“Proud” to be an American…
Last week we left the party scene behind and headed east towards Phonsavanh for yet another history lesson and sobering dose of reality. The main attraction around Phonsavanh is the Plain of Jars, which is composed of 52 sites of 3000 year old stone jars, each one at least as tall as I am. There is no explanation for these jars, the two theories being that they were used as burial urns or as storage for lao-lao, the sticky rice whiskey. Of those 52 sites, there are four open to visitors. The remaining 48 are inaccessible due partially to a lack of roads, but mostly due to the danger of UXO, or unexploded ordinance.
Yes, Laos is yet another country that has more or less been crippled by American bombing, and the story here is perhaps the most heart-wrenching and angering (as an American). Between 1963 and 1974, the US conducted a “secret war” against Laos that was unknown to the American citizens, and even to Congress. The bombing was most heavily concentrated in the northeast, where the communist Pathet Lao leaders resided, and in the south, near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Despite signing the Geneva Accords that declared Laos a no-go zone, America dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined in all of WWII.
Many of the bombs that were dropped were merely “leftovers.” On days when missions couldn’t be completed in Vietnam due to various reasons, the planes would be ordered to drop their bombs onto Laos enroute to their Thai bases so that they wouldn’t have to “bother” with the safety process of landing a plane with ordinance onboard. An American working in Vientiene was one of the first people to bring this all to light. He saw the thousands of refugees from the rural areas fleeing to the city and reporting what was happening. Hundreds of villagers were being killed every day; those that could were hiding in caves and suffering from lack of food. The American went to Washington to confront the government and was told that the country’s “official position” was that we’d never dropped a single bomb on Laos. He persisted and it eventually was all exposed; the US was spending over 2 million dollars per day to secretly destroy this unknown country, a blatant violation of the agreement we’d signed.
Nine years of such atrocities are bad enough, but the worst part is the lasting legacy of it all. Unlike Cambodia, where we mostly laid landmines (not that those are any better), the majority of the bombs dropped on Laos contained “bombies,” as they are known here. Basically the huge 500 kilo bombs would break open, spreading hundreds of smaller ball-sized bombs everywhere, each of which in turn were full of explosive pellets. These were effective in nothing but killing villagers; the Pathet Lao were hidden deep in a cave “city” (more on that in a bit), and only the civilans fell victim.
An estimated 30% of the bombs did not detonate, and have resulted in a country that today is one of the poorest and least-developed in the world. The mountains around Phonsavan and SamNeua, where we are right now, are absolutely covered in bomb craters, massive bald spots where nothing will grow. Hundreds of people, mostly children and farmers,are killed every year by these “leftover” bombs. The poverty that grips this country 30 years later is directly due to the fact that nearly half the land is unfarmable; this is a culture that lives by subsistence farming, and they simply cannot use the land that they have, it is so littered with UXO.
A major part of school curriculum in Laos is to teach children not to pick up bombs; the bombies look like toys, and hundreds of children die each year after finding one alongside the road. Even more frequent are deaths that occur when an adult or child sees a bomb and cannot resist the temptation of trying to pick it up; the scrap metal trade is one of the most lucrative around, and for people that can only grow enough food for half of the year, there is nothing that can convince them not to take that risk.
There is a British group called MAG (Mine Advisory Group) that is the central bomb-clearing organization in the country. They train villagers as bomb-clearers, providing a new industry and slowly helping to clean up the damage. Huge bombs are regularly found in schoolyards, under roads, in rice fields. At the current rate of clearance, however, it will take over 100 years to make this country safe.
It honestly makes us feel sick to be American at times. These things are horrible enough to read about, but actually being here makes things that much more real. I have never felt as welcome anywhere as I do in Laos; these are the kindest, gentlest, hardest-working people I’ve ever encountered and there is absolutely no justification for it all. Yesterday as we toured the cave network that the Pathet Lao leaders resided in for those nine years, we saw the MAG people on site, working to detonate yet another bomb found next to a village. Our guide told us that they are there five days a week, every week, searching and clearing a seemingly endless number of discovered explosives.
This is real, and somehow these people hold no resentment or show any anger towards us. It has become a way of life for them, and, as in many Asian countries, they simply look ahead and do what they can, right now. We can’t help but compare it to 9-11, which was horrible but did only a fraction of the damage that we did to this place; the result in America was the shunning of an entire Middle-eastern race, and yet more war has resulted. I have nothing but respect for this entire country, and how incredibly welcoming every single Laotian has been – I will definitely be back to this place, and hope that I can help it in some way.
Tags: 1, bomb, Laos, Phonsavan, Plain of Jars, Sam Neua, Secret war
allisonrae
December 13th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
It is truly sobering to see the effects that the sins of previous generations still have on societies. But it is people like you and Gabe who take the time and the energy to care who can help bring about change. I am sure that most Americans (myself included) are completely unaware of what happened over there but you are helping to open the eyes of everyone that you share this with.