FRIENDS try to comfort Asja Kamber. They tell her how brave she is, how her two children are lucky they still have their mother. But nothing can console her. The 156 year old lost both her legs, her right arm and most of her left hand when she stood on a landmine in the front garden of her old home. She wishes she was dead.
The war in Bosnia was long over when she returned to her old neighbourhood on the hills overlooking Sarajevo. She knew the house that held so many memories for her had been destroyed during the war. "But I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to know what happened to our own home.
She stood on an anti personnel mine, which detonated an antitank mine buried in the soil. "There was a huge explosion. I felt myself being thrown into the air, then falling into a crater in the ground. I called my husband's name, that is all I remember."
"When I saw her, I thought she was dead," says her husband, Ekrem. "She was in pieces in front of me. She opened her eyes and her hand moved, she tried to put her arm together," he explains, wiping the tears from his face.
He carried her to a friend's car and brought her to the hospital. The doctors were on stand by. They had heard the blast. Within 20 minutes she was being operated on. The speed with which she was brought there saved her life.
More than 100 people were billed in mine explosions in Bosnia last year. Some 50 are injured every month. But the Bosnian government does not advertise casualties, if anything it suppresses the figures, according to the UN Mine Action Centre.
With thousands of refugees expected to return from elsewhere in Europe and constant attempts being made to encourage the displaced to return to their villages, the problem is expected to be far greater this year.
The Red Cross has launched a mines awareness campaign for Bosnians at home and abroad. "Refugees are most at risk," according to a spokesman, Claes Amundsen. "We have seen it in other countries, people come home after the conflict has stopped. Their home or their vegetable plot has been turned into a minefield, but they do not realise it until they start digging."
The Red Cross believes there are about three million landmines scattered across the country. The UN has records for 17,500 minefields, but it is believed there are as many sites that have not been mapped. Although they are generally concentrated along the former confrontation lines, mines can be found everywhere in schools and children's play grounds, in graveyards and around churches. Most were placed indiscriminately, without a set pattern, or without being marked. Civilians often laid them around their homes and land.
"The numbers do not matter. The psychological effect is the same whether you have a thousand or 10," says George Focsaneanu, head of the UN Mine Action Centre, which is the only organisation currently clearing mines in Bosnia. "What is important is the amount of terrain that is not being used because people believe it is mined."
There has been virtually no mine clearance to date. "Donors don't feel warm and cosy about investing in long term projects when they hear about places like Mostar, says George Focsaneanu, referring to the ongoing attacks on the city. "Of course, there is an obligation on the government of Bosnia to clear them, but until recently there was no real government, and even now it is not focused on the issue."
There has been some reluctance on the part of the military to remove mines around the borders with Republika Sprska. In some areas, mines have been replanted once they were cleared. In others, mines which were identified have disappeared before demining teams' could clear them. It is feared that they may be used again.
"They have spent the last four years killing each other, it would, be difficult to develop trust again. But there is going to be no war in Bosnia as long as SFOR [the international peace keeping force] is here, and in that time we have to bring about some normality, bring economic growth and prosperity. That would take people's minds off the last four years, and make them think instead of the next four," Mr Focsaneanu insists.
Robert Safradin is not as optimistic. The 25 year old Croat joined the old Yugoslav army at the age of 19, deserted before being called on to fight in Croatia, and later joined the Bosnian Croat army. He planted mines during the war, and although he is now the commander of a platoon clearing mines south of Mostar, he believes he will be planting them again in the not so distant future.
"No one here believes the war is over, including me. We don't want to fight again, but if we are forced to, we will. Three days ago, an 80 year old man was killed in Travnik. He was a Croat in a Muslim controlled area. You don't need me to tell you who killed him."
He smiles tolerantly when you ask about the Muslim Croat Federation. "What federation?" he says, removing his trendy blue shades, to inquire if anyone could really live with Muslims. "There has been too much blood spilled. We can never forget."
"Mines are the dirtiest weapon I know, depending on where you are looking at them from." He believes his own side planted over a million of them during the war. Those he planted were not marked or mapped. "There was no time to keep records," he says without regret.
The UNMAC platoon is clearing land along the separation line with the Republika Sprska in the hope that the Croat farmers who once tended the vineyards in the area will return.
Demining is painfully slow. They work mainly on their knees, prodding the earth in front of them, then lifting the prods slowly into the air in case of trip wires. A 30 man team, working with, specially trained dogs and metal detectors, will be lucky to clear 200 square metres in a day. Spent bullets and shrapnel make it even more difficult. On average, they remove about 50 mines a week. For every 5,000 mines removed, one deminer will probably be killed and two others injured.
For Asja, not enough can be done to highlight the problem of mines. She is now confined to the first floor of a bomb damaged high rise in Sarajevo. The couple live on £20 a month and food packages from the Irish aid agency, Refugee Trust.
When the weather is fine, her husband and son carry her down the steps on a towel so that she can smoke a cigarette. She took up smoking this year.
Asja needs further treatment but it would mean spending several months outside the city and she will not leave her husband. He does not have the money to accompany her. The pain, physical, psychological and phantom, is always with her.
"Every day I beg God to stop this kind of thing happening in the world," she said. "I have no life anymore, but I would be happy if my word saved the life of only one child."