Interviewer:

[Foreign language] [crosstalk]

It's shift change at one of the world's most dangerous work sites. The new crew dons helmets and jackets to protect themselves from being blown to pieces. This is an all female mine-clearing unit in western Kosovo. It's funded by Norway, but it's run by Delphine [inaudible], an ethnic Albanian as proud of her work as she's determined to finish it.

Delphine:

For example me, I was not in [inaudible] or something, you know? I'm now, yeah in Kielet, but in this case now, I have chance to help my people to dig up the mines from our land.

Interviewer:

Across Kosovo, small units like this are fighting to destroy a deadly legacy. 17 months of civil warfare, and 78 days of NATO bombing left Kosovo littered with unexploded ordnance. Kosovo's de-miners are clearing ordnance at a speed that's passed all expectations. They've already destroyed more than 21,000 mines and 11,000 unexploded cluster bombs. That's more than two-thirds of what they estimate to be the total, and it's already paying off.

Speaker 3:

[Foreign language].

Shane Pritchard:

Some people think mines are actually being laid faster than they are clearing. It is not the case, and we are [crosstalk]

Interviewer:

Shane Pritchard is a former Australian soldier turned professional de-miner. He's a veteran of Africa and the former Soviet Union, but Kosovo was the first place he can envisage finishing the job.

Shane Pritchard:

Yeah, in [inaudible] it's very difficult because there's lack of funding there, and it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Here also, we're very lucky because we have Serb records-

Interviewer:

The peace deal gave them a vital head start. Yugoslavia agreed to hand over maps of where Serb security forces had laid mines. It saved the de-miners from spending 1000s of hours checking areas that were never mined. Instead, they've been able to target the most dangerous areas first.

This gully was a former supply route for the KLA. The Serbs peppered it with anti-personnel mines. No one seemed concerned that it was right next to a village.

Shane Pritchard:

With the same radar now, we believe this gully was a likely occasion for the mines, and after the de-miners have come through here, we've already identified a PMI too. This is all rigged up for detonation, and when we get ahead of here, they can destroy it.

Interviewer:

How many of these do you think there might be in this gully?

Shane Pritchard:

The Serb records indicate about 60 mines in this gully.

Interviewer:

And what would happen if someone trod on that?

Shane Pritchard:

In the short-term, that'd blow their foot off, and in the long-term that'd probably require below knee amputation.

Interviewer:

Right. And you got kids playing in this area? It's close to a village.

Shane Pritchard:

Yeah, absolutely. As you see over there, that's the village, and the local people have been advised by us to stay out of this area.

Interviewer:

While Serb maps show the general area, Shane has found them dangerously unreliable for pin-pointing mines.

Shane Pritchard:

A lot of the Serb records are in fact wrong, and because people have focused on these records being correct, you can get yourself into trouble by stepping into a mine field, thinking that it's not the right place. [crosstalk].

Interviewer:

Shane's unit has so far escaped injury. Not Delphine's. One of the women, Seranda, walks with an artificial limb. Last May while she was clearing a gully, she slipped onto a mine.

Seranda:

[Foreign language].

Interviewer:

It must have been terrible.

Seranda:

Oh, yes.

Interviewer:

But Seranda tells only part of the story. At the time, she begged the medics not to help her, pleading to be left to die.

Delphine:

Yeah, that's correct. She said to us, "I don't want any more to live, because I lose my leg." I'm sorry, but it was really ... I never will forget that day, really. Never. I didn't expect accident in my patrol, because girls they are very, very hard worker, you know. We are working very careful, but she had bad luck.

Interviewer:

And yet they've come back to work, she's come back to work.

Delphine:

Yeah, she has come back to work but not like de-miner, but it's okay for her. I'm happy for her, really. [crosstalk].

Interviewer:

Within three weeks, every one of Seranda's co-workers was back clearing mines.

Delphine:

There are more strong now. More tough.

Interviewer:

Very brave?

Delphine:

Yeah, very brave.

Seranda:

[Foreign language].

Interviewer:

Since her injuries, Seranda can no longer clear mines. Now she teaches children to avoid them.

Seranda:

[Foreign language].

Interviewer:

They have become so much a part of everyday life that the children's songs are now about danger and dying.

Speaker 6:

[foreign language].

Interviewer:

But mines are not the only hazard for children. NATO dropped 31,000 cluster bomb units. Each one delivered 147 cluster bombs, all of them scattering over a huge area. Many didn't explode, and some have been found by children.

Shane Pritchard:

What it is especially the American ones are bright yellow with a parachute on it, and a lot of kids see them and they think it's a toy, pick them up, and usually end in fatality.

Interviewer:

Unexploded cluster bombs may be on the surface, but in vegetation, they can be almost impossible to find. Today, Shane's unit is trying to clear a large hilltop beside a highway.

Shane Pritchard:

This was the Serb position. They had anti-aircraft, tanks, and also personnel with bunkers loaded throughout this hill. And what happened was the nights I put in some strikes on this position, and there was about 22 cluster bomb units in the area.

Interviewer:

That means more than 3,000 cluster bombs were dropped here, and 100s could have failed to explode.

Shane Pritchard:

The official record is about three percent, I think, but we've found here in Kosovo, it's been up closer to 15, 20% as those cluster bomb which don't explode. [foreign language].

Interviewer:

It's this initial search that's the most dangerous time of all, but that could be about to change.

Mine clearers are now trying what could be the biggest breakthrough yet in finding UXO. It's an airship normally used for advertising sport or beer, but in an unusual marriage between commercial sponsors and the British Defence Ministry, it's been converted into the world's first airborne mine seeker.

Mark Finney:

If we find an area of interest, we think, perhaps, if you have a closer look we'll go from a higher altitude to a lower altitude and use the optical qualities of our camera to take as many pictured images as possible.

Interviewer:

As the pilot Mark Finney hovers over suspected mine field, the camera records 25 images per second.

Mark Finney:

And the great assets we've got here is that we show all the mines clearers what's on the other side of the woods, what's behind the hedge.

Interviewer:

Unlike a helicopter, it can hover over a mine field without sending a down draught that could detonate mines. The first trials have gone smoothly, partly thanks to low-pressure helium which means the airship can stay afloat even if it's shot.  Like all former battlegrounds, Kosovo is awash with guns and men who need no excuse to use them.

Mark Finney:

We have been shot at while we were here. We heard some automatic gunfire in our vicinity, although we didn't see where it came from, but it did encourage us to move locations rather rapidly.

Interviewer:

The aerial photographs taken by the airship are already making the de-miners' job easier. But it's the next stage of the trial that its makers hope will revolutionise mine clearance. This is the prototype for an airborne radar. It's designed to locate underground mines and bombs as it passes overhead. In trials in Britain, it's successfully detected plastic mines as small as 10 centimetres wide.

While a mine clearer on the ground can check just 45 square metres a day, the mine seeker, if successful, could check 100s of square metres every second.

John Flanagan:

For the first time since the programme started, we have had no casualties reported for a month. Now, we've [crosstalk]

Interviewer:

John Flanagan, the UN mine coordinator in Kosovo believes this could change the mine problem worldwide.

Mark Finney:

In some countries, they clear 1000s of hectares without finding a single mine, and that's the problem. If you've got technology like radar, technology which can ... It won't tell exactly where every mine is, but it will help put you in the right place. And so, we can save a lot of time and money in putting the de-miners in the right place.

Interviewer:

The mine clearers have set themselves a deadline of December to clear all the known UXO sites near towns and villages.

[Foreign language]

Kosovo will never completely safe from mines, even western Europe still has landmines from World War II. What they hope is that Kosovo will be no worse than a normal country.

Shane Pritchard:

The effect that it can have on the community is huge. The mines are a big problem across the world and when you can clear a village or can clear a city, and you can actually see these people go from not being able to use their garden to now being able to use it, and live, then it really does make a big difference.

Interviewer:

In a region so torn by war and ethnic violence, that is one hope worth fighting for.