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Afghanistan Set to Share Legacy of Death that Cluster-Bombing Left in Indochina

BY MATT WARREN
The Scotsman

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The use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan last month rang with the echoes of history repeating itself.

Across the Southeast Asian country of Laos, cluster bombs dropped during the Vietnam war are holding the country to ransom 30 years after the last lethal payload fell from the sky.

For many aid workers, the impact of Indochina’s largely secret air war should be a cautionary tale. Few, however, believe it will be.

Initial objections over the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan were raised in late October when Andrew Purkis, chief executive of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, and Richard Lloyd, director of Landmine Action, voiced their concerns over the impact the bombs would have on Afghanistan’s civilians.

While the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported the weapons were dropped near civilian homes in the north-western city of Herat, many believe the greatest threat to everyday Afghans might come from the 5 to 10 per cent that fail to explode on impact.

Coloured bright yellow and deployed with a small parachute, the bomblets are attractive to children.

In Laos, the issue of unexploded ordnance, or UXO, is an old one. But it is one that fails to go away. Between 1964, when the first 36 fighter-bomber missions were launched over the north of the country, and 1973, 580,344 sorties delivered two million tonnes of ordnance, making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita on the planet.

Largely aimed at halting the flow of North Vietnamese troops and equipment into South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, many of the missions dropped anti-personnel cluster munitions. Today, millions of orange-sized BLU-26 bomblets, which came 670 to the container, litter Laos.

In a strictly agrarian economy, 80 per cent of the country’s subsistence farmers are threatened by UXO on a daily basis. More than 12,000 have been killed or maimed.

"There will always be a large amount of UXO after a cluster bomb strike," says Don Macdonald, Laotian programme manager for the British-based Mines Advisory Group. "We have seen it before in Laos and Afghanistan is unlikely to be any different. Where cluster bombs are used, for example most recently in Kosovo, they often become a bigger problem than mines."

In rural Laos, where the average family survives on less than $500 a year and where 47 per cent of the population is chronically malnourished, the problem of UXO has been exacerbated by a recent increase in scrap metal prices.

With metal objects at a premium in rural areas, many villagers have taken to exploiting the cluster bomb cases littering the landscape. Melted down in forges across the country, this war scrap is transformed into everything from knives and cooking pots to anvils and primitive hunting muskets.

However, with scrap dealers in the northern city of Phonsovan buying scrap for 1,000 kip (7p) and explosives for 8,000 kip (56p) per kilo, many villagers, who otherwise live outside the monetary economy, have been tempted to dismantle the UXO themselves. Only recently, Vilay Sen, 54, and Thong Chan, 50, were killed in the Xieng Khouang province when the rocket they were trying to dismantle exploded.

Laos is also a case study for how indiscriminate the weapons can be. According to an internal Ministry of Defence report, up to 60 per cent of the 531 cluster bombs dropped by the RAF over Kosovo missed their target. In Laos, the figure was much higher. As a result, many schools, hospitals and farms are contaminated with unexploded bombs.

In Sam Neua, capital of the remote north-eastern province of Houaphan, attention was drawn to the provincial high school after a student was killed by a bomblet while digging in the school grounds. During the subsequent clear-up by UXO LAO, the organisation responsible for co-ordinating the nationwide clearance effort, 386 unexploded bomblets were removed from the school.

In this undeveloped country, where lack of funds, infrastructure and international awareness meant that comprehensive clearance work could not begin until 1994, when the Mines Advisory Group started work in Xieng Khouang province, uncontaminated land is still at a premium. However, with a hectare of flat-land paddy capable of producing rice for eight people, few are willing to wait until land has been checked for ordnance.

UXO LAO now has access to some of the US mission records during the nine-year air offensive. Initially discovered by chance by a US air force reservist, Roy Stanley, eight years ago, the databases are being used to plot the co-ordinates of bombing sorties and highlight the risk areas.

"Sadly, while you can pretty much map out where the individual bomblets will fall, in theory, the reality is often far more complex," Mr Macdonald says. "Steep contours, vegetation and flowing water can all cause unexploded bomblets to turn up where you do not expect them. In Laos, for example, you even get unexploded bomblets in the tops of trees that have grown up beneath them."

As in Laos, at least some of Afghanistan’s unexploded bomblets will be discovered only years later, when accidentally disturbed.

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