Cambodia’s Civil War Rides the Rails

Passengers hurriedly hoist their luggage, bundles and baskets of vegetables onto the first car. Then they clamber aboard as the train creaks out of the station, heading west to Pursat.

They don’t seem to mind that they aren’t riding in a coach.

Pushed ahead of the locomotive, the first car is a five-ton flatbed of heavy iron. It is there to detonate any land mines and protect the locomotive from the blast--a bleak sign of Cambodia’s war that will not end.

“It is very dangerous,” said Pich Kim Srieng, director of Cambodian Railways. “I have told people that they are not allowed to sit on that car for reasons of their own safety, but they never listen.”

Maybe because taking the train at all is a risk, passengers do not find anything particularly dangerous in riding on the first car. Some actually prefer it so they can breathe fresh air lacking in the poorly ventilated coaches.

The first car-defense shows peace remains a dream in Cambodia.

Khmer Rouge rebels have blown up hundreds of yards of track since United Nations-supervised elections in 1993, which were supposed to end decades of civil war. The Khmer Rouge, which caused the deaths of 2 million people when they ruled from 1975 through 1978, boycotted the vote and fight on.

“On average, there are two mine explosions on the tracks every week,” said Mao Nhim, security director of the Phnom Penh station.

The attacks have forced the railroad to completely halt service west of Pursat to the provincial hub of Battambang. The line was a commercial link between Phnom Penh and the northern provinces, as well as a means of moving troops to the northwest to fight the Khmer Rouge.

Mao Nhim said Cambodia’s other rail line, which runs south from Phnom Penh to the port of Sihanoukville, is being attacked less these days because Khmer Rouge forces in that region have been weakened by mass defections.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, railways were the country’s most reliable and safe mode of transportation. Now, locomotives on their last legs rock through the countryside at a mere 12 mph.

The government earns as little as $400 a day from the system, which would barely be worth operating except most of the nation’s roads are just as run down and plagued by rebels and bandits.

The worst train disaster was in 1990, when the Khmer Rouge detonated a mine by remote control as a train passed by, killing 70 people.

In July 1994, the guerrillas used a bomb to derail a locomotive, then robbed the train’s passengers. Three Western tourists were taken hostage and later slain. Foreigners are now barred from riding the rails.

“That was the last time the Khmer Rouge destroyed a train in motion,” said Mao Nhim, discussing the use of flatcars to protect locomotives.

In addition, 3,500 soldiers now guard the 375 miles of operational rail lines during the day--the only time trains run. That makes it difficult for guerrillas to plant mines in front of oncoming trains.

The guerrillas also have fewer big mines these days, the result of weakening ties with their former arms supplier, China.

“Now, the Khmer Rouge use homemade mines made of fertilizer and TNT, which they hire local people to lay on the tracks at night,” Mao Nhim said.

The bombs are powerful enough to destroy a railway bridge or blast a three-foot crater in the rail bed.

Children who tend cows in the countryside are hired to hide the mines near the tracks during the day. After nightfall, their elders use the mines to blow up track, Mao Nhim said.

With the change in tactics, there is less risk of an explosion hitting the train’s first car, and some travelers prefer to ride up front.

“I like to feel the fresh air and watch the countryside,” said Keat Kim, one of the passengers who climbed onto the flatcar.