BUILDING PEACE IN THE BALKANS : Clearing Mines Meant for Each Other : Under U.S. Supervision, Former Bosnian Combatants Work Together

U.S. forces supervised once-warring Bosnian troops Friday as they cleared powerful mines to open several routes in the devastated Posavina Corridor for the first time in nearly four years.

In what will soon become a demilitarized zone, U.S. Army engineers--escorted by 1st Cavalry soldiers--oversaw Bosnian Serb, Croat and Muslim forces disarming some mines and blowing up stacks of others with earth-pounding blasts.

At the same time, busloads of local soldiers, their howitzers pulled along separately, began their withdrawal.

“Every day we get through this without someone getting hurt, I’m grateful,” said Col. Gregory Fontenot, who commands U.S. troops in this narrow corridor of land in northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. “Mines--I hate the goddamned things.”

For the Americans, it was another exercise of their newly hewn role as peacekeepers, one carried out with varying degrees of success in what will become the northern and southern zones of separation.

On Thursday, U.S. efforts to coordinate a joint mine-clearing mission between Muslim and Serbian forces just outside Gradacac temporarily ground to a halt when the Muslims backpedaled, saying the Serbs should clear an area that the Muslims had agreed to work. The Serbs balked, saying they wanted the Americans to provide protective helmets and vests.

Early Friday, the Serbs once again objected, saying they lacked fuel. But shortly after U.S. Army Capt. Mike Kasales offered to postpone the work until later in the day so the Serbs would have time to walk there, Serbian officials agreed to clear the route of mines, working simultaneously with their Muslim counterparts, who cleared a different route nearby.

Along the road through the uninhabited hillside town of Lijeskovac, which changed sides three times during war, the density of mines was the highest the Americans have encountered so far, Army officials said.

While the U.S. forces maintained a prudent distance, the Serbian soldiers carried stacks of mines--which the Americans call “toe poppers”--as though toting cake pans.

U.S. officers asked the Serbs to warn them before each blast, but the warnings often came only seconds before the detonations. Just before setting off one pile of mines, a Serbian soldier began singing the Bruce Springsteen hit “Born in the U.S.A.”

To ensure that all sides cleared their mines peacefully--although only the Americans had guns--Capt. James Love posted U.S. soldiers in Bradley fighting vehicles and Army engineers in armored vehicles to accompany the Bosnians.

The Serbian soldiers approached the town from the south as the Croats descended from the north. The narrow road through this heavily shelled town was littered with more than 50 antitank and antipersonnel mines.

“This is a hot piece of real estate,” Love radioed his boss.

Capt. Carlos Perez, commander of the 16th Engineer Brigade’s C Company, admonished soldiers to stay on the broken, cracked asphalt. Most stayed in their vehicles.

Friday’s only goal was to clear mines and unexploded ordnance from the road and its shoulder--not yet from the shattered town itself or from surrounding fields where mines were visible even to the untrained eye.

A further obstacle to the clearing effort is that, because the town had been won and lost various times, the mines were of differing technologies and ages.

But the Serbs and Croats pressed ahead with the work Friday, each moving toward a bridge in the center of town. Debris and puffs of gray smoke filled the sky, marking each crew’s progress. When the two sides met at the dilapidated, shell-cratered bridge, the Americans eyed the situation uneasily.

“I never would have allowed them to actually meet,” one officer said.

But the Serbian and Croatian soldiers gathered peaceably on the bridge, shook hands and spoke to each other as the Americans watched, breathing more easily.

One Croatian soldier confessed that he believes the bridge is still mined because he had planted three mine on its underside, and the bridge was pocked with only two craters.

Yet no one moved from the bridge. Instead, two soldiers dangled another by his legs to see if he could spot the third mine. A few minutes later, no remaining mine had been found.

Some of the Americans were relieved by the Serbian and Croatian soldiers’ conviviality, which had not been present in all exchanges this week.

“You’ve got Serbs and Croats smokin’ and jokin’,” Perez said, shaking his head in surprise.

“It’s a little bit strange, but I think it’s a good thing that I can see and talk to them now,” Serbian soldier Rado Djurdjevic, 34, said when asked how it felt to address the his enemies face-to-face.

So the men who as recently as two months ago had shot at one another now politely inquired about family members against the backdrop of the demolished village.

We were all once friends, explained Maj. Alija Fitozovic of the Bosnian Croat forces. We were all once neighbors, said Capt. Ivica Ozebic, a fellow Croat.