Silent war in Laos - Franco Guidi Photography

The CIA operation, which ran from 1961 until 1975, became known as the Secret War because, unlike in the well-known Vietnam war, the fighting was done not by American soldiers but by the CIA’s mercenaries.

That operation was attempted to stop the Pathet Lao communist insurgency and to interrupt Vietnamese supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh trail that connected Northern and Southern Vietnam.

During that period the United States released 2.1 million tons of ordnance over Laos and on numerous occasions bombed the civilian population.

After the war ended, up to 78 million unexploded cluster bombs and other ordnance remained, posing a constant threat to civilian life. Unexploded ordnance (UXO) contaminates close to half of the country and kill or injure three hundred people each year, more than 33,669 square miles of land are contaminated, covering at least 37 percent of the whole country.

The United States dropped more bombs on Laos than it had dropped on all countries during World War II.