The Devils Gardens: A History of Landmines

Lydia Monin, Andrew Gallimore
Pimlico, £12.50, pp 234
ISBN 0 7126 6859 4
Rating: ***

Doctors have international obligations in a contracting world; and many doctors today travel or work in one of the 28 or more countries where landmines are seeded. Knowledge about the threat of landmines and an understanding of the 2000 to 3000 blasts that occur each month—leaving a quarter of the victims dead and every survivor disabled—are essential informational tools.

This is an important book about “Africas longest plague” and the new “international front line,” which involves potentially every doctor who travels. Anti-personnel landmines rank as one of the top six preventable causes of child mortality in developing nations; and no doctor can stand aside from the obscenity of their continued seeding.

As well as offering a historical perspective of this “Devils Garden,” the authors also give an overview of the risk and cost of landmines today. Some nations have set an example by destroying their stocks of anti-personnel landmines (Australia in September 1999) for what eventually will be a fifth Geneva Convention or similar statement about weaponry that “is a legitimate weapon of war, but never of the peace which surely follows.” Warring factions in some countries continue to seed landmines at a much faster rate than they can be cleared; and places such as Afghanistan will continue to be unsafe for perhaps more than a century, unless the rate of landmine clearance can be increased.

In the past decade Princess Dianas crusade, the Ottawa Treaty, and the Nobel Peace Prize have all raised general awareness and resolve to combat this problem. This book continues this crusade. It is important for all who will travel and work in developing nations—for they and their patients will remain at continued risk for decades to come.