PHNOM PENH (AFP) – Cambodia’s decades-long effort to clear unexploded munitions has had to partially suspend operations after the United States (US) suddenly halted funding, a minister said yesterday, calling on Washington to reverse the order.
Cambodia remains littered with unexploded bombs, many of which were dropped by American forces during the Vietnam War. The US State Department has been a major backer of the effort to clean up the leftover ordnance, but last week US President Donald Trump ordered a sweeping, 90-day pause to foreign aid, which included suspending mine-clearance programmes across the world.
“It affects our mine clearance operation,” a senior government minister and leading official in Cambodia’s Mine Action Authority, Ly Thuch, told AFP. The US has been a “key partner” and provided around USD10 million a year to fund mine clearance in Cambodia, he said.
“The US fund involves the deployment of more than 1,000 staff members and deminers,” he said.
While assistance from other countries will allow the lifesaving work to partially continue, “some deminers who do not enough resources are suspended”, he said, estimating 93 demining teams would be affected.
Ly Thuch appealed to the US to lift the funding suspension as “we still have a lot of mine fields and landmines in Cambodia”.
During the Vietnam War, then-president Richard Nixon ordered a clandestine bombing campaign over large swathes of Laos and Cambodia, which helped fuel the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
After more than 30 years of civil war ended in 1998, Cambodia was left as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.
