Vietnam's deadly legacy

2001-08-16 10:27

Quang Tri, Vietnam - In a scorched, pock-marked landscape rendered useless by a long-ago war, a flak-jacketed soldier jabs a spade into the dank red earth in search of a killer.

The hi-tech beeps and purrs of his metal detector are carried on the hot breezes which blow over from Laos onto this low plateau, where perhaps millions of pieces of unexploded ordnance, or UXO, remain menacingly buried in the soil.

It is barely 08:00, and a team of 40-odd Vietnamese de-miners led by German munitions clearance firm Gerbera has already filled a crate with a potpourri of firepower: M-79 grenades, BLU 23/36 "bombies", ammunition, mortars and rockets.

Locals from nearby Cua village barely notice the team at work.

"We're used to it," says a girl named Dao, who nonetheless pauses to observe two Westerners kneeling over a rocket-propelled grenade dug out of the ground just minutes earlier.

At 17, Dao is too young to have known the war first-hand. But her impoverished province, bisected by the 17th parallel which divided North and South between 1954 and 1975, was the most bombed region during the Vietnam War.

About 15 million tons of ordnance was dropped on Vietnam, more than three times the tonnage used in World War II. Quang Tri itself suffered seven tons of bombs for every man, woman and child in the province. Of the 1 500 villages in the province, three were spared.

Living on an 'ammunition mountain'

Over 38 000 people have died and 65 000 more have been maimed in munitions accidents since 1975, according to Defence Ministry estimates. The number rises almost daily.

Conditions are among the worst in Cam Lo district, site of several former military bases, where nine people have been killed by UXO since Gerbera project manager Karl-Heinz Werther arrived 14 months ago.

"These people are living on a mountain of UXO," says Werther. "It's a disaster here; I've never seen such a concentration before."

In the 1970s and 80s the Vietnamese army did what it could to clear the most urgent areas - cities, towns, roadways. Dozens of soldiers died doing the work, but two thirds of the UXO remains.

"I think it may take the rest of our lives" to clean up, says Hoang Dang Mai, Quang Tri's director of foreign relations.

"We need more equipment, more activities to help clear landmines and UXO," he pleads.

And more money. The government estimates the cleanup cost at anywhere from 4 to 15 billion dollars.

International help is slow and inadequate

Many impoverished peasants don't wait. Peasants scavenge for scrap metal, sawing open mines and bombs to sell the explosives and plant manioc on uncleared patches of earth.

Now there are concerted, if minor, international efforts to start decontaminating this and other regions of Vietnam.

In addition to Gerbera, which is funded by Germany's foreign ministry, US humanitarian project PeaceTrees Vietnam has put down roots as well, clearing a pair of small sites to build a landmine education centre, a residential community and rehabilitation project.

Britain's Mines Awareness Group has also set up shop, and US-based Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) is also involved.

"There has been a lot of progress and things today are much better than they were five years ago," says VVMF rep and war veteran Chuck Searcy, who was in Quang Tri last week to open his new office.

"It is a massive problem, and I'm not sure that anyone knows what it's going to take."

US should own up to its responsibility

Washington, which has contributed 400 million dollars worldwide to de-mining since 1993, has committed a paltry 3.1 million dollars for landmine and UXO clearance in Vietnam.

"The munitions in the ground here that continue to kill and maim children and farmers and innocent civilians everyday, are largely the responsibility of the US government," Searcy points out. "We should own up to that responsibility and do a lot more."

But part of the blame for the slow response can be found within Vietnam, in a bureaucratic communist system which treats de-mining as a national security issue and whose military maintains an intense wariness of foreigners.

It also must tread lightly when it seeks international de-mining aid, as the country continues to use and produce its own landmines.

Hanoi has not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and appears to have no intention of doing so in the near future, according to a report by international watchdog Landmine Monitor.

Where will I fly to?

Some diplomats suggest that political will on Vietnam's demining issue is stronger among foreign governments than it is in Hanoi.

"Vietnam is naturally cautious, and in a way they're right," says Belinda Goslin, a technical adviser for European Landmine Solutions who helped co-ordinate de-mining last year in Kosovo and Croatia, where 16 international demining agencies flooded in to do emergency work.

"They want to make sure things are controlled by them," Goslin says. "It does make things slower, but they've been waiting 25 years for this, they can wait another couple of months."

For many, Quang Tri is ancient history. And with Hanoi continuing to spout that the war is behind them, the country's crushing UXO crisis becomes a fading memory for many in and outside the country.

Yet some people can't forget.

Tran Van Hieu, a 26-year-old fisherman on a beach just north of the DMZ, was 13 years old when he and some friends picked up an M-79 grenade. It blew off three of his fingers to the second knuckle.

Hieu extends his left hand to show his "souvenir" from the war.

A tattooed blue arrow on the back of his left hand points to his three stubs. Above the arrow, the date of the accident: May 10, 1988. And on his forearm, in flowery Vietnamese lettering, the words: "Where will I fly to?" - DPA

- SAPA