Nearly everywhere we’ve been in SEA so far has been tropical. Southern Thailand was jungles, northern Thailand was hills covered in forest and jungle, and Laos has been nothing but mountains of green. But on our bus ride yesterday, about an hour from Phonsavan, the landscape changed dramatically. After 6 hours of driving through misty mountains, we began driving through dusty ones. The air was dry and trees were sparse. There were fields of nothing- no trees, no farming, nothing. Nothing but dry grass and red dirt. Phonsavan is a dusty little town devoid of much vegetation, too. Yesterday, I assumed that our journey had brought us to a drier climatic region.
war scraps decorating our guesthouse
This morning, our guide informed us that Phonsavan and the entire province was once totally green with jungle. Well, he’s not old enough to remember the war, but he said all the older people talk sadly about how green and beautiful Phonsavan was before the war. But its been like this ever since the war; an entire province decimated by American bombs and defoliants. There’s not much to see in Phonsavan and its not a very scenic place either. Neither Joylani or I wanted to visit the main attraction, the Plain of Jars, which are some enormous stone bowls created around 2500 years ago. Even on one of the bus rides here, Joylani told me I didn’t even know what I wanted to see. That was true, I guess I just wanted to see the landscape, see how the place looked. Nobody had said the landscape would be so desolate, but I figured the most heavily bombed region of the most heavily bombed country in the world would look a little different. And it was beyond belief.
Joylani standing on rim of bomb crater
jars
story of our day- craters and jars and dead landscape
Our tour took us to three different excavation sites where jars have been found and UXO (unexploded ordinance) has been cleared. The jars were interesting, if for nothing else, because of their size. Most were at least a meter tall and some even taller. Nobody is really sure, but its theorized that some stored food stuffs, while others were used as urns. Lao folklore credits ancient giants for creating them. The tour guide didn’t have a problem with us wandering from the trail, as we stayed between markers indicating areas that had been swept for UXO. I wasn’t about to risk my leg to get a close-up shot of a jar. We also stopped by a village that produces lao-lao, a distilled spirit made from rice, as well as an old Vietnamese Russian-made tank that had been destroyed by an American air strike, its turret sitting a good 50 feet from the chassis. Besides the jars, there were huge craters, 20-30m in diameter, from the US bombing campaign. Climbing up a hill to get a view of the landscape, I could see many craters in the barren land and thought about how a bombing campaign could turn a jungle into a wasteland.
stay between the markers…or else….
After the tour, Joylani and I went to the local MAG (Mines Advisory Group) office to learn more about America’s “Secret War.†In case you’re not a history buff (like me) or visited your local MAG chapter today (like us), here’s a synopsis of what went down. In 1962, the US and Vietnam (among other nations) signed the Geneva Accords, which recognized Lao and Cambodia’s neutrality in the growing conflict. Bound by international law, neither country was allowed to conduct military operations within Lao or Cambodia. Well, both sides breached this agreement fairly quickly. The North Vietnamese were aiding the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge (domestic communist parties), as well as utilizing the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail, which cut through southern Lao and Cambodia. The US military was fighting on behalf of the Lao and Cambodian monarchal governments (against the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge), while the CIA was training and arming hill-tribes (mainly Hmong) to fight a guerilla war.
In 1964, the US began bombing Lao. For the rest of the decade, the US denied having ever dropped a single bomb in Lao. Even in 1968, when Johnson was praised for ending the bombing campaign, the bombing continued in Lao. In fact, that marked a turning point in the secret war, as the US increased the number of bombing missions in Lao from 300/month to over 13,000/month. By the end of the bombing campaign in 1973, the US had dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on Laos. To give you a frame of reference, this is more than was dropped on Germany and Japan combined during WWII, making Lao the most bombed nation in history. Put another way, it was one ton of ordinance for every one person in Lao at the time. Or it could be said that it was two tons of ordinance for every person living in the bombed regions. This stepped up campaign backfired for the US military though, as the refugee crisis it created exposed the bombing campaign to the American public and Congress, who pressured the military to halt the bombing. A video clip I saw showed various Senators livid that the US was violating the Geneva Accords they had signed, as well as the fact that civilian targets were not differentiated from military ones, and perhaps most of all furious that the military could conduct the largest bombing campaign in history without the knowledge of the American populace or Congress.
What I learned the most about today though, was the civilian costs of the bombing. I should note that the exhibit was not anti-American in anyway (although it could of easily and justifiably been) and the focus was on the past and current costs that the Lao people must live with. First, I’ll give some details of the bombing campaign that provide the necessary background to understanding the current problems. The bombing campaign in Lao did not differentiate between military and civilian targets. It was a secret war and the US military felt no need to operate by the ROE that it established for Vietnam. Thus, villages and farms were bombed to stop food production. Hundreds of thousands of innocent villagers were killed. Another problem was that it was extremely dangerous to land with live ordinance, so if North Vietnamese targets were obscured by weather or heavy defenses, they’d be redirected to secondary targets in Lao or would just dump their bombs indiscriminately over Lao to avoid a landing safety hazard. The most commonly used type of ordinance were anti-personnel cluster bombs, which are designed to kill (rather than destroy or disable buildings, vehicles, infrastructure, etc. Over 90 million cluster bombs were dropped on Lao, killing anyone within several hundred square meters. I saw quite a few real cluster bombs today and although the size of an apple, each one contains 300 ball bearings as well as a metal casing- imagine one of those hitting the ground near you, much less dozens or hundreds at once. Today, and the whole point of all this, there are still 10-30 million unexplored cluster bombs in Lao, as its estimated 10-30% of the bombs failed to detonate on impact (for a variety of reasons, from not spinning enough times to arm to landing softly in mud or water). These millions of “bombies†as the locals call them still affect every facet of daily life. Most of Lao is agricultural and farmers risk their lives every time they work in their fields- using a hoe, buffalo and plow, shovel, anything. A third of UXO fatalities are children as they often pickup and play with the bombies. A lot of UXO is above ground, but much is below ground having sunk in mud or water when initially dropped. So UXO is continually found even in areas that have been swept a dozen or more times. This sounds stupid, but many people try to take apart the bombies if they find one. In such a poor country, the going rate of 15 cents for a kilo of scrap metal or 25 cents for a kilo of explosives is often too attractive an opportunity to pass up. Even if they’re great at it, you only have to make a mistake once and you’re a goner. Since the war, 12,000 people have died from UXO, although the actual number is probably considerably higher for a few obvious reasons. Looking to the future, with bombies all over the country, development is difficult. Although Lao is one of the poorest and neediest countries, farmers are not willing to expand their fields to grow more food. On a larger scale, infrastructure is expensive and slow to expand as UXO must be cleared several times before a road or building can be built. Its terrible what the US did to Lao, but the ugliness of war is still present here and Lao must face the horrors of a war that ended 35 years ago. Today was one of the most sobering on this trip thusfar.
A few more thoughts:
Most of the above facts were acquired at the MAG office. I was pretty impressed with their presentation of everything, from their posters and t-shirts to informational DVDs and books. And their message was not one blaming, finger-pointing, or victimizing. They were basically illustrating the problem and hopeful about the work that has and needs to be done, no matter how painstaking the process is. I bought a DVD and recommend checking out their website: www.magclearsmines.org
One thing that I just remembered and really caught me off-guard was when I was walking with a kid the other day to go fishing. He asked where I was from and I told him. He responded, “The US bombed Lao.†He didn’t seem to have any ill feelings as he kept up our amiable conversation, but was just saying matter-of-factly what he knew about where I had said I was from. And although he didn’t mean anything about it, I can’t stop thinking about it. And I guess I should think about it, because Lao is the first of several countries we’ll be visiting that the US has fought wars against within popular consciousness.
Related to that last point and to the credit of the Lao people, I haven’t felt any malice here. People ask where I’m from and I tell them. Even though there’s so much they could be upset about, they’re still incredibly warm and friendly people.