VIENTIANE, Laos — A prosperous nation recognizes the value in channeling foreign spending to poverty alleviation in developing countries. Everyone in the world should have access to medical care, all children should have the chance to go to school, and food and clean water should be treated as entitlements for all human beings, but there is another—more sullen and compelling reason— for supporting foreign aid.
Heavily carpeted with explosives during the United States’ Secret War in the former French Indochina—a side stage of the Vietnam War—Laotians, especially poor farmers, are still suffering from the undetonated bombs and landmines. In the 60’s, as battles raged on in Vietnam, the US rained down more than two million tons of ammunition on a sparsely populated kingdom with the aims to interdict traffic along the famous Ho Chi Minh trail and to support the Royal Lao government against the Pathet Lao (Laos Country) communist insurgency over the course of 9 years.
For a numerical perspective and for the sake of comparison, over 270 million cluster bombs—that is a type of bomb that releases smaller bombs upon being released—were heavily peppered throughout the country. That is around 2.2 million tons of ordnance. Around 80 million of these did not detonate. The amount of bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War exceeds that of the bombs dropped on Iraq in the First (’91), Second (’98) Gulf Wars plus the 2006 invasion combined. More bombs were dropped on this small country than on all sides of the Second World War.
On top of all this, there are also many grenades, rockets, artillery munitions, mortar shells and anti-personnel land mines that were used throughout the country—again, many went undetonated. All this, against a mountainous, landlocked, and largely rural and agricultural country whose entire population then was about the size of modern day Houston’s (that’s about 2 million.) This gives Laos the unwanted title of the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita—more than a million tons per person.
It is estimated that since the end of the bombing of Laos—two years before the end of the Vietnam War in ’75, more than 20,000 people have been killed and many people whose livelihood rely solely on physical labor have been turned into amputees. So far, only 1% of bombs have been removed and destroyed. Between 1995 and 2013, the government responsible for this humanitarian atrocity has only donated $3.2 million per annum to alleviate a disaster it had spent $13.3 million daily over the course of 9 years to create.
Currently, inhabitants of more than 25% of all rural villages in Laos are exposed daily to the risk of undetonated ordnance as they go out to work their lands everyday. Furthermore, the chemical contamination caused by an explosion thereof continues to present constant health and safety problems. Every year, this legacy of war produces approximately 300 casualties, decades after the war ended. The death or injury of a member of a farming family by an ordnance explosion poses a devastating both an economic and emotional hardship on a family for generations.
Remember, we are talking about a country that still largely relies on agriculture wherein the state provides very little social security. Unexploded ordnances are one of the established causes of poverty in Laos. There is a strong correlation between the prevalence of poverty and the presence of the former.
The case of Laos is an indicting and an implicating example of why donation and foreign aid are necessary. 25% is a staggering percentage of a country to be exposed to this danger. As generations of people who never knew any war are still unable to reassume their normal livelihood, it is imperative that more effort be allocated into the rectification and—perhaps—the atonement, as delayed as it may be, of the wrong that was committed. The right to life is an inalienable right enshrined within the UN Declaration to Human Rights as well as the Declaration of Independence, and one cannot completely exercise this right in such a nightmarish scenario.
– Peewara Sapsuwan
Sources: UXO LAO, Legacies of War, YouTube, Journal of Mine Action
Photo: Around This World