Roundup: Righting wrongs, clearing bombs require more than cash and charm during Obama's historic visit to Laos

Every year in mid-April, the escalating dry heat signals a break from the everyday duties of work and study in Laos as the country's people joyously engage in New Year festivities across the Southeast Asian nation.

The celebration known locally as Boun Pi Mai features a longstanding mix of music, dance and fun; a fusion of indigenous and Buddhist-traditions, similar to those found in neighboring Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and beyond.

In the capital and other urban centers, schools, offices, factories and farms bid a temporary farewell to students and workers with send-off parties involving revitalizing splashes of perfumed water as they return to families in hometowns and villages dotted across the country's 17 provinces.

One group of workers that could well be excused for welcoming the holidays as energetically as any, however, are those involved in defusing and detonating decades-old yet still deadly unexploded bombs that lay hidden across the rural interior of Laos, which is the most bombed per capita in modern history.

They are removing the danger of bombs and explosive sub-munitions that remain strewn in and around Lao as a result of clandestine U.S. bombing raids dating back to what the Laos refer to as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam War 50 years ago.

Spilling over from U.S. intervention in its neighbor to the east, the so-called "Secret War" in Laos saw no less than 260 million tonnes of bombs dropped on Lao territory by U.S. troops between 1964 and 1973, in addition to the bombardment in Vietnam and Cambodia.

According to the United Nations and based on the U.S. own military flight data, over a period of nine years, more than 2 million tonnes of ordnance were released on Laos. More than 270 million anti-personnel cluster sub-munitions were dropped, of which roughly 80 million failed to explode.

While the official secret was kept from the U.S. Congress and public, in ways and on a scale barely imaginable in today's interconnected world, the truth has since been courageously revealed by traumatized survivors with the help of reporters who presented evidence long denied.

It is now a matter of history that this massive airborne military intervention and accompanying political interference, which U.S. policymakers hoped to disrupt and destroy their opponents' supply lines and reshape alliances, regardless of post-colonial complexities and civil conflicts on the Indochinese Peninsula, did not achieve its aims.

Now in 2016, the surviving targets of those weapons have now entered their fifth decade, leading their country via the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and are readying to welcome a new 5-year term with the election of a rejuvenated leadership and cabinet during legislative sittings set for next week.

As this year's chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Laos is preparing to host the East Asia Summit in September when it is set to welcome regional leaders from fellow ASEAN nations and those of China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand.

U.S. President Barack Obama will also visit Laos, the first of a sitting U.S. president to the landlocked country. The trip will mark a milestone which seeks to formally reset relations between the two states and their peoples, and is considered an historic tour akin to the March visit to Cuba by the U.S. leader.

The likely muted arrival of Air Force One will be in stark contrast to the deafening roars of B-52s past and the eery chill felt on the ground between release and explosion of their deadly payloads dropped on every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.

The high-profile visit will be remembered by many although the bombs treacherously took innocent Lao lives and stripped families of their livelihoods, while leaving countless others traumatized and households struggling to avoid a perilous plunge back into poverty.

In 2008, the Lao National unexploded ordnance (UXO) Survey recorded 50,136 casualties from bombs and UXO in 1964-2008, with most victims aged between 15 and 35.

According to official figures published in February, the 2011-2015 five-year peroid saw UXO-related accidents result in an additional 522 casualties in Laos, including 131 deaths. The majority were children.

Despite the disturbing figures, they reflect significant progress in reduction of the death toll from the early post-war era, thanks to a combination of better-targeted surveys, clearance and education.

As recently as 2008, some 300 additional casualties were recorded in a calendar year.

The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set a target of reducing new casualties to 75 annually by 2015. The goal is surpassed with 30 less deaths reported in 2014 that has brought much relief if not complacency to many.

Meanwhile, technological progress in surveying contaminated areas as well as improved coordination between regulatory agencies and those tasked with disposal, saw nearly 30,000 hectares (300 square km) of land, including 18,500 hectares for agriculture and 11,200 hectares for residential, industrial or commercial development cleared over the 2011-2015 period, according to the official figures released by the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) for UXO/Mine Action.

The recent progress comes alongside years of coordinated efforts led by the country's leaders and support from the NRA and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), domestic agency UXO-Lao, plus a number of international donors and development agencies.

According to the NRA and UN figures, some 55,000 hectares had been cleared between 1996 and 2015 of an estimated 8.7 million hectares of land affected, or some 6.3 percent.

Together with their partners, the two organizations are preparing to conduct the most comprehensive national UXO survey through to 2021.

Technological progress has already seen the amount of UXO cleared per hectare increase as technicians work in the areas most affected by the unexploded bombs.

Now, with the rapid development of Laos alongside neighbors in the region, the U.S. once again looms large among a plethora of international actors seeking closer trade and diplomatic ties with the resource-rich country with a population of 6.5 million.

Much is being made for the Obama visit and the promise of additional, if long overdue, efforts by the superpower for a big increase in resources to the UXO survey and clearance efforts. Both sides hope they will go a significant way to make atonement for past wrongs, and prevent unnecessary civilian casualties.

Paltry past contributions by the U.S. to the clearance efforts have been highlighted by the Lao-American organization Legacies of War.

According to the organization, between 1995 and 2013 the U.S. contributed on average 3.2 million U.S. dollars per year for UXO clearance in Laos, just a fraction of the 13.3 million U.S. dollars spent per day (in 2013

terms) for nine years during the bombing of the country.

No doubt an injection of valuable resources and political will from the powerful U.S. presidential office will be warmly welcomed by all keen to decelerate the impact exacted on life and limb from UXO across Laos, especially as the country moves toward raising opportunities for its majority rural population to improve their lives and livelihoods and create conditions to graduate from the least developed country (LDC) by 2020.

Yet as always in diminutive Laos, the impact of decisions made far away will be keenly felt on the ground, for better or worse.

Given the deeply polarized U.S. political scene on full display in its current party-primary process and the all-too-frequent partisan deadlocks seen in its habitually divided Congress, the prospect of ideology-driven foreign policy decisions that seek to undermine or even radically re-write the 44th president's legacy, in matters of foreign policy, can not easily be ruled out by rational observers.

Exactly how President Obama manages to make up for his country's past wrongs in a meaningful yet practical way without unduly raising the ire of domestic political opponents including a bevy of strident partisans, populists, ideologues and militarists, will present a challenge, not just to the tail end of his administration, but to the potential for safe, peaceful and confident futures for the multi-ethnic people of Laos, as they usher in this traditional New Year and many more to come. Endit