Sowing the Dragon's Teeth

by Winslow, Philip C.

• ISBN13: 9780807050040
• ISBN10: 0807050040
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Beacon Pr

Summary

Each year an estimated 26,000 people are killed or maimed by the more than 100 million anti-personnel land mines -- sown like the mythical dragon's teeth -- in over sixty-two countries around the world. These weapons are designed to maim, and their primary victims are civilians. Philip Winslow draws on his years as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Africa to show us the human cost of this calamity. He journeys into rural Angola -- one microcosm of the worldwide situation -- and introduces us to the lives of the victims, the difficult tasks facing the deminers, and the way land mines destroy a nation's economy and infrastructure. Moving beyond Angola, Winslow shows us that land mines represent a legacy of twentieth-century war that few countries are willing or able to remove. He writes about the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the ways in which we might finally pull the dragon's teeth from the earth, to restore it to those who live on it. For every book sold, a donation will be made to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation for their work in providing artificial limbs to land-mine victims in Angola.

Table of Contents

Author's Note: The Worst War in the World	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
i "No One Knows Where the Mines Are Buried"	7	(14)
ii Chisola	21	(9)
iii The Road to Canage	30	(12)
iv Mutilados	42	(14)
v "Mines Are Not My Problem"	56	(13)
vi Turner, Priestley, and Rice	69	(12)
vii Under Siege	81	(10)
viii Why Does It Take So Long?	91	(14)
ix A Museum of Crutches	105	(7)
x Luckiest Survivor in the World	112	(14)
xi "Not War, but Murder"	126	(12)
xii The Campaign to Ban Mines	138	(11)
xiii "All I Want to Do Is Drive a Truck"	149	(10)
Epilogue	159	(3)
Map of Angola	162	(1)
Notes	163	(3)
Acknowledgments	166