Remembering Laos: bombs still exploding decades after the Vietnam War is over

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In a land far away, but in a time not that distant, the United States was fighting an undeclared war in southeast Asia. After the war it left behind its footprint, an enormous amount of explosives buried in the fields of Laos. When I was a young kid, some friends of my parents had a grown son in Vietnam. I did not know what that meant. I had seen his Marine portrait. One day the news came from Mr. Mosier that his son was dead. He had stepped on a mine. We went to the funeral home, and since we were Catholic, I expected an open coffin. I didn’t understand what death by mines does to a human body.

All over the world, countries have left their unexploded weaponry littering countrysides. In one of her last charitable efforts, Princess Diana embraced the cause of cleaning up mines that were maiming and killing countless people.

Laos is the former home of a friend of mine who came to the US. In a petition he is writing to garner support for removing the mines, he explains why Laos in particular is in need of weapon removal:

Laos, a neutral territory during the Vietnam War, is a small (size of France) landlocked country surrounded by Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and China. However, from 1963 to 1974, the US dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions. That translates to one planeload of bombs dropped every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, over 9 years. The American public was deceived about the Secret War in Laos and the illegal bombings of innocent civilians that the US Government was engaging in during the Vietnam War.

Legacies of War (www.legaciesofwar.org), a national grassroots organization advocating for the international banning of cluster munitions and US removal in Laos, reported that “up to 30-50% of these ordnance failed to detonate, leaving 78 to 130 million unexploded bomblets, which contaminate 37% of the land in Laos. Data from a new survey being completed in Laos indicate that UXO, primarily cluster bombs, have killed or maimed at least 50,000 civilians since 1964 (34,000 since the end of war in 1973). Each year, there continue to be close to 300 new casualties. About 40% of accidents result in death, and 60% of the victims are children.”

As a neutral country, Laos became the garbage dump for munitions. It’s a very small country, and with 37% of its land filled with unexploded bombs, that uses up a considerable amount of what might otherwise be arable territory. Imagine a family acquiring a small farm and being decimated by the an explosive as they are digging a well, or planting their first crop.

We need an increase in program funding for the Uexploded Ordnance removal from Laos left from the Vietnam War by the United States. As the US seeks to rebuild its image around the globe after eight long years, it should join the global community in recognizing the threat of these weapons. It should clean up the mess it left decades ago.

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Filed under Politics, War

Tags: Barack Obama, Laos, Politics, Princess Diana, Secret War, Southeast Asia, Vietnam, War, weapons