It's more than 35 years since the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed. During its brief rule of Cambodia, an estimated two million people died; hundreds of thousands were also killed during the civil war that preceded and followed Pol Pot's brutal 1975-79 regime. Cambodia continues to pay the price of these decades of conflict including the hidden threat of landmines, which kill and injure dozens of people each year. Since the early 1990s, the government's Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) has trained deminers and cleared landmines from large swathes of the country. CMAC's responsibilities took a new direction two years ago when, working with U.S. non-profit organisation The Golden West Humanitarian Foundation established Cambodia's first elite salvage diving unit. Their job is to tackle the underwater menace from those years of conflict (UXO) that litter Cambodia's waterways and rivers.
