By Mr. William Morse, President of the Landmine Relief Fund and International Project Manager for CSHD, USA
How it all started
I have been working in Cambodia since 2003 supporting an indigenous group clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), the aftermath of nearly 30 years of continual fighting that began in the mid 1960s and did not end until 1998. I did not plan for this to be the way I would spend my ‘golden years’.
I was a student in university in the late 1960s, preparing for a career in the US Army. While attending military school I found I could no longer support the war in Vietnam. However, I was committed to joining the army, and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in December of 1970. By the time I finished my studies and was assigned to active duty, the war in Vietnam was closing down and the army no longer needed many of the officers they had trained. I was assigned to the reserves, a decision with which I was not displeased. I became an active opponent of the war and helped run the presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern in 1972 in Georgia, where I had served my short stint and was teaching high school.
My career took several turns and I wound up owning and running my own business, which we sold in 1998. My wife and I lived in Palm Springs, California, in a 325 square meter house, on a golf course, with our own swimming pool. I was 52, financially secure, retired, and completely unfulfilled.
A friend who had been to Cambodia asked me for a donation to help a young ex-child soldier called Aki Ra buy a black-market mine detector. He was clearing landmines and UXOs wherever he could find them. He had started a small museum near the Temples of Angkor Wat in the northwest of the country. He raised money from visiting tourists to support his work and he was also caring for over a dozen abandoned and orphaned children; many of them landmine victims themselves.
My wife and I traveled to Cambodia to find him. In late 2003, we visited his very modest compound. I asked him how much it cost to run his program and he said “$463 a month”. We raised $1,000 from the people with whom we were traveling, and decided to help him on a regular basis. I had started a small consulting company and knew I could pay him from the proceeds, and I could ‘shame my friends out of the rest’. I started supporting Aki Ra monthly and visited him 2-3 times a year. In the mid-2000’s the government started requiring anyone and everyone who was clearing landmines and UXOs, for humanitarian or commercial reasons to secure a license from the national authority, the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA).
I came to Cambodia in early 2007 to help my friend Aki Ra in completing and processing the needed paperwork.
We began the process in January of 2007. The new NGO, Cambodian Self Help Demining (CSHD) received their final operating license in November of 2008. CSHD is unique as it is a fully Khmer (Cambodian) non-governmental organization (NGO). All the other NGOs performing clearance work in Cambodia are foreign, such as HALO, MAG, and NPA. The Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), the largest organization performing clearance work in the country is part of the government. Thus, CSHD is an independent Khmer NGO.
Building a fully Khmer NGO
When Aki Ra and I made our first trip to Phnom Penh, the capital, to start the licensing process we had many long discussions about whether the new clearance organization should be a domestic or foreign NGO. In the end, we decided to make the NGO a fully Khmer operation.
At that point I had been coming to Cambodia for over four years, and had seen many NGOs, most of them foreign. People came, and people left, often leaving behind an ill-trained cadre of locals who were able to manage the process as long as there were no hiccups. When problems arose, as they always did, the staff had difficulty solving them. Not because they were incapable, but because the foreign staff had handled the arising difficulties, seldom involving local staff. By establishing CSHD as a domestic NGO and putting local staff in all the operational and managerial positions the NGO grew up with staff able to deal with any and all problems that arose.
For all of my career I was a manager, which means I built organizations from the ground up, encouraging innovation, risk taking and problem solving. That is what we did at CSHD.
The technical aspects of clearing mines could be taught and/or learned, and we sent Aki Ra to ISSEE in the United Kingdom, where he was certified to the work he already knew how to do. When new field staff was hired, CSHD trained them to IMAS Level 1 and Level 2. Levels 3 and 3+ were taught by outside, contracted organizations, for instance, the Danish Demining Group, ATC-SIPRO from Germany and CMAC. At present, our Operations Manager is Level 3+ trained and one credit short of her Master’s in Business Administration. Our Assistant Ops Mgr., our Supply Officer, and Data Officer are all degreed accountants. Thus, there is no shortage of trained professionals available in Cambodia.
Cambodia was at war for nearly 30 years. Landmines were laid by the US Army along the Vietnamese border, and then by the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, and other guerilla forces fighting a protracted war to destabilize the national government. Prior to that, the United States had dropped over 3,000,000 tons of ordnance on the country; everything from cluster munitions to 2,000-pound bombs.
Thirty years of fighting left untold millions of landmines and ERW (explosive remnants of war) littering the country; particularly along the border with Thailand, where the fighting was most intense. The problems in Cambodia will last for decades to come but they will be solved by Cambodians. Assistance and money from nations who were involved in prolonging the fighting, within which there are many who stood by and did nothing while millions died, will be needed for many years. There is not a problem in Cambodia that cannot be best solved by Cambodians. Certainly, training and education is needed, and is being provided now by governments, NGOs and individuals for that purpose.
I was a policeman in the army. All I knew about landmines was to stop the trucks and keep people out of the mine fields. But I have become a good fund raiser, supporting the needs of CSHD.
Clearing the minefields, removing ERW, performing Explosive Ordnance Risk Education classes is important, but it is only the beginning of what needs to be done.
Our American charity helped start a second NGO, the Rural School Support Organization (RSSO), which builds schools in rural villages, turning them over to the government and providing material support in schools supplies.
RSSO has also started an organic farming program, reaching people to grow new crops, giving them a food source and extra income.
RSSO is run by Khmers. The managing director is working on an MBA, the CFO has a graduate degree in accounting, the Operations Manager has degrees in philosophy, public administration, and law. We help fund growth. It begins with clearing mine fields. And it is done by Cambodians. No problem in Cambodia, or any country, is beyond the ability of its citizens to solve.
William Morse
**All images courtesy of the Landmine Relief Fund
Author: Bio
Mr. William Morse is the Presiden of the Landmine Relief Fund, the International Project Manager for CSHD and a Project Manager at Aki Ra’s Cambodia Landmine Museum. Bill was a commissioned officer in the US Army, taught school, and ran his own business from 1980 to 2007. He shut it all down to concentrate on clearing mines in low priority villages in Cambodia.
In 2003 he heard of an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, Aki Ra, whose quixotic mission was clearing landmines by hand. He and his wife Jill traveled to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to find Aki Ra and learn more about his work. After meeting him, he returned to the US and started the Landmine Relief Fund, a 501c3 charity, headquartered in Palm Springs, California to help support Aki Ra’s work. He traveled to Cambodia regularly to work with Aki Ra who had also adopted over 2 dozen maimed and orphaned children, raising them alongside his own kids.
In 2006, Aki Ra was ordered to close his Museum and cease his unauthorized, guerilla demining. Aki Ra asked Bill to assist him in establishing a new, all-Cambodian NGO (non-governmental organization) to help clear some of the millions of landmines and unexploded bombs that still litter the country and have wounded 1 in every 250 citizens. They thought it would take 3 months- Bill stayed for nearly a year and a half. When CSHD received their license, Bill closed his business to work full time with Aki Ra.
The Cambodian Self Help Demining (CSHD) became certified in 2008. In 2009, Bill and his wife Jill moved to Cambodia to continue the work they find so rewarding.
