XIENG KHOUANG PROVINCE, LAOS
Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped at least two million tons (or four billion pounds) of bombs on Laos. That’s not only five and a half Empire State Buildings, it’s more than we dropped on Germany through all of World War II. A large part of that was cluster bombs – big metal cases full of nasty, tennis ball-sized submunitions. A single cluster bomb contained about 360 of them, and each one of those held about 200 ball bearings that shot out like bullets upon detonation. All in all, 250 million cluster bomblets were released in the skies over Laos, and a full eighty million of them didn’t explode. They’re still there, forty years later, blowing limbs off small children and stopping people from farming perfectly good land.
Cluster bombs weren’t the only things we used, though. The US also dropped plenty of good old 750lb pieces of awesome that indiscriminately blew the hell out of everything in a five hundred foot radius, leaving behind huge craters that are still around today.
Oh, and the communists won.
I drove around Xieng Khouang on a motorbike from dawn till dusk, searching for remnants of this decade of insanity. Over the next couple of days we’ll take a look at what I found.
from the MAG museum in Phonsavan
to all lao citizen around the world, no matter what we see on your posted,I like to see another
war in laos again, how those man want to be the big boss, what they going to do xieng khouang is a beautifull state for all ethnics group,I am very sad, I love xieng khouang, but let the bog boss play game again I am surely that next time
laos will become one state up to vietnamese or one
state up to thailanded, them the problem is over
lao killed lao, this is lao story.
My dad was actually in this war, he fought a hard, and long battle for his country but unfortunately lost it to the communist. I will continue to educate those who do not know about the Lao history and the war that cost many innocent lives.