Plain of Jars and UXO

Our Claptrap climbed to 1000 metres along windy mountain passes arriving in Phonesavan having only broken down once. Phonesavan, in the Xieng Khuang province, is a bit of a detour off the trodden track and into the heart of Laos. As a town it’s dusty and uninspiring except for its ubiquitous scrap collections of bomb casings. What brought Debbie and I here, leaving the Luang Prabang posse for the meantime, was the little known Plain of Jars.

Who, what, where, why, when, how – all questions about the Plain of Jars that remain essentially unanswered. The sites of these jars are now under the protection of Unesco, but up until 1985 there was no protection, and little knowledge of these mysterious SE Asian artifacts. The jars are now empty of whatever they used to contain but they still held plenty of questions for our group and our guide to theorize about.

• The rock from which the jars were made has not been located and is not from the area.
• The jars groupings appear unordered
• Some of the jars weigh over 6 tonnes
• There are up to 60 sites of jars. There are three main sites that are been cleared of bomb ordinance
• The largest site has 350 jars, the biggest being 2 ½ metres high
• Human remains have been found BESIDE one or two of the jars
• Suggested age of the jars is 2500 years old, although this is difficult to measure given the lack of artifacts uncovered around the jars, and until now, the lack of serious research
• Only one jar has any decoration, a basic carving of a man
• Few have lids
• All lie in the elevated plains of the Xieng Khuang province
• Many jars have been damaged by locals breaking the stone to use, US bombings, and nature
• The site is now protected and is being studied to learn more about its purpose and meaing and about early SE Asian civilisations.

Possibly these jars used to contain offerings for the spirits, probably as part of the burial ritual. But uncovering their real history will require academic research in the coming years. Walking between these artifacts, touching them, looking into them, amplified their wonder for me. Our theory that the Jars were for the jam made by giants has for the moment been discounted.

Sadly, the district has a another history as well. Between 1964-1973, in the period of the Vietnam War, the US conducted one of the largest sustained aerial bombardments in history, flying 580,344 missions over Laos and dropping 2 million tones of bombs. The US perceived Laos, disproportionately, as the crucial South Eastern Asian ‘Domino’ relentlessly carpet bombing it to counter the presence of North Vietnamese in the country. Known now as the secret war, these bombings were carried out in violation of the Geneva Convention (Laos was a neutral country), and were denied up until the fall of the Soviet Union, and to this day remains unacknowledged by the US government. But since 1992 when Laos opened up to tourism it is plain to see by any who visit this province. Bomb craters pot the countryside and hills that were laced with Agent Orange and Napalm still lie bare more than 30 years after the war. This appalling legacy lives on with these people daily: About 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to explode leaving the country littered with UXO (unexploded ordinance) from Cluster bombs.

Farmers working these fields for their livelihood are most at risk. Between 1973 and 1996 there were 11,000 UXO accidents. The scrap metal from these bombs is worth a lot of money to peasant farmers in this district. A large bomb, sometimes unexploded, can be worth US$40 as scrap. In town these bomb shells are used as everything from flower gardens to fireplaces or simply decoration, or, perhaps more likely, a reminder. I sensed no animosity from Laos people and our guide spoke passionately about cleaning up the land and making it safe. The US government currently contributes nothing to the cleanup of this UXO, despite spending US$2.2 million a day on their bombing campain here.British Mines Advisory Group (MAG) have been clearing UXO since 1994. Proudly, the New Zealand government has also been contributing this past year and Helen Clark will be visiting the Plain of Jars site 1 when she attends the Asian Summit in Vientiane in November. Many Laos people I met who I had told I was from NZ expressed that they knew of our contribution!

At the current rate of clearance it will take a further 100 years to cleanup this UXO. For me it was a reminder that the consequences of any war live on with the civilian population long after the bombs have stopped falling. As I choke on todays rhetoric of the never ending ‘war on terror’ I am reminded too that war should never be preemptive, never unilateral, and only a last resort, never a solution.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2004 at 5:35 am and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.