January/February 2006
It’s the deadliest scrap trade on Earth—recovering Vietnam-era war scrap, including live bombs. But that’s just what metal hunters in Laos do in their quest to earn a meager living.
By Roger Arnold
stood at the entrance to Mr. Si’s scrapyard, surrounded by bombs. He was barely visible inside, his shop entrance covered with rusted war scrap, much of it still armed, ready to explode. I stepped over a live mortar and asked the price of metal cost per kilo.
“Twelve hundred kip,” he said, quoting in Lao currency. At the time—July 2004—that amount equaled about 12 U.S. cents and represented a 10-percent jump from the previous month.
A Lao man in a Chinese military transport pulled up and called out, “I have antiaircraft gun. You want to buy?”
His offer didn’t surprise me. I was in Phonsavan, northeast Laos, home to one of the deadliest trades on Earth—recovering Vietnam-era war scrap, including undetonated bombs.
Such are the remnants of the Cold War chess match that played out in Laos after World War II. In January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower reportedly told President John F. Kennedy on the eve of his inauguration, “If Laos is lost to the Free World, in the long run we will lose all of Southeast Asia.”
Laos tried to remain neutral, but it was viewed as crucial real estate. Though Vietnam would eventually grab all the headlines, the so-called secret war in Laos would become the largest covert military campaign in the history of the CIA, the U.S. Air Force, and North Vietnam.
By 1975, the United States had withdrawn its CIA advisers, communists controlled the country, and Laos held the distinction of being the most heavily bombed country, on a per capita basis, in the history of warfare. American fist-size cluster bombs have had the most lethal lingering effects. The United States reportedly dropped some 90 million cluster bombs on Laos. Those bombs had a reported 10 to 30 percent failure rate, which meant that millions of them—as well as many larger bombs—hit the ground and remain there, undetonated. As a result, more than 12,000 Lao, usually farmers and children, have been killed or maimed since the air war ended, and at least 150 people a year are victims of unexploded ordnance, or UXO, according to sources.
Increasingly the victims are metal hunters—individuals who seek out war scrap despite the danger. This trade may seem like a death wish, a desperate pursuit by poor people, but that is only part of the picture. Generally, the rural Lao don’t obsess about life’s complexities and believe each person is born with a certain fate, with most expecting good luck. This cultural mindset, mixed with little or no education and an average rural income equivalent to $200 a year, compels many to become metal hunters.
Some of their scrap ends up in Phonsavan at Mr. Si’s scrapyard, a small tin-roofed wooden shed next to shop houses, a hotel, and a busy market on the main road to the airport. When I visited, he was busy weighing scrap being loaded onto a truck by workers from a nearby foundry. I asked him where I could find some some metal hunters who were working. He laughed and said, “They are everywhere!”
He was right, of course. The omnipresent metal hunters, in fact, were recovering war scrap faster and more efficiently—sometimes with fatal effects—than the well-funded organizations in Laos that clean up bombs and other unexploded ordnance. In short, the organizations often find themselves in competition with the same villagers they are trying to help. As one munitions expert said, “Sometimes we go to a village and mark live bombs for removal, only to return the next day to find that the metal hunters have taken them.” Metal hunters complain that if they report a bomb to authorities, the clearance experts take the metal and sell it themselves.
Mr. Si directed me to Ban Khong Village, about 12 miles southwest. There I found Mr. Somboun, a metal hunter with five tons of 155 mm rocket propellant canisters and artillery shells stored under his house. He and 20 others from the village hunt for metal whenever they have a break from working their rice fields. He was in no hurry to sell the metal, preferring instead to hold it like a savings account. “We have rice and a little money,” he noted, “and the price of metal keeps going up.”
A Deadly Trade
Back in Phonsavan, at the Dokkhoun Guesthouse, I stood in the lobby with my translator, Lan, surrounded by war souvenirs. On the floor and walls were 75 mm to 120 mm artillery shells, illuminating mortars, glass vials of medicine, 50-caliber rifle shells, cluster bombs, hand- and rocket-propelled grenades, and a napalm canister. I decided to visit the local foundry, where most of this material is recycled. So we headed west on Route 7, past a series of scrap collectors who had bombs piled in front of their wooden shacks.
At the foundry, two 2,000-pound U.S. fragmentation bombs towered like pillars leading to the front door. I stepped from the car and looked out toward the foundry and a sea of rusting war debris. According to foundry officials, at least 20,000 tons of steel scrap passes through here each year, with war material representing 75 percent of that tonnage. From this scrap, the foundry produces rebar and other building products that are used in Laos and other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, India, and Japan.
It was the end of the day, and the workers filed past the bombs, paying no attention to them. Most Lao have grown up surrounded by bombs. Thus, in Lao culture, bombs are normal—a concept that’s impossible for anyone removed to understand. A distant analogy would be Americans’ comfort level with the automobile. Every time an American stands on a busy street corner or gets into a car, it is potentially lethal, but that possibility is largely ignored. The same could be said for the Lao experience with bombs.
Unfortunately, the lethal possibilities sometimes become harsh reality. The next day, Lan pounded on my door. “Come on,” he called, “let’s go to the hospital. A metal hunter and two bomb disassemblers blew themselves up yesterday trying to open a bomb. One is still alive.”
At the Lao-Mongolian Friendship Hospital, I entered the intensive-care unit where Mr. Khamlek lay shell-shocked, his right side charred black with blast and shrapnel wounds. His eyeballs were melted, his hair fried, he was deaf in one ear and appeared in a severe state of shock. The facility, a basic concrete structure, provided him with an IV and a metal bed with a thin mattress and sheet. The doctor said she expected him to live.
His wife, Ms. Khami, related that he was just passing by and had nothing to do with the bomb. I expected her to say this. In Laos, anyone who intentionally handles a bomb is ineligible to collect assistance from international aid groups. I paid part of his medical bills, tried to assure her, and left not knowing what to say.
Back in the car, we headed west on Route 7 past the foundry, through pine forest pockmarked by carpet bombing, 14 miles to Phu Vieng Village, where the accident occurred. We drove by one home with two live U.S. M117 750-pound fragmentation bombs, then past several more homes with children playing on bombs. I asked the children’s grandmother if she was afraid. “No, they’re just part of us now,” she said, echoing a reply I had heard many times. “Its fuse is rusty, and it makes a good place for sitting.”
We arrived at the home of Ms. Suk, who was preparing with her family for the funeral of her husband, Mr. Pai. She and everyone in the village confirmed that the injured metal hunter, Mr. Khamlek, had talked her husband out of retirement, paying him $15 to open the bomb that took his life.
For Ms. Suk, it was bad enough she was widowed with a young son. In addition, she—like most Lao—are Theravada Buddhists who blend their religion with animist phi (spirit) worship. They believe that accidental death creates a phi phetu (malevolent spirit) that roams the earth, tormenting the living. As a result, at the funeral the following day, shamans and monks would make every attempt to assuage her husband’s spirit.
Exhuming the Body of a Bomb
In November 2004, I returned to Phonsavan and headed east 12 miles on Route 7 to Siaongka Handicapped Village to follow a group of metal hunters into the forest. The price of bomb scrap was then 1,400 kip per kilo, up almost 40 percent since June. With the monsoon season over, the onset of the dry season meant that metal hunters were out in force.
I followed the group two kilometers into the forest. The hunters stopped at a crater 5 feet deep and 15 feet across. Mr. Patcheng, the group’s leader, said the crater should contain the shrapnel of a 500-pound U.S. fragmentation bomb. He and Mr. Aon, who lost a leg in a bomb accident, started digging in the orange laterite soil.
Soon, a shovel made a distinct thud, and the group cheered, “Gold!” Patcheng pulled out a 2-foot-long steel shard he called “the rib of the bomb.” For the next three hours, the hunters—including daughters and a grandmother—rotated duty working in and out of the crater. They removed and identified each of the bomb’s “body parts.” Drawing from experience, they deciphered the direction of the bomb’s impact and dug 12 feet deep in that path, stopping when they reached the aluminum fuse, or “head.”
The group excavated about 400 pounds of steel scrap worth $25, a small fortune in a country where many have no cash income and where those who do are lucky to earn $1 or $2 a day. The girls disappeared into the forest, reemerging with small trees cut with their machetes. They peeled off the bark in long, thin strips, which they used as twine to attach the metal shards to each end of the tree trunks and the ends of each shovel. Mr. Aon, with his artificial leg, slung his shovel over his shoulder with almost 70 pounds of metal dangling on its ends. Each metal hunter did the same, then they marched out of the forest to Route 7.
At the edge of the road, Mr. Patcheng attached an old balancing scale to the tree log and weighed the metal. As a favor, I had agreed in advance to buy their bomb scrap, so I handed him $25. I was going back to Phonsavan, which would save them $2 in transport fees.
In Phonsavan, Mr. Si refused to pay the market price for my metal. I had made a novice metal-hunter mistake—I rushed my scrap to market without letting the rain rinse off the mud. Mr. Si was unwilling to pay for the extra weight of mud on my bomb scrap, so we agreed on $24.
An Ironic Situation
In late November 2004, I headed southeast 265 miles to Sepon, a hub of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail was a network of interconnected paths that ran along the borders of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The North Vietnamese used it to supply Viet Cong comrades in South Vietnam and to invade Laos. In response, U.S. forces attacked the trails with carpet bombing and defoliants, clear-cutting the forest and leaving a swath of sand, craters, and war scrap for hundreds of kilometers along the borders.
Sepon’s importance ensured that it received a disproportionate share of the millions of tons of air-dropped ordnance during the conflict. Thirty years ago, Sepon was a bombed-out hell. Today, it hosts the most vibrant metal trade in Laos, with much of the material sent to Vietnam.
I jumped on a small Toyota pickup crammed with locals sitting on the vehicle’s two wooden benches. We headed north on Route 91, which leads to the most lucrative gold mine in Laos. I hopped off at Ban Nonesat Village when I saw two boys carrying metal detectors.
Laema, 12, and Dune, 6, were about to go into the forest behind their home on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I followed them into the jungle, with their metal detectors going haywire. They picked up bomb shards like they were on an Easter egg hunt. After 15 minutes, they came to a spot and started digging, pulling out a live rusty charge. They looked over to me and spread their arms wide, pointing to the hole, communicating that a much bigger bomb was underground. If they were right, the bomb had to be live since there was no crater. They jabbed their shovels into the hole, a technique that has killed many metal hunters. My adrenalin surged. I snapped a few last pictures and got out. The boys eventually recovered a live 250-pound bomb, but they had been extremely careless.
I returned to Sepon in late August 2005. I wanted to visit a village I had passed the previous year that was built almost entirely of bomb scrap. This time I brought Lan, my translator, so I could communicate. We caught a ride with Mr. Burut, a Vietnamese scrap buyer who travels from village to village in southern Laos buying metal from local scrap hunters. This saves them transportation costs and expedites the metal to market. He told us the current price was 1,700 kip per kilo—about 17 cents—the same as when I visited Sepon in 2004.
Mr. Burut pulled his tractor into Ban Patong. Almost every home used U.S. cluster bomb casings for stilts and ladders. Villagers had crafted aluminum pots and pans from metal flares, airborne gunships, and jets. A woman was slicing bamboo on an antivehicle mine, and a man next door was drying bamboo over a fire on an aluminum jet fuel pod. Children surrounded me wearing aluminum jewelry fashioned from war scrap. We walked to the east side of the village where the Se Nam Kok River flows. Below, on the riverbank, there were eight canoes, three traditional wooden ones and five made from long-range jet fuel pods.
I walked back to the village where I met Mr. Khamhuan, a bomb dismantler, metal hunter, and blacksmith. He showed me a machete he had made from a U.S. bomb. The handle was wood with brass antiaircraft shells for collars. He said his cousin was killed the previous month hunting metal. Another villager approached me with a U.S. cluster bomb that had been converted to a kerosene lantern. Its smoke wisped like a ghost, rising skyward in the morning light.
I asked Mr. Khamhuan to make a machete for me using military ordnance. The bellows in his blacksmith shop were made from flare tubes, rifle barrels, and an artillery shell. His anvil included 60 mm and 120 mm artillery shells. He also uses an antivehicle mine and cluster bomb shells as other tools of his trade. In a short time, he had melted and fabricated a sturdy, sharp blade.
I spotted his neighbor, metal hunter Ms. Mabo, and asked about her aluminum earrings. They, like every other metal product in the village, came from war scrap. Another woman chimed in. Lan looked at me, shocked, and said, “You are not going believe this.”
“What? What did she say?” I asked.
“These people are animists and worship the bombs,” he replied. “They sacrifice chickens, pigs, and cows to the bombs in the dry season, when they harvest bombs. They wear the jewelry and decorate their houses because they believe it will protect them from the bombs and bring them good luck. They want more to fall and believe people who die from bombs have not pleased the bomb spirits.”
I looked at Lan in disbelief. “You’re kidding me. Ask her again how the village feels about the bombs.”
Lan repeated the question. The woman answered, “The Americans are good, but we don’t know them. The bombs come from the good spirits in the sky.”
I walked up to Route 91 at the edge of the village, overwhelmed by what I found on the Ho Chi Minh trail. I reflected on how ignorant the villagers were, how they didn’t know what had happened to them. Then I realized: They knew more about the war than most of the world. They had made the best of a bad situation. It was the outside world that was ignorant about what had happened.
I flagged down a lone vehicle. It was a truck from the gold mine. The astonished driver, a Swede, asked, “Are you lost?”
“No,” I said. Then he offered to give me a ride back to Sepon.
En route, we discussed challenges the gold mine faces in an area riddled with live bombs. The road along the way was peppered with small craters dug by metal hunters. As I exited the vehicle on Route 9, grateful for a ride, the Swede lectured me on how the United States should do a lot more to clean up this mess.
I agreed, yet I also had to admit that most people in eastern rural Laos earn their only cash income from U.S. and communist bombs that leveled their country. It is an irony the metal hunters live—and die—under every day.
Roger Arnold is a photographer and writer from Clearwater Beach, Fla., currently based in Bangkok, Thailand. His images have appeared in many publications around the world.
Publisher’s Note: Sources for this article included Shooting at the Moon by Roger Warner, Shadow War by Ken Conboy, Tragic Mountains by Jane Hamilton-Merrit, Lonely Planet Laos, Laos—A Country Study, Mines Advisory Group, United Nations Development Program, UXO Lao, and Bombies by Lumiere Productions Inc. Many calculations and statistics from these sources were based on military records and information provided by the U.S. government.