Blow it up - and give it back
Story by Tom Morgan
In Phan Op Village, MAG’s Salaam Amin and his roving team make a very large bomb safe - using only a small explosion. The bomb case remains intact, and his team then hands it back to the villager whose land the bomb was on.
The following day the roving team returns to the village to find three villagers waiting for them. Word has spread that MAG gives back the scrap metal after removing the explosive material, and the waiting villagers are eager to report the presence of large bombs on their land. One family reports three bombs of between 250 and 750 pounds in their paddy field. After they have been made safe by MAG, they will be able to sell the bomb cases for almost $60.
Sixty dollars is a lot of money in Phan Op. The village is in Boulapha district (Khammouane province) - one of the poorest districts in the country. Its residents have very little of anything, but there is one resource widely available to them; scrap metal left over from the war. Boulapha soil contains a wealth of unexploded ordnance (UXO), bomb cases and other fragments of metal.
An estimated 80 per cent of villagers in the district (including children) undertake scrap metal collection to supplement their income. They sometimes use simple metal detectors to locate the war scrap. When they hear a signal the villagers dig in the soil to investigate, with potentially lethal results. They may find harmless scrap metal - or they may find UXO that injures or kills them. Such activities are becoming the highest cause of UXO-related injuries in Laos.
But whilst the danger level is high, the temptation is great. Collectors are paid between $16 and $23 for large bomb casings, in an area where most people are subsistence farmers with little or no cash income.
MAG is working in the district to remove UXO that endangers lives and increases poverty by making farmland unusable for villagers. But removing the threat of UXO in the conventional way – by destroying the items completely – would have a severe impact on people’s livelihoods in an area where the trade in scrap metal forms a major part of the economy.
Therefore in Boulapha MAG uses a bomb disposal technique (known as a ‘low order technique’) that destroys all explosive material whilst preserving the bomb casing. The cases can then be given back to the villagers, who can then safely sell the scrap metal.
Another MAG field manager working in the district says that ‘once the villagers understand we are only destroying dangerous items, in a manner that results in scrap being left over, they become more willing to report UXO and are more confident about our work.’
