Clearing ordnance on the old Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Laos is contaminated with over 300 different kinds of ordnance. Along the old Ho Chi Minh Trail we found just about everything imaginable, from small cluster bomblets to big bombs weighing a ton or more.

Nong District -Savanakhet Province - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic

Like a wide belt, Savanakhet Province spans the entire width of south central Laos. The western border of the province is the Mekong River, which also forms the national border with Thailand; to the east a jagged mountain range demarcates the Provincial border and the Lao border with Vietnam as well.

Most of the population of Savanakhet Province is concentrated in its western districts; the largest urban center is the city of Savanakhet, which sits on the Mekong River and is separated from Thailand by just a brief car ride over the new Japanese Friendship Bridge. The western region is endowed with some of the most productive agricultural land in all of Laos.

Higher levels of food production in western Savanakhet Province enable its citizens to enjoy a quality of life different from that experienced by the aboriginal or tribal peoples who populate the province’s eastern districts. Relative to the people living on the eastern foothills and mountains the lowland Lao, or “Lao Loum,” have better housing, better diets, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, lower maternal mortality, and higher literacy levels. In total, a higher quality of life.

The contrast in living conditions is due not just to the geographic advantages enjoyed by residents of the western region. During the Indochina War multiple branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail snaked through the eastern districts of the province. American bombers, intent on interdicting the flow of North Vietnamese troops and materiel flew thousands of bomb runs over the area, destroying bridges, roadways, and entire villages. Later, American aircraft sprayed chemical herbicides such as “Agent White” and “Agent Orange” in an effort to defoliate what remained of the primary forest.

American military leaders boasted, perhaps a little more than half in jest, that the United States possessed the capability to bomb its enemies “back to the stone age.” Here in the Nong District, that sad joke very nearly came true. Although nearly forty years have passed, you can still see visible evidence of the bombing and defoliation campaigns. The second growth forest here has barely a tree sporting more than forty growth rings, evidence that when the war finally ended there was little of the native forest still standing. The countryside is pockmarked with craters. (Some sit like huge, empty bowls, a common place for villagers to throw the UXO that they find; others, relished by water buffalo, are filled to the brim with stagnant water).

Somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of the ordnance dropped on Laos never exploded and very little of that refuse has ever been removed or destroyed. Hence, the land and waterways of this region are still contaminated with unexploded ordnance and people still die in UXO related accidents.

I recently asked a man who lives in a nearby village, “How many people in your village have been injured by UXO?” After a moment’s reflection he answered, “Not very many.” Given the level of contamination, his answer surprised me. A bit confused, I asked, “You mean, with all the UXO around here, people don’t have accidents? They aren’t injured by UXO?”

“Oh”, the man replied. “I misunderstood. I thought you asked if people are frequently injured by UXO and live. Most of the time people die.”

The UXO contamination is so pervasive that before beginning any new enterprise people must consider whether their efforts are worth the risk to life and limb. A farmer may want to cultivate a new field or dig a fishpond; a sawmill operator might want to expand a factory; a school board may envision a well from which students can draw drinking water. A village cooperative may want to start a banana plantation or build a kiln to bake charcoal. These and other efforts cannot safely move forward until land is cleared of ordnance.

Recently, the company that I work for began clearing land for a eucalyptus plantation. The deep pocket in this project, a major international paper company, envisions that ten years from now the first trees planted will ready to harvest and turn into paper pulp. Although eucalyptus will dominate, the plantation will not form a monoculture; villagers living near the plantations will be allowed to plant highland rice and other crops in the cleared land between the rows, thereby increasing their food production.

We began our task in earnest just a few weeks ago and have already found a varied assortment of ordnance: cluster bomblets, landmines, hand grenades, rockets and big bombs ranging in size from 250 to 750 pounds. Slowing our work are all the false alarms we get from our detectors, as the teams are searching fields heavily littered with bomb fragments. (In the first couple of weeks the de-miners carted back to camp over 3,000 pounds of scrap, almost all of it refuse of war).

Most of the people who live here in the Nong District belong to small ethnic groups like the Makong and the Ta Oy. They are aboriginal peoples who have occupied these lands for centuries. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, when first surveyed by the Vietnamese, followed footpaths worn by the distant ancestors of today’s villagers: the trails they followed when tracking game or moving from place to place. These people hung onto their land throughout the war; some families spent years living in caves or earthen bunkers. They were innocents living in the wrong place at the wrong time, proof of the adage that “when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled”.

My friend Ku lived a life typical of many villagers present during the war. He has lived his entire life in this district. His cultural identity is tied to ethnic groups of the region and he can trace his family’s presence back through many generations of tribal people.

Ku was born in 1959 and he guesses that he was eight or nine years old when the bombing of his village reached a peak. Though just a child at the time, he had to make life or death decisions whenever the B-52’s flew overhead. Today, he grows emotional when he shares still-vivid memories of the frequent bombardments. He blinked when I asked if his village was ever a target of the American bombers. In hindsight, I realize that my question must have struck him as naïve, if not silly. “Oh, many many times”, he replied. “The bombers come so many times.”

I asked Ku how he and his family managed to live through the campaign.

“It seems to me” he recollected, “that it was the biggest, strongest men in the village who dug the caves [bunkers] for us. Then, when we heard the bombers overhead, ‘vrummm, vrummm’, we would run for the cave. Inside the cave we were safe from the bombies [cluster munitions]. We would not be killed. But if a big bomb landed on top of the cave, everyone in the family would be killed. Some families died that way but my family was lucky, we never had a big bomb land on our cave.”

I asked Ku if he was ever caught too far from his family’s bunker to find safety underground. “Oh, that was terrible”, he said. “If you couldn’t get to the cave, you couldn’t lie on the ground because the shock from the big bombs would break your bones and damage your organs inside. You couldn’t stand; you couldn’t run. All you could do was squat on your toes and cover your head with your hands.”

In spite of economic hardship, Ku has never seriously considered moving away from Nong. Others have moved to Savanakhet, but he thinks the city is too big, too noisy. Nong is his home; this is where he belongs. Ku’s family didn’t desert their ancestral lands during the war; he wouldn’t consider leaving now.

Ku is pleased that PCL is going to organize a Response Team and begin clearing the UXO that villagers discover in the course of their everyday lives. He predicts that the team will be busy. Recently, Vietnamese scrap dealers have begun crossing the nearby border and recruiting villagers into the trade. They sell detectors cheap or will lease them on generous terms: no cash down and future loan payments can be made in scrap. As a consequence, locals have begun harvesting frag like never before. The pay isn’t much, just 2,000 kip per kilo (less than 10 American cents per pound) but people need the money and there aren’t many other ways to earn cash.

Just the other day, as part of a construction project, a government crew began scrapping vegetation from a small, nearby site with a bulldozer. Children came running from every direction. Not to watch the bulldozer but to seize the opportunity to scan freshly turned soil with their metal detectors.

At least fifteen children were perfectly positioned to become collateral damage should the heavy machine strike ordnance and set off an explosion. (A small cluster bomblet has an effective killing zone of approximately 30 yards. The big bombs can throw metal fragments nearly a mile.) Families apparently judged the reward to be worth the risk so, like sea birds hungrily stabbing at morsels along the surf line, the kids busily swept their detectors over the soil and pocketed whatever shards they could find.

Students here in Nong tell me that workers from a Lao government program visited their school a few years ago. The kids remember the visitors talking about UXO safety and awareness. (What we in the trade call “risk education”). A few children can still recite the words to a safety song that they were taught to sing. And, teachers here say that they once attended an American-sponsored training workshop where they were given a packet of lesson plans on UXO safety, as well as posters to display in their rooms.

What teachers, government officials, and village elders all say is lacking is a force to call upon when UXO is found. People say they and their children know how to be safe around UXO. What they need is someone to safely blow the stuff up or take it away!