Rats sniff out unexploded mines
Elephants are on hand to transport visitors to the summit. They’re not really needed. The walk up to the temple is pleasant: cicada choruses and jungle birdsong fill the balmy evening air. Just off the path, last week, a band played: squeaky traditional instruments producing a wistful haunting refrain. But this was no ordinary band: every member of it had been disabled by a landmine or a bomb. Some were blind, all had lost limbs.
In 1969, the United States began carpet-bombing Cambodia. In the civil war which followed, the notorious Kymer Rouge killed two million people. They thought that blowing up innocent children and farmers would demoralise the population into submission, so landmines were laid all over the countryside. Pol Pot, aka Blood Brother No 1, and his thugs were defeated by the Vietnamese but the civil war continued. It would be the late 90’s before hostilities ceased.
