Phonsavan War Debris
ByAll the way up through Laos we had seen missile casings used as flower pots or cluster bomb casings used as fence posts but we were quite unprepared for the extent of war debris scattered around the Plain of Jars. Speaking to Laos people who had been with the communist Pathet Laos forces, Hmong people whose parents had fought for the US and American veterans who were visiting the country again we put together a rough potted history.
It seems that in 1961 when the Americans were concerned about the spread of global communism they opposed the inclusion of the Laos communist party in a coalition government in Laos. They also of course opposed the Viet Minh in Vietnam who had defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1953. There were two main issues. Firstly the Plain of Jars was a large upland area close to northern Vietnam which the US wanted to control. Consequently the Vietnamese wanted to prevent US influence there. Secondly the Vietnamese used Laos and Cambodia as a route for moving supplies down into southern Vietnam and the US wanted to prevent this.
In 1962 a conference in Geneva agreed that Laos would be a neutral country in which there would be no foreign ground troops. The US reaction was to recruit and train the local indigenous people, the Hmong, to defend the region and fight the Pathet Laos supported by the Vietnamese. The American CIA oversaw the operation so that the US could say that there were no foreign ground forces in Laos. The CIA also recruited serving US air force pilots to operate secretly in Laos supporting the 30,000 strong Hmong army. The air support given to the CIA operatives and the Hmong in their battles with the Laos communist forces and the Vietnamese troops resulted in all the war debris we saw.
In addition to the bombing of the Plain of Jars the US also bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail which ran down the length of Laos. Official US figures are that over 2 million tonnes of bombs were dropped in 580,944 sorties. The total cost of the bombing alone was US$7.2 billion or US$ 2 million per day for nine years. Since the country was officially neutral the operations were kept a secret from the American people until 1970.
On our walk between Plain of Jars sites 2 and 3 we had to keep within white stone markers which indicated a safe path. The paths had been cleared by the British Mine Advisory Group, MAG. Even so just off the path we saw bomblets from cluster bombs and mortar bombs left from the fighting. There were also large bomb craters clearly visible on the pastures. One local man told of us a farmer who had been awarded a grant to plant trees. He was killed a month before whilst ploughing the hillside when his tractor hit an unexploded bomb.
As we walked our guide picked up fragments of bomb casings. He told us that there was a brisk scrap metal trade in the market with 4kg of ordnance scrap fetching 1US$. Unfortunately this led to children digging in bomb craters to find enough scrap to sell for pens and school books.
The American veteran said we should look out for the plain clothes soldier on our regular local bus. Apparently such armed guards travel on every bus to deter attacks from Hmong dissidents still hiding in the jungle. For many years this area has been designated as a “Special Zone”, closed to foreign visitors. In 2004 buses were strafed with machine gun fire killing at least a dozen passengers. However the restrictions on travel were relaxed recently. The veteran thought that the Hmong dissidents were related to the Hmong army who had fought with the Americans and who were evacuated when the Americans finally left Laos in 1973. Their finance, he believed, came from their US based relatives who still had grievances with the current government.
Despite the huge burden of unexploded ordnance there seemed to be no resentment of recent events and optimism for the future. We saw forks and knives being made from aircraft aluminium and other war junk being put to peaceful uses. The week before we were there an American team were also in the area looking at aircraft crash sites hoping to find the remains of missing men. So everyone is looking for final closure on the unfortunate period of history.
