Bomblets, bomblets everywhere

After a friend sent me a picture a few weeks ago of an Israeli cluster bomblet left in Lebanon, I realized that we are rarely presented with contemporary artillery photographs by the media. All of the following bombs and mines were produced in the US and were collected by a team led by Aki Ra, a twice-conscripted Khmer Rouge soldier who served with the Vietnamese occupation between these two stints. In the early 1990s he returned to northwestern Cambodia to work as a mine-clearer for the UN. He continued this work after the UN withdrew from Cambodia, and, having stockpiled an impressive collection of shells, opened the Cambodia Land Mine Museum after the conclusion of the civil war.

When I met Aki Ra in Siem Reap, he admitted to me that he believes he cleared some of the very mines he laid during the 1980s for both the Vietnamese/PRK and Khmer Rouge forces.

These MK-82 bombs (note "USA" painted on right-most one) were dropped from US planes, as were the cluster bomblets pictured above, originally encased by a much larger shell. The anti-personnel mines (the ones that look like mini-bombs) and the anti-tank mines (the pancake mines under the house behind the MK-82s) were supplied by the US to the Khmer Rouge and laid in Northwestern Cambodia in the mid-1980s. All were cleared by hand.

For the time being

Fisherwomen under U Bein's Bridge, Amarpura, Myanmar:

Wat Phra Mahathat, Ayutthaya, Thailand:

In an Akha village near Louang Nam Tha, Laos:

Ta Prohm, Siem Reap, Cambodia:

Fruit vendors heading to a floating market at sunrise, Can Tho, Vietnam: