During the war in Vietnam, the US military dropped more bombs on neighbouring Laos than it did worldwide during the entire Second World War. Up to a third of them failed to explode. Now, more than 30 years since the conflict ended, unexploded ordnance contaminates more than half the country’s land and kills around 200 people each year. Ben Winston reports:

In 1993, nine-year-old Phonsay was playing in the fields when a friend found a ball and threw it his way. Fortunately, Phonsay missed the catch. He doesn’t remember much of what happened next because the cluster bomb his friend had mistaken for a ball exploded, sending out a spray of burning shrapnel that tore a hole in his skull and left him in a coma. He was lucky to survive. When he came to 25 days later, he discovered that brain damage had left him hemiplegic – he had lost the use of his entire left side. And although he can now talk and is just about able to walk, he still has difficulty comprehending how he became a casualty of a war that ended long before he was born.

The reasons are twofold. First, like all of the cluster bombs trialled during the Indochina war, the BLU26 cluster bomblet (the most common in Laos and the one most likely to have been involved in Phonsay’s accident) is a sophisticated device. About the size of a child’s fist, it contains 100 grams of high explosive and an intricate, precision-engineered arming mechanism. The problem is that this mechanism is complicated and frequently fails, leaving unexploded bomblets scattered across the countryside in what are, ultimately, de-facto minefields. In Laos, where an estimated 90 million of these things were dropped, failure rates of the BLU26 stand at around 30 per cent. Which means that today there could be anything up to 27 million bomblets lying in wait for people such as Phonsay.

The second reason for Phonsay’s accident is that Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. This is because between 1964 and 1973, the Vietnamese ran the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos in direct contravention of the Geneva Accords that had earlier recognised Laos’s neutrality. When the US military began its subsequent carpet bombing of the trail, it too contravened the accords in what was to become its most expensive military venture ever, costing US$2million (£XXXXXX) per day for the best part of nine years. By the end of 1973, this ‘secret war’ had seen more than two million tonnes of ordnance dropped on Laos – roughly ten tonnes of bombs for every square kilometre, or more than half a tonne for every man, woman and child.

******

Phonsay is one of more than 11,000 people to have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance (UXO) since the end of hostilities (although a recent UN Development Program study suggests that the true number of victims could be more than double that). Thanks to the bombing campaign responsible for this tragic statistic, more than half of Laos’s arable land is too contaminated to be safely farmed and almost 60 per cent of the population is malnourished. But this contamination doesn’t just hold back the cultivation of food – it inhibits the building of roads, schools, bridges, hydro-power, irrigation schemes and other development projects that might otherwise help the country lift itself from poverty.

The village of Houi Dok Kham, located in the heavily contaminated Xieng Khouang province, is a good example. It has an ample 48 hectares of cultivable land, but three UXO deaths and widespread contamination have left the villagers too scared to cultivate more than two hectares. In 1995, the Asian Development Bank funded an irrigation scheme that would have allowed the village to cultivate two rice crops per year, but contractors had to stop work after discovering high numbers of cluster bombs, mortars, grenades and other explosives beneath the soil surface.

Boun Seah, the village’s 52-year-old chief, sits in the shade between the stilts of his raised house and explains: “When Savan and Khampan were killed, many people stopped using the large area of fertile fields beneath our village. These days we cannot grow enough rice for everyone and often go hungry. We would cultivate the land if we knew where the bombs were buried… but we don’t. I would say that UXO is definitely the biggest problem facing our village today.”

But in spite of its contamination, Houi Dok Kham is lucky. The UK-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and national de-mining agency UXO Lao are busy clearing the village’s land for direct agriculture and to enable the completion of the irrigation scheme. The result is that, for the first time since 1964, villagers can soon look forward to feeding themselves properly.

********

Out in the fields, the MAG teams scan metal detectors back and forth across the earth, listening for the bleep of buried metal. This is hot, painstaking work, yet each and every positive reading has to be marked. Then, once the detectors are clear of the area, technicians delicately excavate what, in most cases, turns out to be a harmless bomb fragment. Over two days, the teams uncover nearly 40 kilograms of scrap metal, a handful of bullets… and five BLU26 cluster bombs.

During this clearance, MAG’s perfect safety record was nearly devastated in an incident that highlights the ignorance surrounding UXO. Hearing that bomb-disposal experts were in the area, a seven-year-old boy brought the team two live BLU26s, one in either hand. “Do you want to buy these?” he asked team leader Somphong Chanthavong. The BLU26 has a kill zone of 10–15 metres, and Somphong knew that if either bomb went off, the boy, himself and a number of his staff would be killed. “I told him to be very still,” Somphong says, “then dug a pit, backed off and told him to put the bombs into it very gently.” The boy did as he was told and, thankfully, neither detonated. “He had learned in school about the dangers of ‘bombies’,” Somphong says, “but he just didn’t make the link. He thought he could make a bit of money.”

According to 2000 figures, children under the age of 15 constitute 44 per cent of all UXO victims in Laos. “The trouble is that kids are curious,” explains Mick Hayes, MAG’s director of operations in Laos. “You hear it so often – stories of children getting arms or heads blown off while playing with what they think are toys.” The problem is so acute that the Lao national curriculum now includes an hour of UXO-awareness lessons each week. But what a child learns in school may be contradicted by the ubiquity of UXO at home.

Laos’s material poverty has led to a startling proliferation of recycled war scrap – BLU3 bomblets are frequently dismantled and made into lamps, while the casings of larger 500-pound (227-kilogram) and 1,000-pound bombs make excellent plant pots, fence posts or stilts for a house. Many Lao spoons are fashioned from aluminium salvaged from downed US aircraft, and retrieved explosives are apparently good for fishing. But although many bombs are successfully recycled, amateur bomb disposal is phenomenally risky.

In the central province of Khammouane, local man Mr Bounhome tells of how his elderly father was tempted to dismantle a BLU24 cluster-bomb unit after scrap metal traders offered him 5,000 kip (about 28 pence) per kilo of aluminium. “My dad knew it was dangerous and had explosive bombies packed inside,” he says. “But he was a bit of a drinker, and his judgement was probably clouded by how much money he thought he could get for a chunk of metal that big.” The bomb went off. “My dad didn’t have a chance,” he says. “But somehow I survived the explosion with only heavy shrapnel wounds to my legs.”

Bounhome’s story isn’t exceptional. In 2002, a large bomb killed the eight Kammouane men who were trying to defuse it. Then, in 2003, in Xieng Khouang province, a farmer tried to defuse a 500-pound bomb and blew up three houses, himself, six of his family, and six of his neighbours. Yet while these stories do deter some, there are still plenty of men such as Boulapha resident Cha Kai who make their living from scrap metal. He roams the fields with a cheap Vietnamese metal detector, selling his finds to Khun Ma Mat, the local metal merchant, for just 6,000 kip per kilogram of aluminium, and 600 kip for each kilogram of steel. At these prices, a dismantled BLU26 is worth just under a penny.

In spite of the low prices and high risks, scrap metal is a growth industry in Laos, as the sharp rise in UXO accidents in 2004 attests. Vietnamese traders are increasingly collecting from across the border, and a huge new incinerator in Xieng Khouang is already surrounded by thousands of tonnes of rusting car wrecks, cluster-bomb casings and tank turrets. In addition, tourists are now adding to the death toll as they buy dismantled cluster bombs for souvenirs.

Sadly, the problem of UXO in Laos looks set to get worse before it gets better: population growth is increasing the pressure on land and the price of scrap metal is rising. The best estimates suggest that the clear-up operation will take decades, and even that is dependent on a constant flow of funds. Meanwhile, boys like Phonsay – indeed, more children not yet born – will continue to suffer from the devastating legacy of cluster bombs and other remnants of a secret war in which they played no part.

The Secret War
In 1962, Laos’s neutrality was recognised in the Geneva Accords, which forbade the presence of foreign military personnel on its soil. However, both the USA and North Vietnam (as well as China) acted in direct contravention of them. In order to circumvent the accords, Laos was known as ‘The Other Theatre’ in official US communications. US pilots flew in civilian clothes and carried a pill containing lethal shellfish toxins to be used if they were captured by the enemy. North Vietnam never bothered to try to hide its huge presence, which, by 1969, totalled more than 71,000 military personnel.

Per capita, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. An average of one plane load of bombs was dropped on Laos every eight minutes, around the clock, for nine years – a total of 2.3 million tonnes of ordnance by the war’s end in 1973. Rather than land fully loaded, US pilots often emptied their bomb bays on non-target areas before crossing back into Thailand.

The ever-growing human cost
Thirty-seven-year-old Phouvieng Khamphang was digging holes in the earthen floor of his home when he hit a buried cluster bomb. He lost his left arm and leg. His family house, complete with their savings and everything they owned, was burnt to the ground.

“I cannot see the future: I have no hopes,” he says. “If I was dead, it would be okay, but I think I am unlucky because I am alive and cannot work to earn money for my family.

“I was very sad when I learnt I had no leg and no arm. It is very difficult for me to find food for my family. Now my wife has to work in the fields for low pay. I am very afraid – I spend my days in the house worrying about my wife and bombies. I am to scared to go into the fields.”

Following the accident, a charity called Consortium provided Phouvieng with a new house and a buffalo. The government provided a small plot of UXO-cleared land.

“I still have life and I have eyes,” he says. “When guests visit me, I smile to try to forget the accident. But I have nightmares. I try to forget, but I cannot.”
[Illustrate with picture of guy on crutches – I do have other mugshots if you wanted to use the blurred image more prominently]

Contacts
Mines Advisory Group can be contacted on +0161 236 4311. For more information about the group’s operations or to make a donation, visit www.magclearsmines.org.

For more information on the campaign to ban landmines and other explosive remnants of war, visit www.icbl.org.

For more information on the situation in Laos, visit the national de-mining agency’s website at www.uxolao.org.