Today, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world because of a “secret” CIA bombing campaign
The issue of supplying cluster munitions reared its ugly head recently amid the White House’s decision to send the bombs as part of its next $800 million defense package to Ukraine. (Both Russia and Ukraine already deployed the horrific munitions ever since Moscow’s invasion last year.) Such weapons, outlawed by most of the world, including America’s closest allies, come with significant failure-to-detonate rates and claim the lives and limbs of mostly children long after the dust on a battleground has settled – hence my staunch opposition to the delivery as an American taxpayer now funding war long after the war has ended.
One only has to look at Laos to understand the chilling spectrum of ramifications – yet most Americans don’t know much about this dirty little secret and have never even heard about the CIA’s Secret Air Campaign in the tiny landlocked country throughout the Vietnam War. While most of us learn about this searing conflict in school, few textbooks detail much about what was done to the bordering nation of just seven million.
To this day, Laos remains the most heavily bombed nation in the world per capita, and its people are still struggling with the ramifications of unexploded bombs dropped more than half a century ago.
Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of cluster munitions on the nation – far more than in Germany and Japan combined throughout the Second World War. This type of explosive splinters open mid-air to release hundreds of “bomblets.” Many did not detonate at the time, thus entrenching into the earth only to kill and maim decades later.
So why Laos?
The 1962 Geneva Accords declared the small South Asian country as “neutral” and prohibited outside military involvement on its soil. However, as the U.S. war with its neighbor gained momentum, America and North Vietnam broke the rules with acts of intervention. For a decade, the CIA executed extensive daily aerial bombing campaigns over two-thirds of the country in its quest to decimate communist supply lines between Laos and Vietnam. U.S. military units were forbidden to speak out about the clandestine shadow conflict. This level of bombing is equivalent to one B-52 plane load of munitions released every eight minutes for a horrific nine years. The U.S. Congress never approved this long-running, covert operation, and many Laotians were not even aware of the damage done.
Today, the most underdeveloped and impoverished ethnic groups – especially children and farmers – are most affected by this secret bombing offensive. Over eighty percent of people rely on their land to grow food in Laos. And for years, Washington refused to acknowledge, let alone clean up, the unfathomable excess of tennis ball-sized munitions, often mistaken for toys.
Data from the Cluster Munition Monitor shows that civilians account for 97 percent of all casualties related to cluster munitions. Global clearing initiative, The Halo Trust, roughly 20,000 people, 40 percent of them children, have been killed or injured by cluster bombs or other unexploded items in Laos since the war ended. This equates to more than four thousand casualties per year. Since 1975, unexploded ordnance (UXO) has killed over 12,000 people and blinded, dismembered and disabled tens of thousands more inside the innocent nation.
Furthermore, over eighty percent of people rely on their land to grow food in Laos, which means farmers, too, are routinely slain and maimed due to America’s hidden shadow conflict. And others are so desperate to make ends meet they will scour for scrap metal to send for smelting over the border in Vietnam, where the remnants are transformed into rebar for construction. But that thirty or so dollars earned from discovering a large shell comes with a heavy price.
The U.S. refused to offer any financial assistance for the mess until 1993 and, for decades after that, committed a paltry sum to the cleanup effort of around $3 million per year. In 2010, Washington bumped this up to $15 million annually. However, such a precedent finally changed in 2016 when then-President Obama pledged $40 million for the fiscal year 2021 and $90 million over the ensuing three-year period, illuminating our “moral obligation.” But even with more resources and an uptick in spending, analysts anticipate it could take innumerable decades before Lao soil is free from bombs. For now, the nation has little choice but to live with the reality that it is a searing statistic.
However, the de-mining effort has a long way to go. Making matters worse, the UXO has also severely hampered Lao’s economic development, with land surveys and clearing projects taking years and excessive amounts of money to complete, deterring domestic and foreign investment in the process.
The effects of cluster bombs are not limited to wartime; they last for several decades after the war is over. And yet we never seem to learn from our mistakes. With the U.S.’s recent transfer to Kyiv, this is once again each and every one of us now funding such a potential war crime for years to come.
PLEASE CONSIDER A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS SUBSTACK TO HELP KEEP INDEPENDENT WRITING AND JOURNALISM ALIVE. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT.
For speaking queries please contact meta@metaspeakers.org
Follow me on Instagram and Twitter for more updates
HOLLIE’S BOOKS (please leave a review)
** Short read of meaningful lessons gleaned from the ordinary forced to become extraordinary
Order your copy of “Afghanistan: The End of the US Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule” out now.
For those interested in learning more about the aftermath of war, please pick up a copy of my book “Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield.”
If you want to support small businesses: