Project Sekong 2012: The Lao government posts a roving team in Sekong Province to destroy newly found UXO.
UXO/Lao is the government agency responsible for clearance of UXO. Some teams do area clearance. Others provide rapid response to newly found ordnance. This team stopped by our worksite to alert us to recent reports of UXO in the area.
Report 16
Today, while our team was working in Dak Door, searching gardens and the sites of future fishponds, a team of men and women from the government agency UXO/Lao stopped by to greet us. Their nine-person team is responsible for providing “rapid response” to ordnance found throughout this district. Over the past week we’ve occasionally heard their demolitions so we were aware of their presence near us.
As a courtesy their team leader briefed us on the types of ordnance that people in the area have found over the years and inventoried the items that his team has recently destroyed. Then, he pointed out several mountain peaks where villagers have found large, general-purpose bombs, mostly 500 and 750 pounders. (The rice fields and pastures around Dak Door and Dak Den are pockmarked with bomb craters; the dense foliage of the forest beyond no doubt conceals many more).
In turn, we described the nature of our work and identified the kind of UXO that we’ve uncovered: mostly cluster munitions, but also old anti-aircraft ammunition, rifle grenades, an assortment of fuses and other bits and bobs. (Clearance organizations have found more than 300 different kinds of military ordnance in Laos. When searching for UXO its helpful to know what kind of military action took place in the area, what nations provided weaponry, what forces used them, and what kind of refuse has already been found).
The one thing that surprised me about the UXO/Lao team was the size of their crew. In the six years that I have worked with response teams, we’ve experimented a bit with team membership. Three positions are essential: team leader, medic and driver. Then, the number of additional staff can vary, but usually will include three or four deminers, who will heft, tote, search for UXO when necessary, and serve as sentries when clearing people and animals from the vicinity of a demolition. The nine-person team that we met was the largest that I’ve ever encountered.
What surprises me about UXO/Lao staffing a team with so many people is that the logistics of maintaining a camp in a remote village like Dak Door in a distant province like Sekong, can be daunting. While additional helping hands might be nice, the needs of staff for food, water, laundry, communication, transport and medical care make prefer a small team to a large one.