SIEM REAP, Cambodia — The detonation rattled the surrounding forest.
Kitted out in neon-orange, U.S.-funded personal protective equipment, Chhun Bora, who has more than three decades of demining experience, let the dust settle before checking what was left of the landmine.
After giving the all clear, Chhun, the operations manager at the nonprofit group Cambodian Self Help Demining (CSHD), removed his helmet. He pointed to the red, white and blue sticker of the American flag and said, “Maybe we need to change soon.”
In the 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War left Southeast Asia riddled with remnants of war, foreign aid from the U.S. has steadily funded the removal of landmines and unexploded ordnance. That lifesaving work is now in jeopardy after the Trump administration ordered a 90-day suspension of all foreign aid, pushing nations in the region to turn to U.S. rivals such as China to fill the funding gap.
Late Thursday, a U.S. judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate foreign aid funding but did not challenge the executive order itself.
“If we want to be the country we often claim to be, a shining example for the rest of the world, this is not the example we want to set,” said Charles Ray, a former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia. “Are we in fact the country we say we are? Are we in fact the good guys?”
‘Killing people indirectly’
Over lunch on a sunbaked landmine field here in the northwestern province of Siem Reap, Bill Morse, who was a U.S. Army officer during the Vietnam War, spoke about co-founding the Landmine Relief Fund and his more than 20 years of fundraising for the Cambodian demining group.
“When the war ended, we didn’t give a damn about anybody else. We ignored it and we walked away. I sure hope we don’t do it again,” Morse said. “I am over here because my mother told me as a little kid to clean up after myself.”
Historically, America has done that.
In 2022, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor ranked the U.S. as the top donor to “mine action” in Vietnam and Laos, second only to Japan in Cambodia.
Both Cambodia and Laos were drawn into the Vietnam War, setting the stage for civil conflicts in both countries that left the region heavily contaminated with landmines and other weapons.
Aerial bombs and cluster munitions make up a large portion of the unexploded ordnance in both countries. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. is estimated to have dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia and more than 2 million tons on Laos.
Since the end of the war in 1975, Vietnam has recorded more than 100,00 casualties from unexploded remnants, including nearly 40,000 people killed. In Laos, there have been an estimated 22,000 victims of unexploded bombs, almost half of whom died.
In Cambodia, landmines and unexploded ordnance killed nearly 20,000 people and injured more than 45,000 others from 1979 to 2024. Last month, two deminers with the government-run Cambodian Mine Action Centre were killed by an anti-tank mine near the Thai-Cambodia border.
American aid for mine action in Cambodia has mostly come through the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, which declined to comment about the funding freeze. The U.S. embassies in Cambodia and Laos referred requests for comment to the State Department’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs.
“We are reviewing all foreign assistance funds to ensure they are aligned with American interests. National security is and will remain a top priority,” said a State Department spokesperson, who added that the 90-day review period was “put in place for us to align our ongoing work” with the Trump administration’s America First agenda.
There was “total shock” in Cambodia when the U.S. announced the funding freeze and the administration moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Nhean Phoung Maly, the founder and director of the women’s empowerment group Rachna Satrei.
In Siem Reap alone, the hobbling of USAID has affected nearly a dozen nongovernmental organizations that provide HIV treatment, tuberculosis screening and early education, said Nhean, who coordinates a network of more than 300 organizations in the province.
Many officials in Cambodia are reluctant to criticize the U.S. aid freeze for fear that it will be the nail in the coffin for future aid. Nhean is not one of them.
“Killing funding,” she said, is like “killing people indirectly.”
An unfinished job
The American aid vacuum can’t be filled by any one nation, said Yoshinara Asada, an adviser with the Japan International Cooperation Agency who works within the Cambodian Mine Action Center.
“We need a joint effort to tackle this issue,” said Asada, who added that “sudden 180-degree policy changes can bring considerable confusion and damage reputations.”
The aid suspension could create an opening for rival governments in the region to step into America’s soft power shoes.
“When we start making foreign aid a political cudgel, we end up pushing people, who could be on our side, or at least be sympathetic to our aims, into the arms of our adversaries,” Ray said. “It is a no-win situation for us when we start playing games with aid to people.”
In early February, less than two weeks after the U.S. aid suspension went into effect, China pledged $4.4 million to humanitarian demining in Cambodia.
“The job is not yet finished. That’s why the contributions from friendly countries, like the United States, is crucial,” Ly Thuch, a senior government minister and vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, said in an interview in Phnom Penh, the capital.
He added, “Cambodia is blessed in having a number of friendly countries supporting us.”
On Friday, government demining teams scoured farmland around Wat village in Siem Reap, where an anti-personnel mine and an unexploded mortar round had been detected.
A pair of K-9 units worked in unison to patrol the known edges of the landmine field, once a battleground between the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian government, sniffing for explosives.
“We have only worked on this landmine field for three days, and look at how many dangers we have found already,” Oum Socheath, a demining unit manager with the mine action center, said as he motioned to the dogs.
If his group and others are unable to continue their work, local residents “will have to play a lucky draw on minefields,” Socheath said.
“Now that the war in Cambodia has finished, people need to make a living,” Oum said. “But if we don’t clear out the mines, there will always be a risk.”
While slowed by the aid freeze, demining continues in Cambodia. The same can’t be said in Laos, where the U.S. provided almost 90% of international funding for unexploded ordnance clearance in 2022, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor.
The freeze in funding is pushing Laos into “uncharted territory,” said Danae Hendrickson, chief of mission advancement and communications at Legacies of War, a U.S.-based advocacy group for mine action in the region.
“I fear this pause in funding will undo decades of progress, not only in mine action, but also in U.S.-Laos relations, which have been difficult in the past few decades,” Hendrickson said.
Since aid was frozen in late January, four unexploded ordnance accidents have been reported in Laos — leading to two deaths and five injuries across three provinces, according to local authorities. NBC News was unable to independently confirm that figure.
“I refuse to live in a world where we don’t continually strive to help our neighbors, especially when we have been part of the problem,” Hendrickson said. “This is our shared history. The U.S. has dropped these bombs and it is our duty, our moral obligation, to clean that up.”
