The Legacy of Agent Orange

 This unretouched photo of a deformed Vietnamese boy illustrates the horror of the U.S. chemical warfare in Southeast Asia. Our country, right or wrong? We don't think so.

 

Three-year-old Xuan Minh, believed to be suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, looks out from his hospital bed in Ho Chi Min. Photographer: Richard Vogel/AP

Long after the last bullet has been fired in a war, unexploded bombs, landmines and toxic chemicals continue to maim and kill civilians. This is particularly true of the Vietnam war. Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam. Relations with the United States have been normalised since the 1990s, but the denial of justice to the victims of Agent Orange remains a major bone of contention.

Not only are Vietnamese still maimed from treading on unexploded bombs, they are also victims of this insidious scourge that poisons water and food supplies, causing various cancers and crippling deformities. Eighty million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam, destroying swathes of irreplaceable rainforest through massive defoliation and leaving a toxic trail of dioxin contamination in the soil for decades. The legacy of this chemical warfare can even be inflicted on the unborn, with Agent Orange birth deformities now being passed on to a third generation.

In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health problems and are in need of constant medical attention. Last month, members of a US Vietnamese working group reported that it will cost at least $14m to remove dioxin residues from just one site around the former US airbase in Danang. The cost of a comprehensive clean-up around three dioxin hotspots and former US bases is estimated at around $60m. The $3m pledged by US Congress last year is a pathetically inadequate amount set against the billions spent in waging war and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

The recent study of one Agent Orange hotspot, the former US airbase in Danang, found dioxin levels 300 to 400 times higher than internationally accepted limits. The study confirmed that rainwater had carried dioxin into city drains and into a neighbouring community that is home to more than 100,000 people.

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