Laos: The Secret War
This bus journey was bit longer - 9 hours to a town called Phonsavanh. The road was beautiful albeit a bit winding. We hopped off at the local bus station and found a few guest house reps with business cards of their places. No one really approaches you though, perhaps someone will eventually politely and quietly ask you if you require a guesthouse, but that will be it. This is Lao softspokeness and shyness at its very best - unlike all the other places we have been! We picked a great one (Kong Keo) where we would spend the next 2 nights and quickly got into a part of world history we had never heard of before - the Secret War.
The guest house owner showed us a documentary on this Secret War, a war waged against Laos because of their supplies support of Northern Vietnam during the Vietnam war. In violation of the Geneva treaty declaring Laos to be a neutral country, the USA turned Laos into the most heavily bombed country in history...
The US Airforce dropped one plane-load of bombs on Laos every 8 minutes for a period of 9 years - a total of 2.3 million tonnes by the end of the war in 1973. This happened without the knowledge of US citizens or the rest of the world. Even failed bombing missions turned back from Vietnam were ordered to empty their hazardous load over Laos on their way back to base. This was much easier than to undergo stringent safety procedures to land with bombs. Everywhere you go you see war relics. People have made good use of the bomb metal over the past 30 years. Old shells form the foundations of houses, tables, herb gardens and fire places. Metal is re-used to make cooking and farming utensils.
The Hmong people are mountain tribes people who were largely recruited for the CIA-trained and US-funded Hmong army during the Vietnam war. Our guide (whose name is TV) for the area was from a Hmong village nearby. We first stopped at the local market where we saw every conceivable variety of bird and rodent and water creature for sale for food. Even the pigs for sale come conveniently pre-packed in snug reed shoulder carry bags! We bought some food and headed off to a field of bomb craters. One thing that really struck us during all our driving through Laos was how little of the landscape had been cultivated into rice paddies - unlike all the other Asian countries we travelled to. This field was a good example of why this is so...
Throughout Laos there are innumerable amounts of unexploded ordinances (UXO's) that can still explode if provoked. Bombies are the products of the so-called cluster bombs - huge bomb shells containing up to 300 bombies - smaller bombs loaded with 150 bearings that were specifically designed to kill as much as possible. Once a cluster bomb is dropped, it is supposed to open in mid air, releasing the bombies that were designed to be activated by the spinning motion to the ground. Upon impact they explode, sending hundreds of bearings in all directions - but many of them did not explode.
20 000 Lao people have died as a result of UXO's since the end of the war - mostly children. The risk is especially high when trying to cultivate the ground as the ground must be tilled. While there exists an organization called MAG that mine-sweeps the country and removes the bombs that they find - the process takes forever and many villages are on a long waiting list before they can hope to head into the fields again. We walked amids bomb craters and even found some UXO's on the ground: the small tennis-ball sized bearing bombs which the locals call bombies. Hectic! One just has to be careful where you walk. Our driver made a turn on the grass field. Even as he did Janine spotted a bombie out of the window 1 or 2 meters away from the track that we had just made...
The Hmong people are mountain tribes people who were largely recruited for the CIA-trained and US-funded Hmong army during the Vietnam war. Our guide (whose name is TV) for the area was from a Hmong village nearby. We first stopped at the local market where we saw every conceivable variety of bird and rodent and water creature for sale for food. Even the pigs for sale come conveniently pre-packed in snug reed shoulder carry bags! We bought some food and headed off to a field of bomb craters. One thing that really struck us during all our driving through Laos was how little of the landscape had been cultivated into rice paddies - unlike all the other Asian countries we travelled to. This field was a good example of why this is so...
Throughout Laos there are innumerable amounts of unexploded ordinances (UXO's) that can still explode if provoked. Bombies are the products of the so-called cluster bombs - huge bomb shells containing up to 300 bombies - smaller bombs loaded with 150 bearings that were specifically designed to kill as much as possible. Once a cluster bomb is dropped, it is supposed to open in mid air, releasing the bombies that were designed to be activated by the spinning motion to the ground. Upon impact they explode, sending hundreds of bearings in all directions - but many of them did not explode.
20 000 Lao people have died as a result of UXO's since the end of the war - mostly children. The risk is especially high when trying to cultivate the ground as the ground must be tilled. While there exists an organization called MAG that mine-sweeps the country and removes the bombs that they find - the process takes forever and many villages are on a long waiting list before they can hope to head into the fields again. We walked amids bomb craters and even found some UXO's on the ground: the small tennis-ball sized bearing bombs which the locals call bombies. Hectic! One just has to be careful where you walk. Our driver made a turn on the grass field. Even as he did Janine spotted a bombie out of the window 1 or 2 meters away from the track that we had just made...
<< Home