The United States dropped millions of tonnes of bombs on Cambodia. Now efforts to get rid of them have been thrown into disarray.
: Schoolboy Yeath Saly was running an errand near his Cambodian village last Wednesday when he glimpsed amid the rows of nearby rubber trees a peculiar object the length of his 11-year-old forearm.
It was unexploded ordnance, possibly a mortar shell. Key programs to find and remove such items have now stopped, casualties of US President Donald Trump’s order last month toSaly, his ears ringing but feeling no pain, stumbled to his motorbike and rode home one-handed, using the other to stem the oozing blood from his forehead.“I was crying and hugging him,” his father says.
There is no suggestion that Saly would have avoided his injuries had Trump not halted aid, and the provenance of the weapon that hurt him is unknown.But his case underscores how the Cambodian wars have never truly ended in the fields and rivers in which explosives came to rest or were planted. Fishermen still drag them up in nets. Farmers still find them while ploughing or digging irrigation.
Hill, whose research focuses on development and aid, says that while there are valid criticisms of the aid sector – including tangled bureaucracy and at times poor co-ordination – the need for reform should not be confused with wholesale policy demolition. “There’s certainly plenty of talk, even out of the US, that this does open up opportunities for China,” he says. “I’m not a political scientist, but that’s how the philanthropic and aid sector is seeing it play out.”
“Their funding in particular has been for these anti-trafficking interventions. But it’s not only what we’ve lost in this freeze – we’re not even talking millions here – but we’ve lost the opportunity to apply for more.
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