazards from unexploded munitions.

Remfrey said that “while the people of Kosovo suffered greatly, the mine action programme was actually a good one”.

Nevertheless, since Kosovo was declared mine-free in 2001, around 100 people have been reported injured by blasts or during ordnance disposal training.

Hidden devices create post-conflict hazards

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https://balkaninsight.com/2020/03/09/post-war-kosovo-becomes-hub-for-mine-clearance-expertise/

2020-03-09 07:46:53Z
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