A formula to make you understand better is posted everywhere: If a planeload of bombs was dropped every eight minutes for nine years.
2,093,100 tons.
That’s how many ordinances were dropped into Laos by us between 1964-1973.
That’s more than more than all the collective bombs dropped in WWII.
If you’re new to this story (I was), you might have questions:
Laos? Thought we were at war in Vietnam.
We were.
So why bomb a country of (then) 3 million people?
Well, that was a secret.
A secret war, to be precise.
Unluckily bordered by five countries, this tiny former colony found itself playing host to a setting for the Cold War during the mid-1960s.
Here’s the short version:
1954 - Ho Chi Minh defeats the French at Dien Bien Phu. This was the beginning of the end of French Colonialism. You might remember that we visited the museum when we were there.
1955 - Having gained popularity in said (and previous) battles, the Communist group Pathet Lao begins using their sway to move across Laos and into Northern Vietnam to give support to the Communist group there (the group that wanted to unite Vietnam; the catalysts for the Vietnam War).
1959 - Kennedy announces his wish for neutralizing Laos, much in part out of fear it’d join the Communist ranks (I think; the whole why Kennedy wanted to neutralize Laos is a bit murky to me).
1960 - Following a meeting with the Royal Lao Army, the CIA enlists/appoints the poor and marginalized mountain Hmong tribe to fight the Pathet Lao, giving them training + weaponry MORE; this would lead to a brutal, yet fascinating Secret War, of which maybe some day we’ll dive into (I only found out about this from dating a Hmong lady).
1961 - Pathet Lao begins slowly making their way into Northern Vietnam. Kennedy says he doesn’t want a ground war, and signs off on a bombing campaign, cutting off Pathet Lao men + supplies from reaching Communist forces in Northern Vietnam. This was also the year that saw a large scale arrival of US troops in Southern Vietnam.
1964 - The bombing campaign in Laos begins.
(I believe all of those dates and facts to be correct, but—as always—please message me if they’re off and I’ll edit.)
… a truncated and idiot’s guide, sure, but I’m also not going to copy + paste a bunch of info and try to make it sound like my own. I was dumb to this before arriving.
In fact, it wasn’t until I challenged the country’s rule about “No Wild Camping” that someone said “It’s for a reason.” But I wanted to learn, so as soon as I arrived in Vientiane, visited COPE—a nonprofit that both educates, as well as raises money for those in need of walking aids, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs.
I was moved not only by the stories, but also how well this installation was done. Matter of fact. Not preachy. With numerous uplifting stories as well. It was free to enter, with a small box for donations and t-shirts you can buy to support the cause.
In Luang Prabang, I toured the UXO - small, but powerful enough to make its point. Felt a bit more touristy, a few more trinkets and admission fee, but did a good job of mapping out in the area.
The village of Muang Ngoi—that pretty little town only accessible only by boat that I spent my birthday in—was the most surreal, with homes and restaurants using them for fence posts, literal steps into a home, and what looked like a bird feeder (I would later find many more articles dealing with all the ways people are using the materials; pretty fascinating).
But it wasn’t until both my tyre and tube went out in the middle of nowhere and had to ask a family if I could work underneath their porch—seeing how it was raining, seeing how it was monsoon season—where it really hit hard. I noticed it within a few moments of unpacking my bike and spent the entire time hoping they wouldn’t ask me where I was from. I don’t know what I would have said, but was thankful for a language barrier. But there it was. Sitting out in the front yard like some lawn ornament would. Possibly for bragging rights—you can see many family’s proudly display this as a token of survival—or possibly because it was dropped and diffused there and no one ever moved it. But it was that humbling situation of a poor family helping a rich American whose country had dropped bombs in their backyard and most likely harmed, maimed or killed someone they were related to. My heart was in my chest the entire time and, after waving goodbye and cycling away, I began to wonder if this wasn’t how the next generation of Germans post-WWII felt, you know? That unfair-but-not-unfounded guilt of my parents/grandparents did some terrible stuff to yours.
But, at least with that, there was a finite ending. Reparations. A start and stop date. But that’s not the case in Laos. Did we stop bombing in the 1970s? Yes. But only X of those detonated. Meaning there are still (still!) x tons of unexploded ordinances (UXOs) just waiting to go off. And they do. All the time. Last year (2022), 11 were killed, 44 injured. Since 1999, more than 1000 went off, killing 279 and injuring 655 (in fact, “injure” seems to not be a strong enough word here; a broken arm is an injury, but we’re talking arms and legs being blown off, thus, the incredible work of COPE).
The US, under the Obama Administration pledged $90 million to help the bomb disposal teams—some of them all-women—and a few times, I even passed SUVs with a title of UXO Removal Unit on it.
Meaning that whole “Please don’t wild camp in Laos” had merit.
Plenty of articles online, as well as documentaries and a good podcast (host is biased, but the people interviewed are incredible.)
I hope this in itself wasn’t preachy—nothing worse than an American who comes back to America talking about how bad America was—and was nothing more than a story about why I wasn’t allowed to camp, what happened, and the resilience and kindness of the Lao. America was still cool in their eyes and not a grudge was heard… although admittedly, grudges are a bizarre speciality of us white folks.
Anyway, that’s how Laos became the most bombed country in the world.
