Like, it’s one of the five AES countries; and yet, the other four (Cuba, China, Vietnam and DPRK) always gets the spotlight.
Even worse, it’s the most bombed country in history. Over 270 million bombs were thrown on Laos from 1964 to 1974 (a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, 9 years long). Something like 80 million of them didn’t go off, making life difficult to this day, because they’re still there.
Surely the Laotian Government could deploy sappers on the areas to defuse them like the Russian Government is doing on Donetsk-Luhansk, right?
300k of them have been detonated by such programs. I believe the difficulty lies in locating the bombs, seeing that you safely detonate it and not blow up people or infrastructure or housing, and then finding the tools to do that. It’s fine if it’s the occasional bomb in your Western country that has the money to do so, but this is Laos and there’s 80 million of these bombs.
Only 300K out of 80M? Goddamn, I’m impressed that Laos still even exists with that many bombs dropped in there.
