Just over 40 years ago, on April 17, the battle for Cambodia was lost. The US abandoned the kingdom, and the Cambodian people, and left them in the hands of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. An estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million from a population of roughly eight million in 1975 died in the following years.
American Al Rockoff, a photographer who was among a group of people who had stayed on in the capital, was put on trucks and buses by the Khmer Rouge and sent to the Thai border in May, when Phnom Penh had already been evacuated and the first mass killings had taken place. Decades later, Rockoff described the capital at that time when he gave testimony to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, the international court trying some of the leaders of the murderous regime.
“If the wind was blowing right, you could smell it in the distance,” Rockoff said. “You could smell the bodies.”
Less than four years later the country was a shambles, robbed of its infrastructure, financial system and any ability to provide for its own people. In Thailand, refugee camps filled with hundreds of thousands who had endured torture, forced labour and starvation.
Much has changed since. The economy is growing at more than 7% annually and the Asian Development Bank predicts Cambodia will mature from a low-income country to a middle- to low-income country this year.
Huge progress has also been made in mine clearance. The war left Cambodia with a continuing deadly legacy as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Since 1979, the Cambodian Mine Action Authority has recorded almost 65,000 victims — some were seriously injured or had limbs amputated and about 20,000 succumbed to their wounds.
But victim numbers have plummeted, mostly due to the 4,500 square kilometres of land the government and NGOs have cleared. Last year, fewer than two dozen people died from mines and other unexploded remnants of war.
Internationally, Cambodia is seen as a success story in clearing mines. Now attention is shifting to safety hazards that have not been addressed so far.
Hundreds of barges lie on the bottom of Cambodia’s waterways, many filled with up to 1,000 tonnes of ammunition.
To win the war in Vietnam, Washington believed it needed to keep Cambodia stable. So, in an effort to secure support in the neighbouring country, the US backed military ruler Lon Nol, and tasked him with fending off Cambodia’s homegrown communists, the Khmer Rouge.
The barges were intended to supply the Lon Nol regime in Phnom Penh, sent by the friendly Americans from Saigon via the Mekong River. An unknown number, however, were sunk by Khmer Rouge cadres.
Dry run: A diver tries on the equipment he will have to wear while searching for bombs in the murky waters of the Mekong.
DIVING INTO DANGER
Some have already caused hurdles in the development of new infrastructure projects. The construction of a major bridge across the Mekong by the town of Neuk Leung was slowed by the large amount of ordnance that workers found there. Halting the project was considered, but eventually it was inaugurated earlier this month.
“These barges are filled with ordnance and are just sitting on the bottom of the river. It’s a big security problem,” said Allen Tan, Cambodia country director of Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, which is training the first team of Cambodian deminers to salvage the explosives.
“The main reason is: When a boat like that is known to contain ordnance, then it will attract an illegal scrapping operation,” he said.
The professional demining divers will be in a race against crews of villagers turned criminals. Often, it’s the most desperate people who will attach a hose to an everyday air compressor, stick the hose in their mouth and walk along the bottom of the river to recover as much unexploded ordnance as possible, never knowing if it will blow up.
“It’s insane,” Mr Tan said.
“They extract explosives by hand in their villages to sell, and none of that is good for the population. You don’t want someone cutting open a bomb in a village or selling explosives on the black market,” he said, adding that it appears that most explosives illegally recovered so far were used for dynamite fishing or illegal quarrying operations.
But if it fell into the wrong hands, the explosives could quickly turn into a terrorism threat, he added.
“It’s this huge public safety hazard. There’s a reason why explosives aren’t freely available in any kind of society. It’s a weapon of mass destruction, and it needs to be controlled and regulated,” Mr Tan said.
Gearing up: Above, Cambodian deminers get their inflatable boats ready on the banks of the Tonle Sap River near
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET
Based on newspaper articles and other information published at the time, experts believe the Khmer Rouge managed to sink about 300 such ammunition boats.
The Mekong, which directly connects Vietnam’s southern commercial hub with Phnom Penh, was the main supply route, and almost all the ammunition the Lon Nol regime needed to fight the Khmer Rouge was shipped on these waters, as Ira Hunt Jr described in his book Losing Vietnam: How America abandoned Southeast Asia.
“The outcome of the war greatly depended on ammunition and the Mekong,” Hunt wrote, adding that a year before the fall of Phnom Penh, the US spent about US$1 million per day to keep the Lon Nol regime afloat.
But the waters of the Mekong were treacherous. Much of the area east of Phnom Penh had already fallen into the hands of Khmer Rouge rebels. Passage was far from safe, as British journalist Jon Swain described in a 1974 article on the “world’s most dangerous boat trip”.
Swain was travelling on the Bonanza Three, a “rusty old tub, fit for the scrap yard, and that was the reason why she had been chosen for the Mekong River run: her owner thought her expendable. Happily for him, the American government is committed to Phnom Penh’s survival and, so far at least, it has always made it worth his while to gamble the ship and the lives of his crew for a quick return.” As Phnom Penh was almost in sight, the crew relaxed.
But only 19km before the capital, the Bonanza was ambushed.
“Machine-gun bullets clanged and rattled off the hull. In the wheelhouse, the little Cambodian pilot carried on with his instructions, his voice as steady as a rock, his fear betrayed only by his delicate fingers tightly wrapped round a small ivory Buddha,” Swain wrote.
The Bonanza, and the rest of the five-ship convoy, made it to Phnom Penh that day.
Ready to go: It's a race to beat the scrap metal thieves, says Allen Tan, Cambodia country director of Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, which is training the first team of Cambodian deminers.
TAKING THE PLUNGE
Had the Khmer Rouge aimed better, they would be among the ships that the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) and Golden West are now set to look for.
Although scrap metal collectors still take ammunition out with their bare hands, it takes professional training and a deep understanding of salvage diving to do so safely. Many of the barges lie 30 metres below the surface, in pitch-black water. For more than two years, Golden West has trained CMAC staff to prepare them for this perilous task.
When they started, it was swimming lessons first.
“I actually enjoy the swimming, and I always wanted to know how to swim,” said Tri Khun, a 42-year-old deminer who volunteered for the programme.
From a pool in Phnom Penh, the group moved on to diving instructions in the crystal-clear waters of the Gulf of Thailand.
Tri struggled with the physics of diving — how air compresses under water, how the human body floats — but still managed to be at the top of his class.
Not all the initial 40 volunteers made it. Some cracked under the boot-camp style training and the “correctional exercises” their former US military coaches deployed. Some weren’t physically fit enough.
Today, a total of nine remain. From new headquarters several hours from the capital, the team is training for their big day. With blackout masks to mimic the zero-visibility of the muddy river, they navigate a maze of strings fashioned after environments they might encounter on barges.
“We’re setting up these sites on land to dry practice,” Mike Nisi, head of Golden West’s underwater operations, said. Now the team is waiting for the arrival of additional equipment, but the first ammunition would be taken out before the beginning of the rainy season, Mr Nisi said.
The site has already been located. Several years ago, fishermen reported that scrap-metal collectors pulled artillery shells off a sunken ship in the Tonle Sap, a major river that directly runs into the Mekong next to the capital, Phnom Penh.
“It’s US ordnance that was brand new at the time, and there is a high probability that there’s still a lot of stuff on the ship,” he said.
For the divers, the long training and tedious drills will soon pay off. They are proud of their achievements, diver Tri said, and are looking forward to their first deployment.
“I became a deminer to make this country safe, and now I want to clear the rivers too,” he said. n