In
1954, Ho Chi Minh’s government in the north and the French colonial
administration in the south agreed an armistice that involved a
‘temporary’ partition of Vietnam. The Ben Hai River, in the extreme
north of Quang Tri province, became the arbitrary line dividing the
two halves of the country.
When
the southern ‘government’, backed by the US, reneged on the national
elections promised in the agreement, Quang Tri became the theatre
where most of the important scenes of the Vietnam War were staged.
From then
until the early seventies when the Vietnamese army overwhelmed the
defences along the southern edge of the DMZ, Quang Tri was a
battlefield, one of the most intensively bombed areas in military
history. It left a barren desert created by hundreds of thousands of
tons of high explosive, estimated to be the equivalent of seven
Hiroshima atom bombs, as well as napalm, phosphorous and herbicide.
Today,
nature has reclaimed much of the land, but craters are visible almost
everywhere in the area.
It has been
estimated that nearly a third of the ordnance failed to explode.
Clearance is continuous, but there are still enough live landmines,
bombs and shells to add to the tens of thousands of children and adults
killed or maimed by unexploded ordnance since 1975. The numbers are
dropping, but incidents of death or injury among local people are
reported almost every week.
Accidents
affect children walking to and from school or the market who mistake
grenades for toys, farmers ploughing or planting crops, building workers
digging wells or laying foundations, and poor peasants attempting to
dismantle a bomb or shell to sell the scrap metal for a small amount of
cash.
The main
sites and paths are now free of danger, but venturing off the beaten
track is unwise unless you’re accompanied by a professional guide.
Apart from
war memorabilia, little remains of the pre-war towns and villages.
Nevertheless, there are a couple places of interest beyond those
directly linked to the war.
Quang Tri
town, once an important citadel town and the provincial capital, is
mostly an evocative ruin. There are a few remains of the citadel, built
in 1824 by King Minh Mang, but not much else.
On the
other hand, Dong Ha, the present provincial capital, has flourished. It
has a large deepwater port, a direct route to Laos via the Lao Bao
border gate 80kn to the west, and is likely to be an important hub on
the planned trans-Asia highway. It has a decent hotel and is a good
centre from which to explore the DMZ in depth.
Near the
Laos border, Huong Hoa is a unremarkable small town in the foothills of
the Annamite mountains. Formerly known as Khe Sanh, it’s known for the
coffee produced from plantations developed by the French. The interest
for our visitors is a German project linking Kraft Foods Germany and the
Dutch ‘Douwe Egberts’ coffee company with a Vietnamese Arabica coffee
producer to develop high quality coffee without exploiting the farmers
or damaging the environment.
A sizable
proportion of Huong Hoa’s population is poor Bru Van Kieu ethnic
minority people – you’ll probably meet women smoking long-stemmed pipes.
