Legacy

Far too common, in eastern Lao, is the sight of cluster bomb canisters being used as fencing, building material, or water troughs.

This pair of cluster bombs was dropped on Muang Ngoi by the United States. The Pathet Lao were active in this area during the Indochina war. Despite the fact that the US was not at war with Laos, the US managed to drop enough ordnance on Lao to make it the most bombed country on earth.

In addition to targeted bombing raids, launched from US bases in South Vietnam, the CIA, and its proxy forces including Air America, flew countless raids from secret airbases inside Laos.

Besides targeted bombing, Lao was also the dumping ground for B-52 bombers returning from raids over Hanoi. US pilots had standing orders to drop any remaining bombs on Lao "targets" as the bombers returned to their bases in South Vietnam. If a US bomber couldn't find targets in North Vietnam, or the weather prevented a bombing run, the planes simply turned West and South and dumped their lethal loads over the Lao landscape.

Much of this ordnance was in the form off cluster bombs. Hundreds of bomblets were contained in each canister. As the canister was dropped, it opened up and spread its deadly little seeds over vast areas. By US military estimates, at least ten percent of these toy-ball sized packages of death did not explode. Still deadly, they lie all over Lao, needing only an unsuspecting step, or curious little hand, to explode, maim and kill.

Back in Muang Ngoi, my Lao cafe host told me that in 1995, a villager, living less than a 100 meters from where we were sitting, had been critically injured by a bomblet. The thirty-odd years since it had been dropped on Lao had not reduced it lethality.

And now, almost forty years after the cessation of the war, the harvest of war continues. There are still, by UNESCO and COPE estimates, vast numbers of unexplored ordnance scattered across huge swaths of Laos. At the present rate of removal and disposal, UNESCO estimates it will take a minimum of 250 years to clear the UXO that everyday threatens the safety of Lao People.

When hiking here, one stays on a clearly beaten path, or takes grave risk by stepping off.

As a footnote: The United States still has not signed the proposed International treaties on the use of land-mines.