A Real Minefield - March 3, 2012

Today we had the sobering experience of a visit to the local War Museum, more properly an anti-war museum. Cambodia has had many wars, of course, but this museum commemorates the murderous regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975-1978), the subsequent invasion by Vietnamese forces to put an end to that brutal regime, and the stubborn guerilla resistance put up by Pol Pot forces in the western, mountainous regions near the Thai border for years following the invasion (supported by the Americans). This resistance included planting countless thousands of land mines, which continue to kill and maim several hundred people every year.
Our guide was a 34 year old man who had lost an arm in a land mine explosion when he was 16 years old. He had been a child soldier, but was not in the military at the time of this tragedy, which killed several of his friends.
The museum was in a compound rather than a building, and had several small buildings where war relics are kept, including AK-47s, M-16s, and the many varieties of land mines,

which were planted in profuse numbers in this country. Our guide explained how all of these mines worked, including the Claymore, which was the particular type of mine that injured him. This mine is still available for purchase from American arms manufacturers.
Outside the small buildings were rusting tanks and artillery pieces of both American and Soviet manufacture, rocket launchers and other lethal hardware that has been recovered from battlefields in Cambodia. There was a grassy area that had a display of disarmed land mines, including near-invisible trip wires, and plastic mines that are as lethal as the metal ones, but the shrapnel from them does not show up on x-rays.
This chilling reminder of the consequences of modern warfare, and its brutal effects on non-combatants, makes me thankful that there has not been a war on Canadian soil since the American invasions of 1812-14.
Here, the after-effects of war are obvious. Most of a generation is missing. A Japanese NGO has helped some land mine survivors by teaching them to play traditional musical instruments. We saw a performance of one of these troupes of musicians, playing traditional instruments in order to feed their families.