LIVING WITH LANDMINES
On Dangerous Ground
It's quiet out here. No-one much around. The middle of a minefield is a good place to be by yourself, to just sit and… Well, I was going to say that it's a good place to just sit and think, but that's not exactly true. It's a good place to sit and think about landmines. Most people find it difficult to think about much else in this situation.
I'm sitting here squinting at the screen of my laptop in the bright Cambodian sunshine. The terrain in this part of the country is pancake flat for the most part, so I can see quite a way from my perch atop a small dyke.
To the north I'm looking out over seemingly endless open fields, idle now, but prepared for the cultivation of rain fed rice once the rainy season sets in. Beyond the fields, along the horizon, isolated karst formations jut sheer out of the plain, incongruous. These are the steep rocky mountains so often featured in Chinese painting. On the nearer ones I can make out the vertical rocky cliff faces with small trees growing out of every cranny in this tropical climate. There's a grove of dense woodland around the base of each outcrop, in the spoil of rocks fallen from the cliffs. Similarly, each mountain has a level top, almost inaccessible a few hundred feet above the plain. The tops are rarely visited, and they too are covered by dense groves of trees. They're spectacular little mountains. It's clear why artists are so attracted to them. Otherwise, my view to the north is rather an empty one. The eye is more attracted to the clouds, building up for an afternoon thunderstorm, than to the land. The plain is quartered into individual fields, each two or three hectares, by a network of small berms about 15cm high and only 20 or so centimetres wide. There's no pattern. The fields are all different shapes and sizes. Apart from the little berms, there are no fences. Here and there I can see individual cattle grazing, each tethered to a stake and grazing in a circle on rice stubble and the grass that's grown up among it.
Here and there among the fields there's the odd grove of saplings. Investigation would probably show that each grove was left to grow up around an isolated boulder, a well or perhaps a grave or some other special feature. Seen from up here, these isolated groves give the impression that there are quite a few trees among the fields, but that's only because my extensive view takes in trees that are actually very widely spaced. Anyone working in the fields would remark instead on the lack of shade. Only far off to the northeast can I see a coherent line of small trees and brush which I know marks the line of a rough track between villages.
Turning (carefully) to the south reveals a less extensive view. On this side of the dyke someone has planted a grove of coconut palms, now all about 15 metres tall. Through the forest of tall leafless trunks I can see several hundred metres, but from my elevated viewpoint the thick fronds of the crowns obscure the horizon and any distant karst formations which might be out there in that direction. The slope of the dyke, the floor of the grove among the trees, all is grown up with grass, scrubby bushes, saplings and the odd thicket of bamboo. The palm plantation is not a big one, perhaps 100 trees in all, so I can see right through to the other side. There, perhaps 300 metres south of my perch on the dyke, I can make out a dense clump of bush about 50 metres in diameter. That's really what brings me here. Inside are camped the soldiers.
To the non-specialist, Cambodian history appears to be organized around an interminable series of struggles between the Khmer, the Vietnamese and the Thais. From ancient times right down to the present day, each of the three states seems to have devoted a great deal of its time and treasure to the elusive goal of conquering the others. In these protracted struggles, Cambodia, stuck in the middle, has been almost continuously engaged against one or the other of its larger neighbors. There have, of course, been intervals of peace, but the most recent of these was the French colonial era. That ended in the 1950s, and Cambodia has been in trouble ever since.
At independence, Cambodia was a constitutional monarchy, a form of government which by its nature constitutes an affront to Marx's theory of the inexorable evolution of history. In those cold war days there were solidarity funds available for anyone prepared to advance the cause of communism in what is now known as the third world. Cambodia's monarchy soon generated its obligatory resistance movement which took to the bush and launched a Maoist style war of national liberation. Thus was born the infamous Khmer Rouge.
As with the communist movement in China, the Khmer Rouge didn't make much headway in their struggle until outside forces intervened to weaken the government. In Cambodia's case, this came with the war between North and South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese took over a swath of eastern Cambodia as part of the Ho Chi Mihn trail supplying their forces fighting in the south. Successive Cambodian governments were powerless to do much about it, and finally the Americans took matters into their own hands and began carpet bombing large swathes of eastern Cambodia to disrupt the supply route. Just as the Japanese invasion of China put the Chinese communists on the map, so these violations of Cambodian territory and the impotence of the government were as good as a recruiting drive for the Khmer Rouge. With the help of the Chinese, they built up their strength and gradually took control over more and more of the countryside. By the time the Americans abandoned Vietnam, the government could no longer survive without American support. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took over.
It took the Vietnamese a couple of years to consolidate their gains in the south, but by 1978 they were ready to move on and demonstrate that the CIA's domino theory was no fantasy. They invaded Cambodia. The Cambodians have never been fond of the Vietnamese, but after 3 years under Pol Pot they were ready to try anything. The Vietnamese quickly pacified most of the country, but the Khmer Rouge, as well as remnants of the pre-Khmer Rouge royalists, retreated to the mountainous regions along the Thai border and went back to guerrilla warfare. As before, the Khmer Rouge were supported by the Chinese, the various royalists had support from the Thais and assorted Western countries, and the Vietnamese were friends with the USSR. All sides, then, were well supplied with the arms necessary for guerrilla warfare, particularly small arms, explosives and, significantly, landmines.
The tide turned again in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Vietnam lost much of its Russian aid and quickly realized it could no longer sustain its conquests. The Vietnamese pulled out, setting the stage for what would have been a resumption of hostilities between the Khmer Rouge and the royalists except that the UN decided to intervene. The UN sent in a multi-national peacekeeping force which more or less kept the feuding factions under control and ran the country until elections could be held.
Given a choice between Pol Pot, collaborators with the Vietnamese or various royalist factions, it's not surprising that the voters came out solidly in favor of the royalists. Sadly, that wasn't the end of the matter. The UN ran out of money and withdrew soon after the election. This left the well-armed friends of the Vietnamese free to dispute the election result and claim a share of the government by threat of force. The Khmer Rouge were fresh out of friends, but they did what they do best and returned to the mountains to continue the guerrilla war. This, in a nutshell, is how Cambodia by 1997 came to have a king, two prime ministers, a guerrilla insurgency and, to some extent, two parallel and feuding governments at the national level.
In light of this tortuous saga, it's not surprising that the country is strewn with landmines. The government used them against the Khmer Rouge; the Americans used them in the east against the North Vietnamese; after they took over, the Vietnamese used them to keep their enemies pinned back against the Thai border; and now that the Khmer Rouge have come full circle, the government is again using them against the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge are using them to terrorize civilians. Even after the departure of the UN in 1993, mines were still being laid in some parts of the country. For a couple of years, this minelaying was proceeding faster than mine clearing in the country as a whole, so the mines situation was actually deteriorating overall. Happily, things have improved over the last few years. Supplies have been cut off, and all sides have pretty well used up their stocks. Mine clearing has begun to make headway in certain areas. But there are still millions of the things in the ground.
Some of them, right around here.
The Vietnamese border is about 20 kilometres due east of where I'm sitting. Fortunately, the point 20 kilometres due east of here is just about the extreme southwest corner of Vietnam. From there, Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) is to the northeast. As a result, the Ho Chi Mihn trail never came this far south and this area escaped the American carpet bombing visited on most Cambodia/Vietnam border regions. On the other hand, this is fertile agricultural country. Rice from here helps to feed the bureaucrats in Kampot, Sianhoukville and Phnom Penh. So this region has been fought over since shortly after the departure of the French.
The karst formations around here are enough to gladden the heart of any guerrilla fighter. Their sheer cliffs are laced with caves and can be scaled only by a few steep trails. The flat tops offer a panoramic view of activities in the surrounding countryside, but are covered in lush vegetation concealing the defenders from spotter planes. At the base of the cliffs is a jumble of fallen boulders covered with jungly undergrowth. Defending one of these karst formations isn't difficult, but to prevent surprises a thoughtful guerrilla will lay a thick cordon of mines in the boulder field so that no-one can approach the base of the cliffs quickly or undetected. A guerrilla's dream retreat.
Meanwhile, conventional forces defending the plain are probably prepared to concede the karst formations to the guerrillas. No-one lives up there, so any guerrilla who spends his time holed up atop a karst formation won't be winning many hearts and minds among the citizenry. The army's job is to keep the guerrillas up in the mountains and away from the villagers. To do it, they spread their forces around the countryside in small encampments patrolling, checking traffic on the roads and trails and watching out for suspicious strangers.
One such encampment is just over there on the other side of the palm grove. As a suspicious stranger, I can't wander over and investigate, but according to people who live around here there have been soldiers encamped there as long as anyone can remember. They picked that particular grove because it shelters a well. Individual soldiers come and go. The uniforms change with the political season. But that grove holds a squad of soldiers, always has and always will as far as anyone around here can foresee.
These days, most of Cambodia has been cleared of insurgents. There are none around here. Nonetheless, Cambodia feels unable to demobilize any soldiers. Each army unit is loyal to one of the factions in the dual government. Every faction sees civil war as a possibility, so none is prepared to give up any of its troops. As a result, the nation is saddled with a large number of idle troops whom it can't afford to pay. The troops have come to realize that they must forage for themselves, weapon in hand. This is the origin of what Cambodia refers to as its bandit problem. Underfed and underemployed soldiers set up checkpoints on all the roads and trails and extort food and money from the citizens. You can call it banditry, or you can think of it as a thoroughly disorganized system of taxation. For the citizens, it's a harassment they've learned to live with, but not to enjoy.
Spared the danger of guerrilla attack, these days the local soldiers sleep soundly at night. But this is a recent development. When the guerrillas were active, night was no friend to the government troops. Encamped in small groups, they were ever vulnerable to a concerted guerrilla foray. They could post sentries. They could have flares at the ready. But another measure that helped them get a better night's sleep was to sow the perimeter of their camp with mines.
For soldiers camped around the well, this dyke, my tranquil perch, was danger made manifest. Lying in their hammocks it was easy to visualize the guerrillas jogging up from the southwest or down from the northeast under cover of the dyke to assemble, scramble over and sweep down through the palm grove to storm the razor wire and over-run the camp. Forced to camp in such a vulnerable spot, the soldiers' thoughts naturally turned to a field of landmines as one important element of their defenses. It's no wonder that the dyke and the palm grove are still thick with mines today.
This, then, is why the land north of the dyke is being grazed and cultivated while similar land to the south is choked with grass and dabbed with clumps of brush. In Cambodia, uncleared brush is a useful warning of dangerous ground.
Don't imagine, though, that the presence of a few landmines has left this young and productive palm grove entirely unexploited. Not at all. Unlike most Cambodian minefields, this one is not only owned, it's inhabited. Turning just a bit more to the southeast we see, at the edge of the grove, about 150 metres away, the home of Mr. Son and his family.
Son Salin (like most Asians, the Cambodians put their family name first) is in his late 20s. His family has lived in this area for generations. His present home was rebuilt a few years ago on the site of several previous family homes, and Mr. Son lives here with his wife, his sister, his aged mother and a fluctuating flock of children, some his own and some nieces and nephews. They must all be at school this afternoon, as the house and yard are quiet.
During the Pol Pot years Son Salin was a small boy. His family was partly dispersed, but mostly around the local area. He can't remember his father, who was called up for some sort of labour service and never returned. Fortunately, with the arrival of the Vietnamese Mr. Son's mother immediately re-united the family at the site of their old home and set to work reviving the coconut plantation.
It must have been a tricky business. The army post had been in place before the Khmer Rouge takeover, but in those days the soldiers had cooperated in keeping paths open to get to the trees. Returning from various communes, the family no longer knew the safe routes through the grove. The young trees had formerly produced palm toddy, a wine fermented from sap tapped from the crowns of the trees. Toddy is more valuable than the nuts. It provides a steady cash income, but the taps require regular daily attention. The sap can't simply be piped to ground level for collection. Someone has to climb the tree, collect the sap and re-adjust the tapped surface. Unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge soldiers didn't, for some reason, maintain the toddy production and seem rarely to have entered the grove except to collect fallen nuts. Mr. Son and his family had to start from only a couple of used paths to gradually re-establish safe routes to all of their trees.
It may seem perverse that Mr. Son's mother would deliberately install her family in the midst of a minefield, but it makes good sense in the context of the time. The Vietnamese were very keen on land reform. A valuable resource like the palm grove would normally have been nationalized. It's likely that the Sons were able to keep it as their private land only because it was so dangerous. Had they cleared the mines properly and begun making serious money from the toddy, they would certainly have lost their land to government confiscation.
When they first returned home, the house was a ruin. Someone had removed the stove and the corrugated metal roof, leaving the wooden structure to weather and rot. Fortunately, the house site itself wasn't mined, though initially the Sons couldn't be sure. Salin had to spend days weeding, sweeping and prodding around his overgrown yard to convince himself that the ground was safe. He then built a thick fence of thorns around part of the yard, a sort of low-tech barbed wire, and set to work rebuilding.
Mr. Son's house today is a typical Cambodian farmhouse. It sits 2.5m above the ground on 9 stout wooden pillars. At 3.5m square, it's awfully small for his extensive brood, but during the daytime the family makes good use of the shady, breezy area at ground level underneath the house itself. He has a new sheet metal roof which extends out over a narrow verandah across the front of the house. At one end of the verandah is the staircase leading down to the front walk.
Mr. Son's yard is a cleared area of beaten earth about 25m square, still fenced around with thorns. There's a latrine, a banana plant, and a couple of papaya trees, newly planted. The yard also features a chicken coop and a dog house, animals light enough to forage among the palms without setting off pressure-activated mines. Mr. Son doesn't own any cattle. The family has another small plot more than a kilometre away where they grow vegetables, but when they need to plough it Mr. Son borrows the use of an animal.
The dogs run in the grove and help to keep the rats down. Of course, Mr. Son is worried that the children will start playing there too. They're all small now, but as they get older they'll be susceptible to the same psychology that fascinates children with matches, knives, firearms and cigarettes. Small children are light enough to walk over pressure mines and escape unscathed. It encourages them to feel invincible. But they're getting heavier every day.
Salin worries about this almost daily. He's heard that dogs can be trained to sniff out buried mines, but he has no idea how he'd go about training his own dogs in that skill. He might as well think about buying his wife a dishwasher for his house with no electricity and no running water. For now all he can do is strictly forbid his children to roam outside the yard. Even the path out to the road is fenced with thorny branches. But he knows that at school, child society is undermining all of his safety training. Time is not on his side.
Or is it? Just how dangerous is living in a minefield, anyway? Are mines really lethal forever? Don't they just rust away after a while?
Well, it all depends. One important consideration is who laid the minefield and why. The border between North and South Korea, for example, and the islands in the Taiwan Strait have been carefully mined by military engineers in patterns designed to effectively disrupt an invasion. The exact patterns are, of course, top secret, and they're carefully designed to be indecipherable to an attacking force. But in fact the minefields in such places have been laid to a carefully worked out pattern. Someone slowly clearing the field and carefully plotting the position of each mine would be able to work out the general scheme, even if the actual pattern were too random to be predicted. In the Gulf War, on the other hand, many of the minefields were laid by bored ordinary soldiers. When they were cleared, the deminers occasionally came across "five o'clock fields" where all the rest of the day's quota had simply been buried in one big hole without even being armed. The Iran/Iraq War saw some areas so heavily mined and remined by both sides that there was no place left to dig new holes between the mines already planted.
Mr. Son's problem is that his grove was mined and remined by successive garrisons with a real terror of attack from the dyke and plenty of time on their hands to do it cleverly. On the other hand, they may not have had an unlimited supply of mines to work with. Considering how many times the grove must have been remined, the mines found so far don't seem to be very thick on the ground.
Another consideration is that some mines definitely do become much less dangerous with age. One type very popular in Cambodia is essentially a cast iron pineapple grenade mounted on a stick. It's set up with a tripwire so that anyone passing near sets it off and the shrapnel from the cast iron casing disables whoever's in the vicinity. These are simple and inexpensive devices much favoured by the troops who have disputed the Cambodian countryside at such length. They're particularly suitable for use in Mr. Son's grove, where the defenders were most worried about a sneak attack involving a large number of attackers approaching on foot. But mines of this sort don't last forever. The tripwires should really be thin copper wire, but often that wasn't available and the troops made do with twine, plastic filament or even natural fibres collected locally. These get brittle or stretch, sag and eventually rot away making the mines themselves a lot safer to approach. In a country like Cambodia the cast iron casings are worth money as scrap iron. The explosive inside is easy to extract and useful for all sorts of things, not least for fishing. A field of these stake mines doesn't last long once the soldiers have gone. Any which are overlooked eventually fall to the ground when the stake rots away. The fact that no-one has yet been killed in Mr. Son's palm grove may be because many of the mines originally placed there were these stake mines.
As a rule of thumb, Western military experts assume that, for one reason or another, 10 to 15% of all their ordnance will fail to explode when it's supposed to. Since all concerned go to great lengths to make sure that it doesn't explode ahead of time, this 10 to 15% is what the layman would call duds. In Cambodia most of the mines in the ground were originally manufactured many years ago in China, Vietnam or the Soviet Union. From suppliers like these, even when they were new the percentage of duds may have been somewhat higher.
Then, most landmines, unlike other munitions, are deliberately buried in the ground. After that, various other things can start to go wrong. Mines buried in mud, for example, can be washed away. Or they can gradually sink deeper and deeper into the mud until they're too deep to feel the pressure of someone passing over them. Similarly, they can be buried by landslips or, as is common in Bosnia and Afghanistan, by falling walls. Motion of the soil, especially along river banks, can turn them on edge so that treading on them doesn't depress the pressure plate. Anti-personnel mines are buried only a few centimetres below the surface, so when it rains water can seep in carrying silt which gums up the mechanism. Trees and bamboo can grow over them, the roots dispersing the pressure of any footfall. Apart from all this, mines can explode harmlessly when no-one is around. Branches can fall on them. The wind can bend branches into the tripwires.
So no-one can be sure how many live mines there are in any minefield. Even if there was a careful count of how many mines were laid in the first place, attrition inevitably takes its toll. And, as anyone who has played with fireworks knows, a dud munition is the most dangerous of all. Is it really harmless, or just waiting for the wrong moment to explode?
People walk through the coconut grove all the time. Occasionally they step off the worn paths, and in recent years nothing has happened. Cattle occasionally wander in, but none of them has been injured either. No frond or coconut falling from the trees has ever set off a mine that anyone can remember. This is exactly the situation that makes the grove so dangerous for Mr. Son's children. It's pretty hard for them to comprehend why this ground is so deadly when nothing at all deadly ever happens there. If Mr. Son could get hold of any mines, he'd be tempted to plant a couple in his grove and set them off, just to show his kids what he has been warning them about. In fact though, scavenged mines are getting scarce in this part of Cambodia. The demonstration would be too expensive.