CLEARING THE MINES : Lethal excavations in Vietnam.

The campaign against land mines, the work of many activists and diplomats, led to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty in which nations around the world-now numbering 135-agreed to ban the use, sale, and export of antipersonnel land mines. For signatories, the treaty took effect March 1, 1999. The United States remains an outsider. At Ottawa, it had unsuccessfully sought exemptions to the ban for a few hot spots like Korea, where 30,000 members of the American military are stationed. Without defensive land mines, the Pentagon maintains, such troops would be at unacceptable risk.

Apart from ending the new deployment of land mines, the removal of mines and other munitions already in place is universally acknowledged to be the most urgent task associated with this worldwide scourge. Each year exploding land mines cause the death or mutilation of more than 25,000 victims, primarily in underdeveloped countries, among which Vietnam and Cambodia rank as the most treacherous.

One small organization, based in Bainbridge Island, Washington, was the first to spearhead a response to the pressing need in Vietnam. Created as soon as the United States reestablished diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995, PeaceTrees Vietnam (PTVN) has a three-pronged program to deal with the leftover weapons that dot Quang Tri, the northernmost province of the former South Vietnam. The province includes a broad swath of land that was the DMZ (demilitarized zone) of the Vietnam War. Today Quang Tri harbors an estimated 58,000 land mines, although it is not even half the size of New Hampshire. Recently two other demining organizations-one German, one British-have joined PTVN in Vietnam. All three will concentrate on Quang Tri Province.

PTVN has so far sponsored ten trips to Vietnam. Early on, volunteer American experts trained Vietnamese deminers in the use of state-of- the-art equipment and UN safety regulations. The initial PTVN project cleared an eighteen-acre site; subsequently, PTVN volunteers-Americans, Vietnamese, and other nationals-planted 1,700 saplings there, made up of thirty-seven varieties of indigenous trees-eucalyptus, cinnamon, mango, and jackfruit among them. Those efforts were a step toward restoration of the once-diverse biological environment of the DMZ. The site, christened the Friendship Forest Park, now draws families for carefree recreation and school groups for overnight camping.

Prior to the deforestation of the DMZ, trees had provided a buffer against the ravages of perennial monsoons. Shorn of its sylvan screen, the region turned into a pressurized corridor, blasted by hot winds and subject to disastrous, even lethal, flooding. With each floodtide, long-buried mines-which can float-were unearthed and swept along to new, even distant, locations. Ghastly as the idea is, such weapons in various shapes-most no bigger than an adult fist, some sprouting stubby projections, others dotted with a pattern of holes-can seem attractive playthings to unsuspecting children. Because those who clear mines know that theirs is a job that will never be wholly finished, the need for comprehensive mine education is equally urgent.

The Danaan Parry Landmines Education Center addresses that problem. Located in the Friendship Forest Park and dedicated last September, the center is named for the late founder of Earthstewards Network, the umbrella group that includes PTVN. The 800-square-foot center, built in the style of local architecture, houses two classrooms and exhibit space designed for instruction on the appearance of landmines, the possibilities for their emergence, and how to behave in their presence.

Most important, in a society where not all families can afford to send their children to school, the center is creating a team of mobile professionals to instruct 25,000 trainers from the Vietnam Women's Union, a national organization with a membership of 8 million. Reaching into even the smallest hamlets, the trainers will disseminate the center's lifesaving information. Financed by a U.S. State Department grant, PTVN with staff members from James Madison University's Mine Action Information Center in Virginia are currently at work with representatives of the Quang Tri Women's Union on a nine-month project in Vietnam to develop the center's mines awareness curriculum.

PTVN founder Danaan Parry died suddenly at fifty-seven just before the organization's first large-team trip to Vietnam in 1996. Parry, a nuclear physicist, had opted for a change of life around 1980 and created the Holy Earth Foundation. From that evolved Earthstewards Network which fosters conflict resolution together with individual projects of community development around the world. Last month, twenty PTVN volunteers from the Seattle area, including fourteen high school students spent two weeks in Quang Tri, where they joined Vietnamese peers in work projects at a local school for homeless children.

PTVN prides itself on taking direction from the people it serves. Areas slated for mine reclamation are those the hosts have prioritized as the most dangerous. Early this year, PTVN Director Martha Hathaway was in Quang Tri with two explosive ordnance disposal specialists there for work on exactly that kind of site-ten acres adjacent to the Friendship Forest Park. At a spot on that land last September, two young boys were injured by an unexploded bomb just when the Danaan Parry center was dedicated. Prior to the monsoon season next November, another PTVN team of volunteers (each of whom pays $2,500 in travel costs) will join the Vietnamese to plant trees in the new extension to the park.

The goal of PeaceTrees Vietnam-to ensure a safe environment for the people of Quang Tri Province-is, by no means, a short-term objective. "The job will probably last my lifetime," observes thirty-year-old Hathaway. While the United States holds itself aloof from the Ottawa pact, the nongovernmental PTVN can already claim measurable success- mine by mine, tree by tree.

Susanne Washburn, long a Time magazine reporter, is Commonweal's copy editor.