XIENG
KHOUANG, Laos, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Yianyang Bounxieng remembers playing with
bombs as a child growing up in Xieng Khouang, a verdant and mountainous
province of Laos, and the area most heavily bombed by U.S. Air Force planes
during the war in neighbouring Vietnam.
His
grandmother resented foreigners because of the bombings.
"When
I took tourists to visit her she was angry and would say: 'Why did you bring
them here? They destroyed everything'.
Now
28-year-old Yianyang works as a support officer for Mines Advisory Group (MAG),
which helps to find and destroy unexploded ordnance (UXO).
Addressing
the legacy of war in Laos will be a focus of U.S. President Barack Obama's trip
this week to the country's capital, Vientiane, for a meeting with Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders and an East Asia Summit.
Obama,
who will become the first sitting president of the United States to visit Laos,
is expected to announce more funding to help clear leftover bombs and conduct
Laos' first national survey on unexploded ordnance.
"The
big focus of the UXO programme over the next few years will be to conduct this
comprehensive national survey on cluster munitions," Balasubramaniam
Murali, deputy resident representative to the United Nations Development
Programme in Laos, told Reuters.
From
1964 to 1973, U.S. warplanes dropped more than 270 million cluster munitions on
Laos, one-third of which did not explode, according to the Lao National
Regulatory Authority for UXO (NRA).
The
bombings were part of a CIA-run, secret operation aimed at destroying the North
Vietnamese supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh trail and wiping out its
communist allies.
They
also left a trail of devastation in Laos, which U.S. planes used as a dumping
ground for bombs when their original target was unavailable and planes couldn't
land with explosives.
U.S.
bombs are still killing in Laos, and Xieng Khouang could be earning more if it
was safe for visitors to trek on its rolling hills.
Across
the country, over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by bombs since the
war, many of them children.
According
to Legacies of War, an organisation focused on addressing the impact of bombs
dropped on Laos, $25 million a year will need to be spent over the next decade
to prevent further casualties.
CHILD'S
PLAY
Beeping
metal detectors pierce the tranquillity of Phaxay district in Xieng Khouang,
where local technicians scour a hillside for unexploded bombs. They find a
BLU-26 cluster bomb, the size of a tennis ball, and mark it for demolition.
Another 106 BLU-26 bombs were found on site over the past two months.
The
Lao government says a national survey will take five years to finish but
Phouttasone Nounthabout, 22, the team's deputy leader, says that's probably
impossible.
"There
is so much land to clear," she told Reuters.
While
overall casualties have come down - in 2008 recorded casualties were just over
300 compared to 42 in 2015 - the percentage of children hurt or killed has gone
up.
"Children
are curious and tend to play with the bombs or try to prise it open," said
Murali.
Landlocked
Laos remains largely agricultural with around 80 percent of the population
reliant on agriculture. Some land is simply too dangerous to farm.
Now
40 years old, Soud was 10 when, out farming with his family, his spade hit a
bomb triggering an explosion that blinded and maimed him.
His
mother, Thongsy, now 75, remembers the day vividly.
"I
heard an explosion and then I saw my child lying there. The villagers helped
carry him to the nearest hospital by foot. They had to cut off his hand. I was
crying," she said.
Pomee
Kaewpimpa, 59, was a young boy when he saw bombs dropped on Napia village in
Xieng Khouang up to three times a day.
Now
a village elder, he wants Washington to take responsibility.
"Until
every bomb is removed from the ground our children will be at risk," he
said. "I want to know whether those Americans who pierced our land with
bombs, are they sorry?"
(Editing
by John Chalmers and Simon Cameron-Moore)
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