One horrific legacy of the wars in Southeast Asia is a glimpse into Ukraine’s future

The war in Ukraine is far from over, but its spectre will cling to the battle-scarred nation long after the fighting is done. Just ask Cambodia or Laos.

In the 21 months of war that has ravaged it since Russia’s fateful invasion, Ukraine is now the most mined country on Earth. In place of lush forests and farms is a wasteland where only metal and blood are present for harvest.

Already, Russian mines are reaping a significant toll. More than 600 people in Ukraine were injured or killed by landmines in 2022, according to the International Campaign to Band Landmines, in the wake of Russia’s aggressive deployment of mines throughout Ukraine.

Think tank GLOBSEC noted Russia’s proclivity of planting mines in creative and overwhelming ways. This includes “victim-activated devices on animals, dead bodies, as well as double and even triple booby traps on roads, fields, and forests,” as well as “deliberately targeted farming areas and agricultural land for contamination in order to deny its use for future economic activity in Ukraine."

Cruel and spiteful, but effective in inflicting both death and terror in one’s enemies.

It is a terrible affliction that Cambodia and Laos know too well. It is in these countries particularly that we see the true cost of transforming a nation into a game of Russian roulette - where every footstep is a pull of the trigger.

To this day, these two Southeast Asian countries suffer the cost of their wars with America that ended four decades ago. Warning signs are littered along the east of the Indochinese Peninsula as swathes of mine-infested land remain off-limits.

Before Ukraine, Cambodia was considered the nation most afflicted by landmines and unexploded bombs as a result of a string of conflicts in the latter half of the 20^th Century. Along with America’s invasion of Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam War, landmines and explosives were planted throughout the nation during the reign of the murderous Khmer Rouge. More came still as the armies of Vietnam and Thailand breached Cambodia’s borders during later conflicts. Landmine Monitor reported that 40,000 Cambodians have suffered amputations as a result of landmines, meaning that Cambodia has the highest ratio of mine amputees per capita in the world.

And Laos, despite being only a peripheral in the context of the Vietnam War, is said to be the most bombed country in history. Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of explosives on the small nation; many of which remained dormant in the ensuing decades until activated by unknowing innocents. According to the Halo Trust, 20,000 Lao people have been killed by these remnants since the war – 40% of them children.

This terrible fate seems certain for Ukraine. The size of the area contaminated by mines is equal in size to Florida, according to the Washington Post. Enormous chunks of Ukraine, including the vast majority of its south, will need to be scoured. It is a task staggering in its scale and will not see completion for decades.

Such an endeavour would take gargantuan manpower and expense. According to the World Bank, the cost over the next ten years would reach far into the billions. If left to the demining teams currently in operation in Ukraine, crawling across the soil inches at a time with a metal detector and spade, the job will not be done for hundreds of years.

The United States, as well as other western nations like the United Kingdom and Germany, may very well allocate more money to Ukraine to expediate this task; providing the war is over and Russia is on the losing side. But all the money in the world would not mean that Ukraine is unburdened by this crisis any time soon.

The scale of the crisis, alongside the scars of the war itself, will lead to a fundamental change in what it means to be Ukrainian. Society at every level will be forced to adapt; from an individual’s relationship with nature to the nation’s agricultural practices and environmental safeguards.

Another important element that will need to be introduced is in education. In Cambodia and Laos, organisations like the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMMA) and the Halo Trust endeavour to teach the local people, children especially, how to recognise and report landmines or unexploded bombs. This is especially important as many of these bombs lay in wait in agricultural areas; much like they do now, intentionally, in Ukraine.

Through the necessity to educate Ukraine’s children especially, the threat of landmines and their vast presence throughout Ukraine will be as embedded in their minds as a part of Ukrainian life as borscht or Malanka. And there lies its true malevolence.

Like Cambodia and Laos, Ukraine will be forced to develop technical expertise and specific industries, as well as a reliance on foreign aid, in the monumental task of cleansing itself. However, Ukraine must also accept that the scale of this emergency, and the constant vigilance that will be required, will take its toll on the Ukrainian mind and spirit.

Worst of all, the Ukrainian people will learn that, despite the cost of every effort, not everyone will be saved from the sadistic game of chance that their country has become.