Project Sekong 2012: We interrupt our “area clearance” to respond immediately to villagers who have found bomblets.
This woman was cutting brush in a grove of coffee trees when she spotted a cluster bomblet underfoot. The find unnerved her. She knows how close she came to striking the bomblet with her machete.
Report 28
Our first task of the day was calming a lady who was shaken by the experience of nearly whacking a cluster bomblet with her machete while she was cutting back weedy growth in her family’s coffee plantation. She pulled up short when she spied the bomblet mostly hidden amongst the grass and brush that she was chopping.
(Calling her stand of coffee trees a “plantation” is a bit like calling my Wisconsin farm a ranch. In truth, while just about every villager in these parts either cultivates coffee trees, or aspires to do a planting, most of the sites amount to no more than half an acre of trees).
The BLU 42's were not intended to explode on impact. They were designed to become landmines. Clearly visible on this bomblet is one of its eight "eyes", a port from which a trip wire was jettisoned after impact.
The device she uncovered, a BLU 42, has some interesting characteristics. It’s the same size, shape and color as the BLU 26, the infamous cluster munition that the Lao call the “bombie” but the two devices differ in that the 42’s were not designed to explode immediately. They were designed to land and, upon impact, shoot out eight plugs, each attached to the “mother bomblet” by an individual, yard-long, trip wire. Essentially, every BLU 42 became a landmine. Usually, a few of them were mixed among a load of other cluster bomblets to make it dangerous for combatants who fled an area to return.
When we find these devices the trip wires have almost always rusted away but the bomblets remain dangerous. (The have an effective killing zone of approximately 30 yards) Considering the holes from which the trip wires were jettisoned, the Lao have tagged this bomblet the “bug with eight eyes.”
As we were inspecting this woman’s find, other villagers approached us with concerns. One fellow wants us to visit his grove of trees and inspect an aluminum canister that he thinks might contain several sub-munitions. Ever since it turned up, he’s stepped over and around the canister to avoid disturbing any ordnance within. Another man would like us to accompany him to a distant rice field to see three bomblets that he found years ago and deposited atop a tree stump. He’s confident that he and his wife can continue to work around that stump but he’s concerned that some child might grow curious and touch the bomblets.