FEATURE

The continuing crime
against Vietnam

The people of Vietnam are still suffering from the
devastating effects of the chemical warfare used against
them by the U.S. from 1961 to 1975 during the Vietnam
War. Large areas of land that were once covered with
crops, vegetation, and animal life are today barren. Dam-
age to human chromosomes, causing miscarriages, fetal
deaths or congenital malformations, still persists.

By William Pomeroy

C hemical warfare — its use by the U.S. in Vietnam
and its effects — was the subject of an international
symposium in Ho Chi Minh City on January 14-18.
While the Western press virtually ignored the sym-
posium, it has given extensive coverage to allegations
by the Reagan Administration of Soviet use of chemi-
cal weapons in Indochina and Afghanistan — allega-
tions that have been proven to be false by authorita-
tive scientific bodies in Britain and Australia that
have branded the so-called evidence as faked.

Presented to the symposium was a chilling report
by Dr. Nguyen Khac Vien, ‘‘The Lasting Conse-
quences of Chemical Warfare,’’ compiled from
studies by Vietnamese biologists and doctors. In the
report, published in Hanoi in the February issue of
Vietnam Courier, Dr. Vien generously points out that
‘American biologists ‘were the first to point to the
serious consequences of chemical warfare on the
vegetal environment” and to ask “distressing ques-
tions,’ while the war was still in progress. He cites
estimates by U.S. biologist Arthur H. Westing of the
amounts of lethal chemicals sprayed upon Vietnam:
a total of 44,300 cubic meters or 57 million kilograms
of Agent Orange, a mixture containing, all told, 170
kilograms of the extremely poisonous substance,
dioxin. es

His report is divided’ into two parts, one dealing
with the effects of the chemicals ‘‘on the natural
milieu, the ecological environment of Vietnam,” and
the other with the effects ‘‘on the health of the Viet-
namese population, given the carcinogenic,
teratogenic and mutagenic effects of dioxin, at pre-
sent and in the future.’’

The objectives of the U.S. chemical warfare pro-
gram, carried on from 1961 to 1975, with massive
sprayings occurring in 1967-1970, were to destroy
guerrilla refuges by wiping out extensive areas of
forest and other growth with defoliants, and to de-
stroy the guerrilla support base among the peasantry
by destroying food crops and thereby forcing the
peasants out of the countryside.

’ As Dr. Vien points out, at the same time that these
areas were being sprayed with chemicals, they were
also receiving colossal bombings and shellings com-
prising three times the tonnage dropped on all theat-
ers of operation during World War II.

Vast areas of forest were destroyed. Among the
immediate effects had been the falling off of leaves,
the drying up of tree trunks, the loss of crops, and the
killing of plants, insects, fish and animals.

The long-term effects, which continue to the pre-
sent and into the indefinite future, are if anything

William Pomeroy is a Daily World correspondent based in
London.

worse: disappearance of folial cover, erosion of the
soil, impoverishment of the soil, laterization, persis-
tence of harmful substances, replacement of natural
vegetation by tough grasses difficult to deal with, sec-
ondary vegetation susceptible to fire in the dry sea-
son, vanishing of honeybees, birds, fish, frogs and
snakes while great numbers of mosquitoes, leeches
and flies reappear after initial disappearance, impor-
tant changes in the climate due to loss of vegetal
cover. Natural regeneration has proven to be impos-

sible and artificial reforestation is extremely costly

and will take a long time to carry out.

As far as food crops are concerned, all vegetal
groups have been affected. After spraying, plants had
withered and died, but subsequently seeds have failed
to germinate or seedlings that did sprout soon died in
the contaminated soil.

Dr. Vien cites the effects upon specific forest
areas. The Ma Da forest, covering 30,000 hectares of
rolling hills 100 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh
City, had been a rich tropical forest:

The forest was a three-tiered one which could
yield up to 200 cubic meters of timber per hec-
tare. Many wild animals lived there: elephants,
tigers, panthers, bears, deer, roe deer, pythons,
a wide variety of other snakes, as well as
swarms of honeybees. Many species of medici-
nal plants which could be used in traditional
pharmacology grew there.

Today, after the chemical sprayings and the
bombings, 74% of the Ma Da forest is grassy Savanna
or clumps of degenerate bamboo, while the crowns of
the remaining 26% of forest are either gone or rav-
aged by insects and diseases. “‘Birds and other ani-
mals have become quite rare.”’

One of the main targets of the U.S. chemical war-
fare was the mangrove forest in the Mekong delta.
Here about 100,000 hectares were heavily sprayed, the
worst-affected being the 45,000 hectares of the Ca Mau
mangrove forest. This was a rich vegetal area, of
great economic value, where logging, charcoal mak-
ing, fishing, bird-catching and honey-gathering
yielded very good incomes to the inhabitants.

The results of the sprayings were devastating. At
present 30% of the region is still without vegetation,
while that which has regrown has harmful modifica-
tions. Waterways have silted up. Rich soil has been
ruined by salinity. The rich fauna has diminished al-
most to the vanishing point. Local fishermen who
used to get catches of 200 kilograms with simple
equipment in a night now take a meager 10 to 15% of
this. Regeneration could occur only over a very long
term.

In the A Luoi region, a valley 30 kilometers long
and 2-6 kilometers wide, chemical spraying was con-
ducted throughout the 15 years of U.S. destruction. A
militarily important region lying near the 17th paral-

Daily World file photos

(

U.S. planes spray chemicals on cultivated land in Vietnam in
1965

lel and the strategic Highway 9, it received concen: —
trated U.S. attention. Now it is one of Vietnam’s de-
sert areas; as Dr. Vien puts it, “the region has 2
sinister look” with “bare stumps of trees that have -
died.”

This was an area of highly abundant animal life,
where over 150 animal species thrived. The destruc:
tion of the fauna, says the report, ‘“‘was especially
spectacular.”’ Birds have gone, they have no fruits or
insects to eat. ‘In August 1981, in the midst of sum-
mer, a team of researchers working a whole night
caught only a few insects belonging to 10 different
species; in the ponds and rivers they found only three
kinds of frogs. . . . In 1981, no sizable mammal of any
value was found.”

The conclusion in regard to the A Luoi region could
be applied to many areas in Vietnam: “The regenera
tion of the flora and fauna has proved to be well-nigh
impossible. At any rate, it will call for immense e
forts and a very long time:” .

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 29, 1983—Page 4