high and dry

Doublestrike | adamkylejackson

Lethal Legacy of Secret War in Laos (via Reuters)

From 1964 to 1973, U.S. warplanes dropped more than 270 million cluster munitions on Laos, one-third of which did not explode, according to the Lao National Regulatory Authority for UXO. 

The bombings were part of a CIA-run, secret operation aimed at destroying the North Vietnamese supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh trail and wiping out its communist allies. They also left a trail of devastation in Laos, which U.S. planes used as a dumping ground for bombs when their original target was unavailable and planes couldn’t land with explosives. 

Landlocked Laos remains largely agricultural with around 80 percent of the population reliant on agriculture. Some land is simply too dangerous to farm. Across the country, over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by bombs since the war, many of them children.