<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;">&nbsp;As global tributes to late US diplomat Henry Kissinger poured in, his death stirred fury across Southeast Asia.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Homage has been paid to Kissinger’s realpolitik and intellectual heft as secretary of state to US presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.</div><div><br></div><div>But in Southeast Asia, millions have remembered when the US bombed swathes of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, an onslaught ordered by Kissinger and Nixon.</div><div><br></div><div>“Every single time I hear Kissinger’s name, my blood boils,” Sera Koulabdara, who fled Laos with her family at age six, told AFP.</div><div><br></div><div>The bombing was a failed attempt to disrupt rebel movements and strengthen Washington’s hand as it pulled out of Vietnam.</div><div><br></div><div>Koulabdara said her father remembered the bombing.</div><div><br></div><div>“He described it as a roaring rain, but instead of water, it was flames.”</div><div><br></div><div>Laos became the world’s most-bombed country per capita from 1964 to 1973 as the US dropped more than two million tonnes of ordnance, equal to a plane load of bombs every eight minutes.</div><div><br></div><div>Since then, unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the impoverished country has killed or wounded at least 20,000 Laotians.</div><div><br></div><div>“The life-threatening problem that exists in Laos is a direct result of the US’s barbaric decisions and one of the main architects, Kissinger,” said Koulabdara, who heads advocacy group Legacies of War. - AFP&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>