laos

Unexploded Bombs in the Land of a Million Elephants

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:54:05 -0400

by Nakhone Keodara

I was one of those Sally Struthers' babies in the Christian Children's Fund brochures, a young child running around my village in Laos, barefoot and naked, playing in the rice paddies. One afternoon I was playing by a pond when I spotted a water snake swimming toward me hissing, as if delivering a message. Running away, heart thumping, I heard a distant buzzing sound from above. I saw an airplane and a small voice told me that one day I would ride that iron eagle to America--a place my sister Samountha had moved to some years before. I was probably 6 years old. Tha

Laos Reaps Deadly Harvest

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:20:27 -0500

by Ian MacKinnon

The entrance to Craters restaurant is guarded by a phalanx of bombshells, each as big as a man. Opposite, the Dokkhoune hotel boasts an even finer warhead collection. For tourists who have not cottoned on, the Lao town of Phonsavanh lies at the heart of the most cluster-bombed province of the most bombed country on earth.

Drawing the Future From the Past

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:13:55 -0500

by Channapha Khamvongsa

The bombing was relentless. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos. That's a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world.

"In the area of Xieng Khoang, the place of my birth, there was health, good earth, and fine weather," one survivor, a 33-year-old man, recalls of that period.

Forty Years on, Laos Reaps Bitter Harvest of The Secret War

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:41:53 -0500

by Ian MacKinnon

Phonsavanh, Laos - The entrance to Craters restaurant is guarded by a phalanx of bombshells, each as big as a man. Opposite, the Dokkhoune hotel boasts an even finer warhead collection. For tourists who have not cottoned on, the Lao town of Phonsavanh lies at the heart of the most cluster-bombed province of the most bombed country on earth.

Nowhere Safe To Play for Children in Cluster-Bombed Laos

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:20:26 -0500

XIENG KHOUANG, Laos - Laotian children chase each other through their school playing field, unaware of the 248 unexploded bombs buried a few steps away -- the lethal legacy of a war that ended three decades ago.

Remnants of the Vietnam War which ended in 1975 litter this tiny Southeast Asian nation, which became the most bombed country in the world after US forces dropped planeloads of ordnance to cut off Northern Vietnamese supply routes.