The Soldier That Never Sleeps

​Landmines, the soldier that never sleeps

Twenty years ago, I sat on the doorstep of a clinic in Battenbang, Cambodia, covering the recent surge in landmine victims.  Large sections of the jungle along the Thai-Cambodian border, once controlled by the Khmer Rouge, had recently been opened to settlers.  The only problem, the area was heavily mined.
"Emergency" an Italian NGO, nongovernmental organization, was a modern facility in Battenbang that was treating around ten landmine victims a week.  Every day it seemed victims would arrive, usually in the back of an aging pickup truck, legs, and feet blown off by a landmine.  When the Vietnamese forced the Khmer Rouge from power in Phnom Penh back in 1979, Pol Pot's revolutionary army fled to the border areas in the west with Thailand.  Here they fought a holding action against the Vietnamese and then later against Royalist Government forces.  Their strategy it seemed was to mine areas along roads and footpaths that led to villages.
To make matter worse they then forgot where they put the mines.  Landmines have been called "the soldier that never sleeps" and can kill for 50 years before discovered and eliminated. 
I followed a young victim, Nil Sarak as he arrived for treatment.  He had stepped on a landmine while clearing an area near his new home.  His right foot would need to be amputated, his left leg was injured as well, but he would not lose the use of it.  Cambodian surgeons operated once he had been cleaned and stabilized.  Outside the operating room, his 16-year-old wife waited along with his mother.
I would later visit the homestead where Nil has stepped on the mine.  It was a dry patch of ground that looked like it could never produce anything but weeds.  His home, a small bamboo shack was less than three months old.  Scattered around the hut were pieces of cooking utensil, pots, and pans abandoned when the family dropped what they were doing to rush him to "Emergency".  That trip cost the family the last of their money.
There was no happy ending to this story, and Nil lost his right foot, mid-calf, He would spend two more weeks in the hospital before returning home to an uncertain future.  I bought $100 worth of rice and canned fish for them before I left.  Nil's mother cried.
Cambodia today is the third most mined nation in the world with an estimated 10 million mines still in the ground.  Throughout the world, according to UNICEF, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people are killed or injured by landmines.  Today in Cambodia, 50 percent of the victims are children.

all photos by David Longstreath/Associated Press