Aftermath of war
When i was school-kid in the end of the sixties and the early seventies listening to the news on a black and white TV, there were always the same pictures repeating. American B-52 planes dropping bombs filmed from another plane, and then, from above, smoke plumes of the detonation on the blurred ground above faraway and unknown places. The announcements were always the same: “The US air force bombed targets in Hanoi, Haiphong and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail”.
The jars of site number 1
The Ho Chi Minh trail was the supply route down along the border of Vietnam with Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam to bring weapons, ammunition and resources to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong Army fighting in the South. Even according to the NSA, the US national security agency, this trail network was considered as one of the great achievements of military engineering in the 20th century. In the beginning the supplies were transported in ox-carts, on bicycles and sweaty backs of human pack animals. One of the bicycles made it into the Museum of American history in Washington DC. Later the track was improved and a large number of trucks was used. The trail was party using laotian and cambodian territory probably in the hope that the Americans would not follow onto the territory of these countries. Although Laos had their Pathet Lao and Cambodia the Khmer Rouge, for a long time Prince Shianouk of Cambodia and king Savang Vattana of Laos were desperately trying to keep their counties neutral.
Lids of the jars are rare
Meanwhile the Americans tried to stop the activities on the Ho Chi Minh trail by carpet bombing. On average every nine minutes a plane dropped a load of bombs onto laotian soil. In November 1968 alone 12800 planes departed from bases in Vietnam and Thailand to bring their deadly load to Laos. All together more bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war than during the entire WWII. But not only the amount of explosives was terrifying. The genius of humankind also had invented more efficient ways of killing. Along the Ho Chi Minh trail, cluster bombs were used. These bombs produce as many as 300 explosive bombies which distribute in the countryside and have a much more wide spread effect. Of the 262 million bombies dropped on Laos about 80 million failed to explode and still wait for future victims.
Another site in a little forest
Next to bombs chemicals like the infamous agent orange were dropped to defoliate the forests with fatal result on the health of the population. But in their futile attempt to stop the North Vietnamese infiltration, the Americans also resorted to curious methods. Since the trail became almost impassable in the rainy season the American strategists tried to create an eternal rainy season. In “project popeye” a mist of silver iodide seeds was created to cause rain. The operation lasted from september 1971 to july 1972. In the same year Dow Chemical developed a mixture of nitrilotriacetic acid and sodium tripolyphosphate which when becoming wet developped into a slime which destabilised the soil to create landslides to wash away roads.
Bomb crater on top of the cave
Nobody knows exactly when but possibly in the Iron age 500 BCE – 500 CE people carved thousands of limestone jars and lids and left them in the area of Phonsavan in Laos called the plain of the jars. Who these people were and why they did it is a mystery. Possible uses could have been as storage jars or for burial. There are about 90 sites with up to 400 jars. French archaeologist Madeleine Colani dug around many of the burial sites and discovered human remains, burial goods and ceramics. She connected the location of the sites to ancient trade routes for salt and ore across the south east asian peninsula. The Phonsavan plain of jars is one of the most important prehistoric sites in South-East Asia and was recognized as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 2019.
The crater of a one ton bomb
Unfortunately the site also has some good hiding spots and was one of the hide-outs for Pathet Lao and Vietcong. Between 1966 and 1969 the area was heavily bombed by the US air force. Bomb craters, trenches and fox holes bear witness to this time. Many of the jars are broken or displaced. In a cave in a limestone boulder is a little Buddhist shrine. This was the headquarter of the Pathet Lao which the american air force tried to destroy with 2000 pound bombs. The rock resisted.
The cave with a shrine which served as a pathet lao hiding spot
When I came to Phonsavan in 2015, only a small area around the jar sites were completely cleared of bombs. The non-detonated explosives are called UXO (unexploded ordinance). Although clearance started as early as 1994 it has been calculated that it might take as much as 100 years to get ride of UXO. Bombies keep rising to the surface and kill man and beast even 50 years after they have been dropped. By 2015, several organizations had cleared 4 sqkm and found more than three hundred UXO’s and visually searched 40 sqkm and found almost 400 UXO’s and 660000 pieces of scrap metal. However, the bombies seem to reappear from the ground.
That makes hiking here dangerous. Visitors have to stick to narrow footpaths between the jars to minimize the risk of an encounter with a reappeared bombie. White smoke rises in the blue sky in various spots. The locals regularly burn their fields in the hope that UXO’s explode in the heat.
Abandoned tanks in the villages around Phonsavan
In the guesthouse where I stay the dining room is decorated with remainders of the war. I have breakfast and dinner under machine guns, ammunition belts, helmets, hand grenades and other stuff with only one purpose – to kill. Also other businesses and homes in the neighborhood are decorated with remainders of the war. Fuel tanks discarded from planes are lined up in front gardens next to unexploded bomb shells. The odd wrecks of Russian tanks dot the countryside around the town.
Shells and discarded aircraft spare fuel tanks
The peaceful town and the quiet countryside is in stark contrast to the belligerent remains. Across the street from the guesthouse is a quiet lake where people have dinner in a restaurant on stilts above the water. People balance on the little dikes between fish ponds and rice fields to tend to their vegetable gardens. The produce is sold on the market in town, where life animals are for sale from straw baskets. Deplorable black pigs are rolled into straw mats to prevent them from running away.
Restaurant in the pond of Phonsavan
In a wooden hut an old toothless woman is busy with a distillery to produce home made brandy. The liquor is filled into recycled plastic bottles and sold to passing tourists.
The distillery
This was also the area of the Hmong tribe (see also story number 15). Traditionally these mountain people were the enemies of the lowland Vietnamese on the other side of the mountains. Already the French made good use of them and trained them as guerrilla fighters. The CIA promised weapons, money and supplies in exchange for their help. The Hmong spied on troop movements and potential targets, rescued shot down pilots, sabotaged supply lines and ambushed convoys on the Ho Chi Minh trail. About 20000 Hmong fighters and a third of the population died during or as a result of the war.
The old woman owner of the distillery
After the war the Hmong ended up on the loosing side. A third of the population left Laos and ended up in refugee camps in Thailand. About 130.000 finally ended up in the United States. About 400.000 remained in Laos. The Pathet Lao government began a campaign of eliminating the minorities, who had helped the Americans during the war, in particular the Hmong. The villages and fields were burnt and their population massacred. Some of the population fled into the jungle to hide and remained there for more than 30 years. They were supported by American relatives in the hope to overthrow and replace the communist Laotian government by smuggling weapons across the border from Thailand and dropping supplies from into the jungle.
Hmong women in the villages around Phonsavan
In the edition of “The Nation” (Thailand), June 28th 2007, Roger Warner wrote: “We looked into claims that Hmong are still fighting against their old enemies in Laos. We found those reports true on a small scale. Scattered bands of ragged fighters subsist off wild plants, trying to evade the Laotian army and almost every day, the leaders of these Hmong bands talk on satellite phones with their Hmong-American relatives.”
The city center of Phonsavan
The few cars on the wide streets in the new parts of Phonsavan
One of the next days I share the back of a pick up truck with Huong. With a sad face he tells me about the emigration of his Hmong family in 1980. 10 years they spent in a refugee camp in Thailand. Now his parents are homesick but they cannot come back to their motherland any more because they are too old and sick even for a visit to their village.
The market in Phonsavan
Pigs ready for transport
The first Indochina war started in 1946. Altogether the war lasted for almost 30 years until 1975. But the aftermath of the war lasted at least as long and traumatized even the winners.
The decoration of the dining room of the guesthouse
This link leads to the previous post:
Tasting the liquor
