In the late 1970s and early 1980s, reports persisted that the Soviet Union was using chemical and biological weaponry in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

Lao tribesmen described bombs unleashing clouds of colored gas and oily liquid. Some Dutch journalists covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan even filmed a Soviet helicopter dropping canisters emitting a yellow cloud on a village near Jalalabad, and the CIA sent in operatives into Southeast Asia to collect plant and tissue samples from areas where the attacks occurred.