Croatia is finally mine-free, and most people who have vacationed on its Adriatic coast will hear that sentence with a mild, vaguely confused sort of surprise. Mines? In Croatia? The country with the crystal water, the medieval walls, and the Game of Thrones filming locations? Yes. That one. The same country that has welcomed millions of tourists to Dubrovnik, Split, and Hvar every summer for the last three decades was simultaneously conducting one of the largest and most expensive humanitarian demining operations in European history — just a few dozen kilometers inland, where the pine forests go quiet and the road signs used to carry a very different kind of warning.
In February 2026, the Croatian government formally declared the country free of landmine hazard, completing a 30-year effort that cost approximately €1.2 billion, involved the removal of over 107,000 mines and 470,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance, and claimed the lives of more than 200 civilians and 60 professional deminers. It is a story about the mechanics of modern warfare, the geography of a particular conflict, and the long, deliberate, unglamorous work of undoing what war leaves behind. It deserves to be told in full.
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