Legacy

This fine gentleman is not planting seeds, he's part of a demining platoon. This is not an uncommon site in Cambodia, but I never expected to see it just 20km north of Phnom Penh, right by the side of a major highway. According to a lieutenant I talked to, it will take two months for two platoons to clear out 20km along the road. That's along the road, not going deeper. This particular area was mined between '70 and '75, that's 40 years ago. Though there is four different organizations operating across the country, they are still under-manned, but most of all lack the funds. Its' a very costly operation, ranging from 1000-1500usd per mine. Add to that the difficulty of the terrain, since most of them are scattered in rural areas and not along the highways and it's no wonder it takes so long. But how long is long? Cambodia got a 10 year extension back in 2009 to meet the demands of APMBT(read more here). With millions of mines and unexploded bombs left from the US raids, that's another 10 years of living dangerously for too many Cambodians. I've seen areas along the mekong where children played next to warning signs, where families had their houses next to one-wire-blink-and-you'll-miss fences marking the no-go zone. What happens in the wet season? Ground becomes softer, mines might move and the once cleared paths become hot again, or as was the case last summer in a village I passed by before Battambang, a much used road got so soft, that a mine that layed there since who knows when was triggered by the weight of a truck, killing all 14 passengers.

Casualties have been dropping steadily, down to about 200 per year, but that's just numbers and mean nothing when farmers become incapacitated or parents lose their child.