“Though it has a king, a government and an army, and can be found on a map, Laos does not really exist. Many of its estimated 2,000,000 people would be astonished to be called Laotians, since they know themselves to be Meo (Hmong) or Black Thai (Tai) or Khalom (unidentifiable ethnicity) tribesmen. It is a land without a railroad, a single paved highway or a newspaper. Its chief cash crop is opium.”

"Laos: The Four Phases of Nonexistence", 

On May 25, 1964, a squadron of U.S. Air Force (USAF) T-28D ground-attack aircraft with Royal Laos Air Force markings took off from Udon Royal Thai Air Force Base in eastern Thailand and flew eastward over the churning brown current of the Mekong River into Laos airspace. The Air America pilots climbed above the rice paddies and karst cliffs that characterize countryside of Khammouane province, then banked north toward the highlands of Xieng Khouang province, the frontlines of the Laos civil war, marking the first sortie of what would come to be the known as the Secret War.O

Only two years earlier, the United States, Soviet Union, China and 11 other countries signed the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos in Geneva, which was intended to prevent any nation from engaging in direct or indirect interference in the internal affairs of Laos, forming military alliances with Laos, or establishing military bases in the fledgling eight-year-old nation-state. The agreement was a symbol farce. It was well-known that the U.S. had been providing military aid to the Royal Laos Army since the mid-1950s, while North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union were supplying Pathet Lao forces with military, economic and logistical support. Far from an armistice, the terms of the agreement set the stage for a clandestine war that would need to be hidden from the public eye. To that end, the U.S. hired “civilian” air corps to operate missions out of a network of secret airstrips and refueling stations known as “Lima sites” strategically located across the remote highlands of Laos and recruited Hmong and other hill-tribe mercenaries and trained them in guerrilla warfare. Black-ops were in part funded through the Golden Triangle opium trade.

Operation Barrel Roll was initiated in August 1964 by U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii with two primary objectives: provide air support for Vang Pao’s Hmong army in the strategic strongholds of Xieng Khouang and disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply lines that North Vietnamese forces (PAVN) were using to circumvent the bombed-out no-man’s land that separated North and South Vietnam, known as the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a labyrinth of jungle paths and dirt roads developed by Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodia resistance fighters during the First Indochine War against France. By the time the Americans arrived, it had evolved into a warren of undetectable paths, shielded almost entirely by jungle canopy, spanning hundreds of miles across the frontiers of three wartorn Southeast Asian countries.

On April 11, 1967, B-52 Stratofortress bombers flying out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Airfield southeast of Bangkok dropped the first payloads of cluster bombs on eastern Laos, violating both the Geneva accords and the agreement between the USAF and Royal Thai Navy. It mattered little, the USAF war machine had been unleashed. Wave after wave of B-52s carrying up to 50 two-meter-long, five-hundred pound cluster bombs scraped the Laotian skies at 50,000 feet. Each bomb casing opened in mid-air and released around 150 bomblets that fanned out over an area the size of a football field during descent. Upon impact, each bomblet decimated a radius of up to a 150 meters with shrapnel and ball bearings.

Between 1964 and 1973, cluster bombs rained down upon Laos in a deluge of iron and fire. On average, U.S. planes dropped one bomb every eight minutes for nine years. In November of 1968 alone, U.S. bombing missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail reached 12,800. In total, 580,000 bombing missions were carried out on Laos and more than two million tons of cluster bombs were deployed on an ostensibly neutral country with a population of less than 3 million people. The covert U.S. air campaign left Laos the most heavily-bombed place on earth.

Those in targeted regions did what humans have done to survive war for millennia––they fled to the forests and hid in caves. All but the most defiant among the villagers of Ban Bouam Long, Ban Nasavang, Ban Namuen, and Ban Faay in Xieng Khouang province left their homes, their crops, and their cattle for the relative safety of Tham Piew cave. In the dark recesses, encased in limestone, they listened for the distant, low rolling thunder of B-52s that foreshadowed the coming storms.

Classroom in Tham PIew Cave. © Somsanouk Inthongsai

Over the next four years, the refugees undertook the Herculean task of transforming Tham Piew into a village. In the “rooms” extending off the 300-meter-long main corridor of the cave, teams of village carpenters furnished the communal living quarters with bunk beds and a classroom with wooden tables and a chalkboard. A communications center was built, as well as a hospital, where a handful of nurses and doctors provided medical care for wounded soldiers, the elderly, and the few women who gave birth. A fresh water spring flowed beneath the rock floor and the communal kitchen ensured no one went hungry. Buddhist monks built a shrine consecrated with statues of Buddha in one of the deepest rooms.

The cave dwellers of Tham Piew ventured out into the forest only at night. And then, only to gather food, dig for potatoes, or hunt for small game with bow and arrow. Occasionally, a few brave souls would tempt fate and return home to harvest crops from their now-unkempt, bomb-cratered fields. Then, on November 24, 1968 everything changed: a U.S. reconnaissance plane detected activity near the cave.

One of the few survivors, Nang Boua, who was just 13-year-old at the time, remembers: “One night I heard a terribly loud explosion far from my village. I knew there were some people who had refused to leave their homes and were still living in their villages. My grandfather was one of them. The next day, bad news arrived: our village had been bombed and our old house was on fire. My grandfather was severely injured. My auntie rushed back to our village to check on him, so I went with her. We had spent three nights in our burning village when the worst news came.”

Part of the cave that collapsed after the missile strike. © Somsanuk Inthongsai

While Nang Boua was hiding with her aunt and wounded grandfather next to the smoldering ruins of their family home, Tham Piew had been discovered. She only heard the plane. What she didn’t know at the time was that the first missile went off target and hit the side of the mountain. The second hit the mouth of the cave opening and gave the pilot a clear view of the inner chamber. The third entered the long tunnel and exploded deep inside the living quarters, killing hundreds of people in a flash of fire, flesh, rock and bone. “The last missile caused the cave to collapse and killed everyone I knew,” remembers Nang Boua. Twelve families were wiped from the earth that day.

Grandfather Wat was born in 1950 and grew up during the hostilities of the “Three Princes” era, when the leftist “Red Prince” Souphanouvong, neutral Prince Souvanna Phouma, and right-wing royalist Prince Boun Oum were in the throes of a power struggle following independence from France. By the time he turned 14 years old, Young Wat had already joined the communist party and was serving as a village soldier for the Pathet Lao.

“I served my village by guarding and protecting it from the enemy. During 1964, the US was bombing all over our country, especially in Xieng Khouang province. The villagers couldn’t stay in their homes; they all fled and hid in Tham Piew cave. In the cave there were mostly elders, women and children. The men had joined the army, aside from a few young, healthy adults whose job it was to find food in the jungle due to the bombing raids.”

On November 24, 1968 at 13:30 p.m. an American pilot shot a missile into Tham Piew cave and killed 374 innocent lives … After the cave collapsed, the Muang Kham district governor assigned village guards and soldiers to bring the dead bodies from Tham Piew cave to be buried. It took them four days because they had to bury the bodies between 7 p.m. and sunrise. The [rescue teams] dug seven huge graves out of bomb craters near the cave because it was faster to bury them that way, although they dug some of the graves near the entrance to the cave.

After the Vientiane Treaty was signed on February 7, 1973, which marked the end of the nine-year-long U.S. Secret War in Laos, Grandfather Wat stayed near Tham Piew and worked for the Xieng Khouang Ministry of Agriculture until he retired in 1986. Since then, the 71-year-old has served as information secretary at Tham Piew museum.

“Many years later, in 1999, authorities from the local Muang Kham district announced that Tham Piew had been designated a historic site by the central government. And on November 24, 2001, the 33rd anniversary of the massacre, Tham Piew was declared a national memorial site dedicated to the innocent lives lost during the Secret War. A ceremony was held and the presiding holy monks chanted for the lost lives.”

The hospital located deep inside Tham Piew cave was reduced to rubble. © Somsanouk Inthongsai.

Though his fate is to tend an flame of remembrance, he confesses: “It has been hard for me, for all of us who fought against the U.S. during the war. I’d like people to visit Tham Piew to learn about this history and the damage caused by the U.S. bombings.”

Noudaeng was a 29-year-old soldier patrolling a jungle path one morning in 1972 near Xieng Khouang province, not far from the Vietnamese border, when he stepped on a landmine. “The explosion nearly blew my leg off, and the force of the blast hurled my body into the forest.” He was rushed to a nearby hospital in Vietnam, where surgeons managed to save his life but had to amputate his leg. “When I came home,” remembers the now 78-year-old Noudaeng, “I felt trapped. I couldn’t walk. I had to use crutches. But it’s really difficult to plow the land and follow the buffalo with crutches! Then I had an idea. I fabricated a homemade leg with bamboo.” He laughs, “I thought I was the first man to invent a prosthetic leg!”

With every passing monsoon the landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) left behind from the Secret War settle deeper into the soil. Of the 80-90 million bombs dropped on Laos that did not detonate upon impact, only around 1 percent have been cleared. In one nine-square-kilometer tract of land during 2020, Mines Advisory Group (MAG) Laos specialists cleared more than 20,000 unexploded ordnances. That is roughly the number of people who have been killed in Laos by bombs since the end of the war. And there's still no light at the end of the tunnel. According to the U.S. government's congressional research service, it could take 100 years or more, at the current pace, to clear all the remaining UXOs.

Cratered paddies in Khammoune Province southern Laos. © Somsanouk Inthongsai

Sarah Goring, Public Information Manager at MAG Laos, recalls visiting a village in Xieng Khouang, where she watched MAG clearance teams remove 65 bombs from one schoolyard. Some of the rusted explosives were discovered in the dirt beneath the playground. “Teachers and kids were going about their normal routine, despite the fear.”

Between 1993 and 2016 the United States allocated around $100 million to clearing unexploded bombs and landmines in Laos, which equates to around 1/500th of the nearly $50 billion spent on the Secret War. When Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit independent Laos in late 2016, he pledged $90 million over three years to escalate the clearance missions, publicly stating what Laotians have been saying for decades: “The United States has a moral obligation to help Laos heal.”

The Secret War is an appropriate name. Few Americans are aware of that their country instigated a nine-year-long covert reign of terror in Laos during the Vietnam War, and no mention of the incident at Tham Piew can be found in wartime news reports. Only Grandfather Wat, Nang Boua, and a handful of witnesses and rescue team members can speak to the tragedy with any real authority. Their generation will go to their graves with some solace, knowing their sacrifices and enduring traumas helped create a nation. Victory will remain bittersweet, however, and the obligation of the U.S. will remain unmet, until the remaining tens of millions of UXOs are eradicated from the soils of Laos.

*Interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Secret War: Tragedy at Tham Piew

Seventeen years after the end of the U.S. Secret War in Laos (1964-1973), I was born in a beautiful, beguiling land littered with war trash. Millions upon millions of tons of unexploded cluster bombs were buried beneath the soil of my childhood. When I was around 10 years old, I asked my father permission to show a few friends the bomb that was wedged between two boulders at the foot of the mountain near our house. I didn’t wait for him to answer, and we were already on our way when my father realized what was happening and yelled out that I should stay away. It was too late. I’d been boasting about it to my friends for a while, and I wasn’t about to lose face, especially given that we’d each sworn an oath not to poke it.

The unveiling was a little disappointing; it looked like any old, dead, rusty bomb. Still, we were terrified because no one knew if just being near it would cause it to detonate. It goes without saying that we survived, but that was not a foregone conclusion at the time, as my father knew well. That bomb must have been there for more than thirty years when I took my friends to see it in 2000, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still wedged between those rocks today.

To exist within an environment riddled with unexploded ordnance (UXOs) requires at least a modicum of cognitive dissonance. Over time, the detritus of war—bombs, missiles, landmines, downed aircraft—gradually underwent a phase of transmogrification, evolving into menacing, lifeless, invasive species that were subsumed by the natural ecosystem. The jungle devoured some, the rivers others, and the farmlands the rest. But they were never digested. Three generations of Laotians have been raised within this “contaminated” ecosystem. In the most heavily-bombed regions of Laos the prevailing sentiment is that the most effective way to quiet your fears is to act like there is nothing to fear. It may seem preposterous to outsiders, but only when a new field needs to be plowed or farmland reclaimed from the jungle do villagers generally report UXOs to bomb clearance teams.

I grew up at a time when mass media was nonexistent and there was very little information about UXOs. I remember representatives from UXO Laos coming to my school on a few occasions as part of a campaign to educate rural children about the risks of unexploded bombs. The UXO Laos agents played games with us and performed puppet shows that taught us not to touch cluster munitions (“bomblets”) and to immediately tell an adult if we spotted one. It was an excellent effort by the government, undermined by the isolation and poverty of postwar Laos.

Economic desperation, an abundance of a raw material, and few other options provided an ideal setting for bomb harvesting to take root near the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1970s and ’80s. There was little commerce and almost no industry in Laos at the time; very few people were wage-earners. The vast majority cultivated rice, raised a few cattle or buffalo, hunted wild game, and occasionally foraged for fruit or tubers in the forest. Scrap metal, on the other hand, sold for around 1,000 kip ($.10 USD) per kilo. A large haul of cluster bombs could be worth the equivalent of what a poor farmer might earn in a decade, given that the per capita income of Laos hovered around US$300 throughout the 1980s and ’90s. It was little wonder that a scavenging industry emerged in the area most heavily-bombed during the Secret War. Few could have predicted that a Ho Chi Minh Trail gold rush would change the trajectory of so many thousands of lives—a few for the better, far more for the worse.

Harvesting unexploded ordnance is entrepreneurial by nature. First, a cache of bombs or scrap metal must located and carefully removed from the soil or riverbed. The heavy matériel is then transported in bags or by cart back to a workshop, where the munition casing is dismantled and the detonator removed to disarm the bomb. Harvesters then either smelt down the raw material and rework it into products that can be sold to the local community—farm equipment, household goods, or building materials—or sell the scrap metal to Vietnamese merchants who regularly visit town.

The prevalence of this postwar cottage industry is evident in the thousands of villages across central and eastern Laos, where it’s common to see bamboo houses and granaries raised atop eight-foot-tall cluster bomb pillars, metal shells with USAF markings interspersed with bamboo fencing, and vegetables growing out of planter’s boxes welded from shrapnel. Now fifty years after the war, the following series of vignettes paint a portrait of life growing up in Laos surrounded by war trash.

When I was 16, my older brother and I accompanied our father on a field project to map a remote corner of Attapeu Province near the borders of Cambodia and Vietnam. The team set up camp in an area of the jungle far from any known human settlements—a place where king cobras, elephants, tigers, clouded leopards, sun bears, and the last rhinos in Laos still roamed a largely-undisturbed natural habitat. As the weeks passed and the animals became familiar with our presence, we burned clusters of dried bamboo at night to ward off any marauding predators. When heated, the pressure builds in the cavity of the bamboo shaft until it explodes like a pile of firecrackers.

One afternoon after having just finished lunch, a huge explosion about 300-400 meters away from camp jolted everyone to their feet. We cautiously went to investigate what happened and discovered that we had dug our fire pit right on top of an unexploded cluster bomb and the heat from the smoldering fire had evidently triggered the detonator.

Three months later, as we were wrapping up the project, we set off to survey an unmapped mountain nearby. We all descended into a deep gorge, waded across a shallow river, and climbed up the slope on the other side. When I reached the ledge near the summit I froze before a sight I will never forget. I have never felt fear like that in my life. The entire mountaintop was carpeted in bomblets and cluster bomb shells. We would have to tip-toe through the mine field to accomplish our task. Fortunately, the mountaintop was exposed rock, devoid of trees or soil, and most of the bombs were wedged in crevices that we could easily avoid. There was a local guide-labourer with us and I remember him marvelling at the scene, remarking that he could earn good money harvesting the metal. He suggested that we take some small pieces home to use as ash trays or serving bowls for

Keo Ou Don (Don) grew up in Khammouane Province, not far from my village. When she was 10 years old, she and a group of friends decided to scour the jungle in search of an aircraft rumored to have crashed nearby during the war. They carried with them spades, shovels, and a couple empty 50 kilogram rice sacks. Nearly frozen with fear, young Don summoned the courage to follow the other children down a shady forest path. All the while she thought of her older brother who lost his life when the yellow (BLU-3) “pineapple” bomb he was trying to fashion into a lamp detonated in his hands. He died before Don was born. Her mother told her that her brother survived the initial explosion, only to succumb to his injuries a few days later.

Don comes from a family of bomb hunters. Three other relatives died when they inadvertently triggered an entire cluster bomb they were trying to crack open. She marvels how times changed. “Back in the 1980s, people were very poor and nearly every household had at least someone involved in the trade.” Scrap metal was hard currency that could be traded for buffalos, bicycles, radios, watches, or other commodities. Don shakes her head in disbelief: “A buffalo back in those days cost the equivalent of a bicycle or a radio!”

The most money Don ever made was 50 kip, which was a fortune for a kid her age, and it had taken her several days to find those bombs. “I only collected bombs that were already exposed and cracked open. It was very difficult carrying the heavy load on my little back, but the money was worth it.” In time, she learned how to “safely” crack open the bombs from some of the older hands in the village whom she trusted.

. “That was what I thought back then. But I’m glad that I’m still here today.” Don did what most other kids did with the steel pellets, she used them as projectiles for her slingshot. “They are such fancy bullets. Perfect for bird hunting or shooing away buffaloes when they get into your rice paddy.”

Somsanouk’s parents moved to the sleepy riverside town of Thakhek from the bustling capital Vientiane when he was six years old. The family settled in Ban Goot (Village of Cripples), named in honor of the soldiers and peasant victims maimed during the relentless bombing campaign and from UXO explosions. The war left many without limbs, while the UXOs left others blind. It was a village of half-broken bodies where it was not uncommon to see residents with missing legs walking around on handmade, scrap metal prosthetics or children collecting water from the well with buckets made from bombshells.

“As a kid, I made a toy gun out of an old missile I found near our house. I used to play war games with it in the temple yard,” remembers Somsanouk. “While we were all running around, hiding from a friend, I noticed some old bombs rusting away behind the temple grounds. I honestly didn’t feel any fear because it was normal to see them. I knew if I didn’t kick it or light a fire near it, I’d be fine.” He shakes his head at the memory. “At the time, I was only afraid that my friend would find me.”

Years later, while on site for a planned infrastructure project in Boualapha district (the second most bombed area in Laos), Somsanouk was walking through a bamboo forest when he came across a field of bomblets scattered across the jungle floor and instantly stopped in his tracks. He looked down and realized that he was standing on an unexploded cluster bomb. One, perhaps two, more steps and the last thing he would have felt was searing heat exploding from the soil and his body rising from the earth.

On another occasion, not far from Boualapha, Somsanouk and his team were surveying a trail that would be used to install high electrical transmission lines. Aware that they were working in an area known to be dense with UXOs, they waited for a clearance team to arrive. “I made the call to start working a little early because the deadline for our contract was approaching. It was my fault. I thought we could designate the benchmark at the proposed site quickly and save us some time. When the UXO team arrived the next day, they found a UXO right next to the wooden pole we had used as a benchmark. They told us we’d missed hitting the bomb by about 5 centimeters.”

Chanthalavong “Thao” Phet is a renowned bomb metal artist who designs jewelry and handicrafts out of his workshop-gallery in Luang Prabang. Born into a poor family in Xieng Khouang in 1980, his father farmed and made money on the side as a blacksmith. He’d sold machetes and metal tools that he could sell in town for as long as Phet could remember. There was never any talk of artistry; he recycled the war trash—the steel and explosives—strewn about the village and rice paddies into something useful because it was abundant.

As trade normalized over the next decade, the price of raw materials became cheaper and factory-produced metalwork phased Phet’s father out of the market. Not long after, he fell ill. As the months of convalescence stretched into years, Phet’s family slowly sold off their assets—land, cattle, buffaloes—to pay for his father’s medical care. By the time Phet reached 18 years old, the time had come for him to step up and provide for his family. Unsure what to do, he revived his father’s old craft. He picked up a spade, rented a metal detector, and walked into the jungle toward an uncertain fate.

What Phet learned from welding bomb metals as a young man has served him well later in life. back in 2010, Phet sensed that a healthy tourism industry was beginning to take root in Laos and decided to set up a village handicraft collective in Xieng Khouang near the Plain of Jars with a few friends and the support of Helvetas, a Swiss NGO. Seventeen local families have since joined the cooperative, and their products are now sold in the Luang Prabang night market, souvenir shops across Laos, and a handful of international boutiques. Phet’s family earnings have increased by 80 percent since they started the collective 11 years ago, and handicraft production now comprises the main bulk of their income.

Reflecting on his journey, he offers a humbled story of success. “I was lucky to have survived back when I was a farmer. Twice I accidentally hit a UXO buried beneath the soil while I was plowing our rice paddy.” He actually cracked one with his hoe. Fortunately for Phet, both bombs were defunct. He knows it was luck of the draw. “Many of the people I knew in those days eventually lost limbs or died not far from my home.”

Few designers think about risk or responsibility in the way that Emi Weir and Cleménce Pabion do. As co-founders of Ma Té Sai, a Laos-based jewelery and handicrafts cooperative that works with bomb art and fosters partnerships with artisans in rural areas of the country, trust and safety are a requisite part of decision-making.

Weir and Pabion met more than decade ago in Luang Prabang while Pabion was “working in development in remote communities” and Weir was visiting the enchanting UNESCO World Heritage site. Sitting on the banks of the Mekong River, they conjured an idea to “source products around Laos to increase the income for rural families by sending the tourist dollar further out from Luang Prabang.” Wait explains, “we select and co-create handmade textiles, homewares, and handicrafts made from bomb scrap metal by people from villages across Laos.” Some MTS-affiliated artists and designers live in rural highland regions, others are lowland farmers or young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who came to the Luang Prabang to find work and develop a marketable skill.

Sengmany is a 30-year-old weaver who has worked with Weir for years. Her story is not dissimilar to others—the money she earns through Ma Té Sai gives her some financial breathing room. “When I got married and moved into my parents-in-law’s house, the [extension] was my contribution to the family, which came from the income I earned weaving.” The opportunity to earn a living back as an artisan has rippled across the Mekong, according to Sengmany, inspiring some women working in Thailand to return home and take part in the budding local industry. One of Ma Té Sai’s lasting legacies will be legitimising and showcasing the work of local artisans. Sengmany’s work, for example, is a known quantity. She sends her products directly to customers and buyers all over the world without fear her designs will be stolen.

The world changes at different speeds and in different ways. There is not one progress. Luang Prabang’s glittering night market is one reality. Another is that tomorrow morning in Khammouane Province, hundreds if not thousands of capable young men and women will wake up in a small village, eat some breakfast, pick up a shovel, a metal detector and an empty 50 kilo sack of rice, and walk into the jungle to test their luck. Weir and Pabion’s work is important because it offers hope and agency to generations of Laotians who grew surrounded by the remnants of war.