First a little history lesson….
Most people don’t know much about Laos. Most people couldn’t
point it out on a map, or even tell you which continent it’s on.
Well, let me tell you
a little bit about it.
Laos is a small country in South East Asia. It borders
China, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. And over the last
thousand years, it has been invaded by each and every one of those countries,
and other countries from the other side of the world.
The most recent of these wars that Laos has been involved in
was the Vietnam war. Which doesn’t even make much sense when you think about
it. How was Laos involved in the war between North and South Vietnam forces?
During the Vietnam war Vietnamese troops made a series of routes called the Ho
Chi Minh Trail through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to carry munitions to the
troops around the country.
When the Americans found out about the Ho Chi Minh trail
they instigated “the secret war”. The secret war was in the late 60’s and early
70’s when American bomber planes and fighter planes attacked areas of Laos that
they believed were involved in helping the Vietnamese carry arms.
Here are some facts about the Secret War:
· *On average a plane-load of bombs was dropped on
Laos every 8 minutes from 1964 to 1973. That’s nine whole years.
· * The quantity of unexploded ordinance (UXO)
dropped over Laos during this time exceeds 2,000,000 metric tonnes.
· * The American government orchestrated over
584,000 missions to deliver this ordinance.
· *The number of cluster munitions (bombies)
dropped over Laos exceeds 260,000,000
· * The estimated failure rate per cluster bomb is
roughly 30%
· * The estimated number of cluster bombs (bombies)
contaminating Laos today is 78,000,000
· *The number of people killed by UXOs
annually exceeds 300. The number of people injured or maimed is in the
thousands.
· * Laos remains the most bombed country per capita
in the world
As you can clearly see from the facts, there is still a
massive problem with the unexploded bombs dropped by American planes almost 50
years ago. The reality is that more people die in Laos (a country about the
size of Ireland) from bombs dropped by Americans 50 years ago, than have died
of ‘terrorism’ any year except 2001.
Here is a map of where some of the recorded bombing missions
(of rice farming villages) in Laos occurred:
Talia and I have traveled all over this country. There are
people in every village affected by the remains of the American Secret War on
Laos. Every couple of days you see a person without hands, missing a leg or
with a badly damaged face, due to farming for sustenance in an area that hasn’t
been cleared of bombs dropped half a century ago.
Here are some accounts written by children in the refugee
camps during the years of the bombings:
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Cluster Bombs are designed to be dropped from a certain
height, open in the air and drop a cache of apple or plum sized ‘bombies’ over
a large area, each bombie giving around the same explosive force as a hand
grenade.
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| A hanging model of "bombies." |
The UXO situation wouldn’t be such a large problem if Laos
were America or Ireland, where the economy allows for funds to be allocated to
clearing land quickly to allow people to farm. And most people in Laos make
such a meager living that sometimes farming alone doesn’t make enough income so
the people of Laos have to find other sources of income.
Because of this a lot of Laotians turn to the scrap metal
trade. A lot of adults and children go out into the countryside with spades and
sticks to see if they can fish some of the casings from exploded bombs out of
the ground, and sell the metal on the local markets. The people in Laos search
fields, knowing there are unexploded bombs ready to explode, so they can have
enough to feed their families, or just to have some minor luxuries such as pots
or pans.
One of the biggest problems with cluster bombs is that
though many countries have outlawed the use of cluster bombs, many countries
still use them. Even today.
Even today the United States use cluster bombs in areas of
the middle east and as awful as it is to destroy a family’s livelihood (or even
massacre entire villages with bombs dropped from drones controlled from
hundreds of miles away) the land that cluster bombs are dropped on can remain
unusable for decades, as we can see in Laos.
Check out part 2 of our article on cluster bombs when I tell
you how people in Laos are living and COPEing with UXOs.
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