Risking life and limb to visit the mysterious jars
It’s not often when a visit to a tourist attraction comes with the risk of maiming or death, but the Plain of Jars (just outside Phonsavan in Laos) is no ordinary tourist attraction. Quite apart from the mysterious origins of the plains’ thousand namesake stone jars (no one knows how, where or when the jars were made) the place is notorious, and possibly unique among locations of historic interest, for being riddled with UXO (unexploded ordnance).
The UXO, which is largely made up of parts of cluster bombs known as ‘bombies’, is not just confined to the Phonsavan area but found over two thirds of Laos’ land, where it was dropped by the US Army in the 1960s and early 1970s during the so-called ‘Secret War’.
Despite being legally required to respect the Laotian neutrality in the Indochina (Vietnam) war, as ratified by the Geneva Conference of 1954, American military chiefs led as many as 13,000 bombing raids a month over Laos during this time. Their rationale while they were involved in the war in Vietnam was ostensibly that the Vietcong were using the Ho Chi Minh Trail down the eastern border of Laos to transport goods and men. More often than not, the bombs that landed on Laotian targets were just those that pilots failed to drop on Vietnamese targets because of bad weather or other problems. They would rather dump them on Laos villages than deal with the hassle of returning to base with ammo on board.
How the US managed to carpet bomb a whole country without being found out is an even bigger mystery than the jars' origin
How the US military managed to hide the fact that they were dropping bombs on Laos from everyone – US citizens, congress, and the rest of the world – is mind boggling. The level of carpet bombing that happened here is shown on Laos maps as red splodges – many areas are completely covered. Practically, that meant that thousands of villages were destroyed, many people lived in caves for up to 10 years, and huge numbers of refugees fled to the south and Thailand.
Over two million metric tons of ordnance was dropped on the people of Laos – 2 tons for every person. An estimated third of this did not explode and is still out in the fields and villages of the countryside now.
The particular bombs that the US used in those days (and have used since in other wars like Iraq and Afghanistan) are cluster bombs, used solely as anti-personnel weapons, ideal killing machines. Each fist-sized ‘bombie’ (which are packed 600 or so to an artillery shell) is filled with about 300 ball bearings that, when the bomb is armed, are designed to explode out of it on impact at speeds of about 2,200ft a second, tearing through flesh and bone.
Theoretically the bombs, which leave the artillery shell in mid-air, should become armed on their way to the ground as they rotate and explode on impact. However, many of these bombs failed to rotate enough to be properly armed or didn’t explode because they landed too softly or in water and got buried. These have lain there for 40 years, just waiting for a child to pick one up or a farmer to thrust his hoe or spade into the earth above it.
A Mines Advisory Group image of Laos children looking at one of the unexploded bombies
The bombs, even now, claim more than 500 lives a year. Hundreds more people lose limbs, eyesight or suffer severe and permanent damage. Many of the victims are children who think that the small round ‘bombies’ are toys or fruit and pick them up to play with.
In a society where 90 per cent of the population makes its living from the soil, the problem is a daily worry. Wives worry for their farmer husbands, their small children. The birth rate has risen here since the war and 40% of all Laos people are under 18 so new areas of land are constantly having to be ploughed for food, meaning the farmers must risk life and, literally, limb to grow enough rice for their families.
Bomb disposal charities like the Mine Advisory Group (MAG), made famous by Princess Diana, have stepped in to train local people here in safe bomb disposal. They also go into villages to help locals map known bombies and avoid them until they can be blown up (some villages still continue to find bombs after as many as 20 clearance visits). However the work of these charities is just the tip of the iceberg: currently 100,000 bombies are safely exploded every year but with an estimated 10,000,000 bombies still out there it will be 100 years before Laos land is safe to farm and live.
Over the last 20 years, since Laos opened its borders, tourism and development has brought new money and hope to the country. The government aim to get the country off the UN’s Least Developed Country list by 2020 would seem an achievable aim but for the UXO, which makes building roads and other infrastructure a virtual impossibility without a huge amount of money for bomb clearance. The whole country is still being held back by the consequences of a war that it never waged or fought.
Laos countryside is tainted: will it be more than a century until its people are free?
Worst of all, this type of bomb is still being used by US and British troops in wars today. Cluster bombs are not anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery, they are purely designed to kill and maim people and their effects linger on decades after war has ended.
The US army have now acknowledged the Secret War and, to be fair, have tried to make amends by sending a small amount of aid and many metal detectors. The Laos government refuse their aid as they don’t trust them – who would? – any gesture of remorse is seen as ‘too little too late’. If they really cared they would stop using cluster bombs now and stop other countries from enduring the same legacy of pain.
NB: Laos has been chosen to host the first Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2010. If you would like to learn more about cluster bombs please visit www.maginternational.org or www.stopclustermunitions.org
