Efforts to clear mines and munitions from parts of the Mekong region blanket bombed by American forces during the Vietnam war have been hit by a sudden US funding freeze, with skilled deminers losing jobs and rural populations exposed to increased risks of injury from unexploded ordnance (UXO).
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On January 25, the State Department suspended funding of nearly all foreign aid commitments for 90 days pending a review by President Donald Trump’s “America first” government.
The department, which funnels tens of millions of dollars annually through aid agencies and local groups to carry out demining across the globe – including in the Mekong region – ordered all new spending to be stopped, hitting frontline work almost immediately.
The cash crunch has hampered UXO clearance work in places heavily bombed by the United States air force – Laos and Vietnam – as well as neighbouring Cambodia, where instability in the wake of US military intervention triggered decades of conflict.
There will be real world outcomes to the funding freeze, warned Bill Morse who founded Cambodian Self Help Demining, a group which has cleared 285 minefields since 2008.
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“There’s minefields that should be being worked on right now, and they’re not,” he told This Week in Asia. “What can happen? People can die … lives are at risk.”