Weapons of long-ago conflicts still haunt people of Laos

Thong Phet was an 18-year-old novice monk when the swing of a machete altered his life irrevocably. The blade came down on an unexploded weapon that he had not noticed, detonating the device.

"A friend took me to the hospital. I was conscious the whole time. They had to amputate my left arm below the elbow, and my right hand was badly injured as well," he told DW as he watched a team from the Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Program methodically work their way across one of his pastures on the outskirts of the village of Ban Napia, in northeastern Laos.

The year 1973 was extremely dangerous across Xiangkhouang Province, Phet said, as the war was still raging in Vietnam, approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the east.

Though Laos was not officially involved in that conflict, North Vietnam had established the "Ho Chi Minh trail" through eastern Laos to funnel weapons, supplies and troops into South Vietnam.

That — combined with the fact that Xiangkhouang Province was the stronghold of the communist Pathet Lao movement — made it a target for US bombs.

More than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance were dropped on Laos from 1964 through 1973, making it the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita. The weapons ranged from incendiary rounds to rockets and 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) bombs, but the device that caused — and continues to cause — the most fear among local people is the cluster bomb.

Cluster bomb threats

Designed to break apart in midair, cluster bombs delivered up to 600 bomblets, each smaller than a fist, to contaminate an area of several football fields. It is estimated that 270 million of these submunitions — known locally as "bombies" — were dropped on Laos, but 30% failed to detonate. Many lie where they fell half a century ago and continue to pose a threat to local people.

"I remember the bombs being dropped very well," Phet said. "I remember seeing aircraft coming and hiding in caves near here with my parents when I was a boy."

Now, Phet hopes that the unexploded ordnance (UXO) team can finally confirm that one of his pastures is safe.

The rolling fields are marked with bits of red tape that flutter in the wind. Two women in UXO Laos fatigues carry a large-loop detector above a stretch of unremarkable grass, but halt when a signal is detected. They leave a marker and continue along their track.

Behind them, another team member follows with a smaller metal detector and more precisely locates the target. Very carefully, she excavates around the site until the source of the signal can be identified.

Sometimes it can be a scrap of metal; on other occasions; it is the remains of a weapon that exploded long ago and is safe. But often it is a bombie.

Clearing cluster bombs in Laos

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Destroying a danger

Each target is carefully surrounded by sandbags, a small explosive charge, and warning signs bearing a skull and crossbones motif. And, at the end of each working day, an alarm is broadcast over loudspeakers, rolling down the valley and warning local people of what is to come.

There is a sharp crack and three plumes of smoke rise simultaneously in the air from the day's finds.

In the space of one week, this seven-member demining team has made safe 19 bombies and five large-caliber bullets recovered from 10,594 square meters (114,032 square feet) of farmland.

The area that is yet to be cleared, however, is vast. The village covers over 23,000 hectares (about 56,834 acres) of land, with previous search efforts turning up five large bombs and more than 6,000 individual bombies.

And there is a clear need for the effort to continue, as the village has lost five people to unexploded ordnance. There is also a risk to the demining teams, with two UXO Lao experts killed in a blast in 2002.

As soon as Phet's field is declared clear, however, this team will move on to the next polygon marked out with red tape.

'Obstacle to development'

"UXOs are a huge obstacle to development in Laos because they make everything more costly and slower because land has to be surveyed and cleared to make sure there is no risk," Martine Therer, resident representative of the UN Development Programme in Laos, told DW.

Speaking in her office in Vientiane, Therer said Laos was one of only a handful of nations in the world to adopt an 18th Sustainable Development Goal, "Lives Safe From Unexploded Ordnance," which focuses on attaining measurable targets so that UXOs no longer hinder human development and poverty reduction efforts in rural provinces.

"If you look at a poverty map, it is clear that these areas are mostly layered on areas with high levels of UXO contamination," Therer said. "It is clear that numbers of victims have gone down, but there is still fear in these communities.

"Farmers regularly risk their lives when plowing fields, digging or clearing brush, in a country where over 70% of the rural population relies on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods," she said.

"UXO has a direct impact on income generation and poverty-reduction efforts," Therer said, "as contaminated land could otherwise be used productively for agriculture, the development of industry and tourism and the construction of infrastructure."

In the 1980s, casualty figures from UXOs ran into the thousands every year.

Demining efforts and a comprehensive education campaign in rural communities have dramatically reduced that figure. In 2015, for instance, there were 44 incidents involving UXOs across Laos, with nine fatalities. Five years later, that had fallen to 33 incidents and seven deaths and, in 2025, six deaths in 25 detonations.

These numbers are small in comparison to deaths from other causes, with more than 900 fatalities on Laos' roads a year, for example, but the government here says it is committed to leading global efforts to eradicate the threat posed by unexploded weapons to civilian populations.

Laos will host the four-day Third Review Conference of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in September. Initially adopted in May 2008, the convention has been ratified by 112 nations. The agreement obliges signatory states to never use, develop, produce or stockpile cluster munitions, but, significantly, the signatories do not include the United States, Russia or China.

"From the start, Laos has been a champion of the convention, and I see this meeting as a chance for Laos to show what can be achieved," Therer said. "It may seem small compared to the magnitude of the problem, but they have already done so much in the last 30 years, and this is an opportunity to showcase the whole trajectory — but also what remains to be done."

Educating villagers

A key element of the campaign has always been education, with the villagers of Ban Napia gathering recently in the local school for a presentation from UXO Lao.

The adults in the village have lived their entire lives with the shadow of munitions hanging over them, said Thong Kham, team leader for Explosive Ordnance Risk Education.

And, though it never hurts to reinforce the key messages, the primary target for the presentation are the young and inquisitive children who play in the surrounding fields and forests.

"Lots of ordnance was dropped around the village between 1964 and 1973, but we estimate that as much as 30% did not detonate," he said. "Those munitions are still affecting these communities. People here rely on farming, and having UXOs on their land impacts local development and their lives."

One of Kham's instructors is using a pointer to show the children the types of bombs, rockets and bullets that they might encounter and what they should and should not do.

Never touch a suspicious device, she said, and report suspicious devices immediately to adults. Never try to open a weapon, and carefully use a spade when digging a hole rather than a hoe. And never light a fire on the ground in an area that has not been swept for UXOs, as the heat could detonate a weapon.

The children look on attentively and sing-song the rules back to her. Kham's team can only hope that they have taken the lessons to heart.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru