Bomb Disposal
On shore, the bomb will be moved and made safe
Explaining the next steps and gaining much needed media support
THE WOUNDS OF HISTORY
Decades of conflict linked to the Cold War left Cambodia with an unenviable legacy: hundreds of thousands of landmines in the soil, and thousands of bombs and cluster munitions scattered above ground and in its rivers. To date, the government’s demining authority
CMAC has made safe more than 4,000 bombs (like the one described in the accompanying story) found on land; now it is taking the search to the rivers. The Mark 82 bomb made safe in May was likely
dropped by the U.S. Air Force during that country’s illegal bombing of Cambodia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the process Cambodia became one of the most heavily bombed countries in history, with the U.S. dropping an estimated 500,000 tons of munitions. The bombings are believed to have killed tens
of thousands of villagers, but they remain a little- remembered ‘sideshow’ to the war in neighboring Vietnam. And their cost was largely eclipsed by the subsequent brutal rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge that cost two million lives – mostly from execution, starvation, disease and overwork – as the ultra-Maoist regime enslaved the 8-million-strong population and forced them into rural gulags. The Khmer Rouge took power exactly 40 years ago,
and after the Khmer Rouge was driven from power in 1979, Cambodia suffered another three decades of civil war. The toll from landmines and UXO is significant:
nearly 20,000 people killed and more than 44,000 injured since 1979. That said, the number of annual casualties has declined markedly over the past 15 years, thanks to the demining work of CMAC and non- profits like the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and The Halo Trust. In 2014, landmines and UXO killed 21 people and
injured a further 136, while demining efforts saw more than 120 square kilometers of land declared mine- free. Yet, much more remains to be done.
46 Magazine
instructor and EOD team leader. He signed up to broaden his experience despite knowing the job holds more risks than its land-based equivalent. “On the land when we see the
mine, it’s still dangerous, but in the water most of the time we have to use our instincts to identify mines,” he says. “This job is very important for developing our country – especially when building ports or bridges.” Chenda says success – which
means safety above everything – requires several factors: being patient, following the rules to the letter, and trusting the other members of the team. In such a high-risk job it’s only
natural that the men’s families worry about their safety, though that’s not the case for Chenda, a father of two: he met his wife at CMAC – she is
an instructor working with demining dogs – which means my job “is not a problem for her”. Chenda’s role on the day was to
attach the lines from a lift bag to the bomb. When inflated – the most dangerous part of the task – it jolted the bomb free of the mud. After that, the team towed the
bomb to shore then drove it slowly down a rutted track to nearby rice field. There, under a blazing sun some four decades after the bomb was dropped, a remotely controlled mobile band saw cut off its nose and tail – which house the two fuses – rendering it safe. The final stage in the life of
this bomb sees its destructive capability used for good: Golden West’s Explosives Harvesting Program takes old munitions like this and strips out the explosives.
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