Human Conflict Project

All events · Empires Unmade

The Air War over Laos and the Evacuation of the Plain of Jars

1964–1975 · East & Southeast Asia

Displacement
Displaced
750,000
US embassy and USAID refugee-relief statistics, compiled at the time to administer rice drops and camps, recorded that between 700,000 and 750,000 Laotians, roughly a quarter to a third of the country's population, had been displaced within Laos by the early 1970s. The evacuation of the Plain of Jars in 1969-70 moved tens of thousands of people at once, and refugee-relief accounts describe repeated cycles of movement as front lines shifted.
Share of the population affected
30%
of the population of Laos at the start of the American air campaign in the mid-1960s, 1965
Killed
20,000–60,000
conflict deaths incl. combatants

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What happened

From 1964 the United States bombed Laos on a scale that made it, per head, one of the most heavily bombed countries in history: more than 500,000 sorties and about 2 million tons of ordnance over nine years, targeting the Ho Chi Minh trail in the south and Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese positions in the north. On the Plain of Jars the population moved into caves and trenches and farmed at night; in 1969, as the ground war shifted, the plain's remaining inhabitants were evacuated, some by CIA-organised airlift, and the area was left empty. USAID refugee statistics recorded 700,000-750,000 people displaced within Laos by the early 1970s, many repeatedly. Fred Branfman's collection of refugee testimony and drawings, Voices from the Plain of Jars, published in 1972, was the first substantial public account; the US government had described the campaign as limited or denied it altogether. Unexploded ordnance has continued to kill and injure Laotians and to sterilise farmland for fifty years, and the atlas covers the postwar Hmong flight separately.

Parties

US air power, the CIA-directed Lao irregular forces and North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops emptied the Plain of Jars and much of northern Laos

Disputed

Civilian death tolls for the bombing were never established; US official accounts at the time understated both the scale of the campaign and the displacement it caused.

The denominator

UN and US estimates put Laos at roughly 2.4-2.6 million people in 1965; no national census was taken until 1985, so the figure is an estimate. The Plain of Jars and the northern provinces most heavily bombed held only a fraction of that total, perhaps 150,000-200,000 in the plain itself before it was emptied in 1969-70.

The affected figure is a cumulative count of displacements over roughly a decade, and many families were moved several times as the front lines and bombing shifted, so it overstates the number of distinct people uprooted.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

No count was made of civilian deaths from the bombing. The lower figure reflects contemporary estimates drawn from refugee testimony; the higher reflects broader estimates of Lao civilian deaths across the conflict, including ground fighting. Around 20,000 further casualties have been caused by unexploded ordnance since 1975 according to Lao government and clearance-agency records.

Documented forms of violence

Destruction of Property

Refugee testimony collected by Fred Branfman and USAID refugee-relief reporting documented the destruction of villages and the emptying of the Plain of Jars.

Movements mapped

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Laos

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.
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