Introduction
During the early years of the French Indochina War, it appeared that the country and people of Laos might escape the worst of the violence that engulfed other parts of French Indochina. Prince Phetsarath, a central figure in the emergence of Lao nationalism, proclaimed the independence of Laos on September 15, 1945, less than two weeks after Hồ Chí Minh had done the same for Vietnam. But as Hồ’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN) and France drifted toward full-scale war during 1946, Laos appeared to take a different path. After colonial forces reoccupied Laos in the spring of 1946, Lao leaders opted to negotiate with France to gain a measure of self-government. A constitution was promulgated on May 11, 1947, paving the way for Laos to become a constitutional monarchy and an Associated State within the French Union in July 1949. King Sisavang Vong’s proclamation in 1948 of an amnesty for nationalists who had fled the country led to the dissolution of the government-in-exile of the Lao Issara (the Lao independence movement) in October 1949 and the return of most of its members to Laos. A formal transfer of powers to the Royal Lao Government (RLG) was signed on February 6, 1950, although the French retained key prerogatives, including control over internal security and extraterritorial jurisdiction. The RLG’s first government was formed in the same month. The United States and Britain swiftly accorded diplomatic recognition to the Kingdom of Laos the day following the transfer of powers.
In the end, however, the war did not spare Laos. In April 1953, the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) invaded northeastern Laos in April 1953 in support of their Lao allies, the Pathet Lao (the generic term for the Lao revolutionary movement). Under the able command of General Võ Nguyên Giáp, Hồ’s forces captured the entire province of Huaphan and occupied areas of Phongsaly and Xieng Khuang – a territory of more than 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers). For the Pathet Lao, these moves provided direct access to DRVN territory and resources and consolidated their control over a revolutionary base area isolated from the rest of Laos by mountainous terrain.
These base areas were equally important to the DRVN. The creation of a “liberated zone” in northern and eastern Laos along the highly permeable Vietnamese frontier allowed the PAVN to link its main base areas in the far north of Vietnam to other DRVN-controlled areas in the central region of the country, thus creating what Christopher Goscha aptly describes as a vast “sickle-shaped” crescent of contiguous territory wrapped around the Tonkin Delta. The Spring 1953 invasion thus revealed the enormous strategic importance of eastern Laos for DRVN leaders and military commanders.Footnote 1
Through their own prisms, French and American officials also perceived the strategic significance of Laos. It was in part to defend the northern region of Laos (with whom the French government had recently signed a mutual defense treaty in October 1953) that General Navarre, the penultimate French commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Indochina, decided to confront the DRVN on the Vietnamese side of the Lao border. He did so by concentrating French forces at the outpost of Điện Biên Phủ, located nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of Hanoi. The PAVN siege of the French garrison there began on March 13, 1954. It lasted for nearly two months and ended with the surrender of the French troops on May 7. The following day, the Geneva Conference opened, leading to a ceasefire and the ostensibly temporary partition of Vietnam, as well as confirmation of the independence of the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia.
In the aftermath of Geneva, the United States sought to transform both Laos and the Saigon-based Republic of Vietnam (RVN) into anticommunist “bastions.” Such a policy, American leaders hoped, could save Thailand, if not the whole of Southeast Asia, from a communist takeover. The salience of the “domino theory,” along with geographical realities, competing Lao nationalist forces, the Vietnamese communists’ transnational military planning, superpower Cold War politics, and other aspects of US policy in Southeast Asia, are essential to the understanding of Laos’ civil war and its long descent into a vortex of political instability and violence beginning in the late 1950s. Nevertheless, this story is more than just a tragic tale of an underdeveloped country engulfed in a conflict over which it had little control. During the crucial decade of 1954–64, between the end of the French Indochina War and the escalation of the Vietnam War, Lao groups and leaders played key roles in Indochinese politics. In these years, Laos was the focus of international negotiations that briefly raised hopes for peace; it was also the site of the construction of new states and its citizens experienced unprecedented social, cultural, and economic changes. Laos and the Lao people thus helped to write the fate of all of Indochina, even as they also shaped the interventions of the United States and other foreign powers in the conflict that became known as the Vietnam War.
The Geneva Accords and the Road to a Coalition Government
At the beginning of the Geneva Conference on May 8, 1954, two Lao parties claimed national sovereignty: the French-backed RLG and the Pathet Lao resistance government, which had been created with DRVN support. The latter were led by Prince Souphanouvong, a member of the Luang Phrabang royal family and a French-trained engineer later known as “the Red Prince.” In 1949, Souphanouvong’s faction of the Lao Issara chose to continue the armed struggle against the French in alliance with the Việt Minh. On August 13, 1950, the prince convened a congress in northern Vietnam that proceeded, with the encouragement of the DRVN, to elect a new resistance government with Souphanouvong as its leader. A subsequent meeting held in November 1950 provided the Pathet Lao with a new political movement, the Neo Lao Issara (the Free Laos Front), modeled on the Việt Minh.
The DRVN failed in its quest to have separate delegations for the resistance governments in Laos and Cambodia represented in Geneva. Instead, the RLG was recognized as the legitimate government of the country, and the kingdom’s independence and territorial integrity were affirmed. Nevertheless, the powers that endorsed the accords – the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – agreed that the Pathet Lao should continue to occupy the two eastern provinces of Phongsaly and Huaphan and should be allowed to regroup troops in those areas pending a negotiated agreement on their political, administrative, and military integration into the RLG system. In allowing the administration of these two provinces by the Pathet Lao, the Geneva Accords implicitly endorsed the group’s transition from a localized guerrilla force to a national political movement, thus conferring a measure of legitimacy, despite the lack of official recognition as a government.
The Geneva Accords also stated that Laos should neither participate in a military alliance nor allow foreign powers to establish bases on its territory unless it came under direct foreign threat. Foreign military forces – that is, French troops and pro-DRVN Vietnamese “volunteers” – were to withdraw from the country within four months, although up to 1,500 French soldiers were allowed to stay for the purpose of training the Royal Lao Army (RLA). But in practice, these provisions of the accords remained hollow. Enforcement mechanisms were nonexistent, nor were there sufficient personnel on the ground to verify and control foreign military interference, particularly in the remote areas of eastern Laos. Consequently, in the following years, both the RLG and the Pathet Lao continued to strengthen their military forces with the disguised support of the United States and the DRVN, respectively.
Souvanna Phouma’s Reconciliation Policy
The Geneva-mandated division of Laos was similar to that imposed on Vietnam: a territorial partition that ended the fighting but failed to establish the conditions for lasting peace. Vietnam’s division into nearly equal-sized northern and southern “regoupment zones” reflected the new balance of power in Indochina – the United States’ determination to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam mirrored the DRVN’s commanding military and political position in the North. The envisioned process of reunification of both Laos and Vietnam was vaguely defined in the Final Declaration at Geneva. But while the Ngô Đình Diệm government rejected consultations with the DRVN as proposed in the Geneva Accords (the State of Vietnam, led by Bảo Đại and Diệm, had refused to sign the accords) the leadership of the RLG took a different approach. For the moderates within the RLG, the integration of the Pathet Lao into the national body was critical to restoring the kingdom’s territorial and political unity. Prince Souvanna Phouma, the RLG’s most important leader and a cosmopolitan member of the Luang Phrabang royal family, embodied the reconciliation policy.Footnote 2 As prime minister, he advocated for the integration of the Pathet Lao leaders and soldiers into the RLG’s political system. Souvanna Phouma believed that his policy would pull the Pathet Lao away from the DRVN and boost the prospect of a neutral, nonaligned Laos. He was also convinced that Souphanouvong (who happened to be his half-brother) was not a communist and that all Pathet Lao leaders and supporters should be treated as fellow nationalists. Unbeknownst to Souvanna Phouma and to most Lao, Souphanouvong was in fact one of the earliest members of the Lao Communist Party. Ideology mattered more to the Red Prince than his half-brother believed.
In Souvanna Phouma’s view, Laos could not afford to openly take sides in the Global Cold War. He deemed neutralism the best policy to ensure minimal interference from outside powers and thereby the country’s peace and stability. More specifically, his foreign policy aimed to reduce DRVN and PRC involvement in Lao affairs as a means of defusing the threat posed by the Pathet Lao. The prince’s visits to Beijing and Hanoi in August 1956 reflected this strategy. Mao Zedong reassured Souvanna Phouma of China’s support for his neutralist line and policy of reconciliation with the Pathet Lao. In fact, what mattered most to Chinese (and Vietnamese) leaders was the particular form of Laos’ neutrality – or, as Zhou Enlai put it to Souvanna Phouma, “[not allowing] the United States to enter [Lao] territory.”Footnote 3 Still, the second half of the 1950s seemed to offer favorable conditions for pursuing a neutralist course. In the wake of the Bandung Conference in April 1955, leaders of newly postcolonial states (including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Burma, and Sri Lanka) envisioned an alternative international order that leaned neither to the Soviet nor to the American side and rejected Cold War ideological binaries.
Negotiations between the RLG and the Pathet Lao dragged on, however, hampered by suspicions on both sides. A government headed by Katay Don Sasorith, a prominent conservative nationalist, led the country between November 1954 and March 1956 and took a harder line toward the Pathet Lao. PL leaders demanded treatment as an equal partner and assurances that their armed forces and political representation would not be dissolved once they had been reintegrated into the national fold. The irony was that as Souvanna Phouma strove for the admission of Souphanouvong and his cohorts into the Kingdom of Laos’ national community, the Pathet Lao worked to strengthen its separate ideological foundations and political structures. The organization’s political growth reached a milestone on March 22, 1955, when the Lao People’s Party (LPP) was created in total secrecy. Kaysone Phomvihane became its first General Secretary. With the formation of a new (and clandestine) Communist Party in Laos, the Pathet Lao completed its conversion to a fully orthodox communist-dominated organization in the image of the existing Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP).
Nevertheless, Souvanna Phouma’s reconciliation policy found an unexpected ally in the DRVN. Vietnamese communist leaders encouraged the Pathet Lao to accept Souvanna Phouma’s proposals after the latter regained the position of prime minister in August 1957.Footnote 4 There were several reasons for the DRVN’s conciliatory attitude. First, Hanoi, preoccupied by its own problems with agrarian reform in North Vietnam, was advocating for “peaceful political struggle” in the South to achieve the reunification of Vietnam. Second, the DRVN’s covert support to the Pathet Lao continued, including the maintenance of a significant presence in northeastern Laos in the form of hundreds of “advisors” who stayed behind rather than withdrawing as required by the Geneva Accords. By late 1956, therefore, the DRVN was sufficiently confident in the political and military viability of their Lao allies to believe that they could stand their ground in a coalition government with the RLG and expand their influence more effectively through peaceful negotiations. Last and most important, Hanoi attentively watched the negotiations between the two Lao parties in the hope that the Lao neutralization example might be transferable to the Republic of Vietnam.Footnote 5 For a short while, the threat of military conflict receded in Laos.
The Vientiane Agreements – the first of three coalition agreements during the life of the RLG – were endorsed in a joint communiqué by Souvanna Phouma and Souphanouvong on November 2, 1957. Demobilization of the Pathet Lao forces began soon after. Some 6,000 fighters returned to their villages, while the 1,500 Pathet Lao officers and soldiers chosen for integration into the Royal Army were grouped into two battalions. On November 18, Prince Souphanouvong handed over the two northern provinces of Huaphan and Phongsaly to Crown Prince Savang Vatthana, representing the king. Twelve years after Prince Phetsarath’s declaration of independence, Lao unity appeared within reach. Despite weakening its initial demands, the Pathet Lao had reason to be satisfied since the accords enhanced its political standing. It had two ministers in the coalition government – Souphanouvong as minister for planning, reconstruction, and urbanization, and Phoumi Vongvichit as minister for religion and fine arts. In addition, the Neo Lao Hak Xat (Lao Patriotic Front), the LPP’s overt political arm founded in January 1956, was entitled to campaign as a nationally recognized party across the country in general elections.
American Opposition to Reconciliation and the RLG’s Shift to the Right
The Government of National Union headed by Souvanna Phouma was a setback for the United States, which by the mid-1950s was replacing France as the dominant Western power in Laos. Eisenhower administration officials were deeply skeptical of Souvanna Phouma, whom they believed was naive about Pathet Lao intentions. Washington was thus determined to keep the communists out of the RLG governing system by all means short of direct military intervention. American officials were convinced that the “loss” of Laos would seriously damage the United States’ credibility in Southeast Asia among its allies vis-à-vis its containment policy against the DRVN and, above all, the PRC, which the United States saw as the main threat to the “Free World” in Asia.
US efforts to undermine the unity government began almost as soon as it was created. The partial success of leftist candidates in the supplementary parliamentary elections of May 1958 in the provinces of Huaphan and Phongsaly provoked a shift to the right within the RLG and in Lao politics in general – a shift that American officials actively encouraged. Washington suspended all economic aid to Laos following the election results, forcing Souvanna Phouma’s resignation and the collapse of the coalition government. The rift deepened in July 1959 when Prince Souphanouvong and fifteen of his comrades were charged with treason and imprisoned in Vientiane. The arrests came after the Pathet Lao’s 2nd Battalion had failed to comply with the RLG’s May order to integrate into the Royal Army and instead had swiftly fled to the DRVN; later in the summer, elements of the 1st Battalion of the Pathet Lao forces also made their escape. The newly appointed US-backed government, headed by General Phoui Sananikone, a rightist leader from Vientiane, declared the Pathet Lao move an act of rebellion for which there could be only a military solution.Footnote 6 As prime minister, Phoui developed closer ties with the United States and Thailand, resulting in an increase of Western economic and military aid.
The American intrigues in Laos coincided with new moves by the DRVN. In January 1959, the DRVN party leadership authorized the use of armed force on a limited scale in the Republic of Vietnam. The new rebellion would subsequently be led by the National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam (NLF), formally established the following year. In May, PAVN leaders began preparing the Hồ Chí Minh Trail (a complex network of tracks, roads, and rivers that ran through eastern Laos, the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and eastern Cambodia) to supply men, weapons, and other materials to the war effort in South Vietnam.
In July 1959, the United States sent its first counterguerrilla specialists (Army Special Forces units known as “Green Berets”) to organize, train, and equip Lao forces, including Hmong paramilitary units in Xieng Khuang province. These activities were run out of the embassy’s “Program Evaluation Office” – a military mission operating under cover as a civilian aid program. War had not yet returned to Laos, but peace seemed an increasingly doubtful proposition.
Two Competing Nation-State-Building Projects
To fully comprehend the transformational impacts of the Vietnam and Cold Wars in Laos it is critical to broaden the analysis and look beyond the power plays of political elites in Vientiane. In the aftermath of the Geneva Conference, the two governments rushed to consolidate their authority within their respective zones of control. As neither the Pathet Lao nor the RLG had sufficient resources to build new physical and human infrastructure, both entities relied heavily on the support of their foreign allies. The RLG set about constructing the new state, initially with substantial French assistance, then with the massive financial support of the United States.
Although France had formally transferred governing authority to the RLG in February 1950, the state’s sovereignty remained incomplete. Although ministries such as health, education, agriculture and industry, and foreign trade were placed under Lao direction, the French maintained significant control over finance, justice, and defense. Moreover, French personnel (e.g., teachers, doctors, technicians, military instructors) continued to serve in government posts for years after independence, due to the failure of the colonial education system to produce a well-educated workforce in Laos. In the late 1940s, only 400 civil servants and 700 technical cadres were employed by the government; more than 200 French teachers were still teaching in Lao secondary schools in 1965.Footnote 7
The RLG passed a law in 1951 instituting compulsory, free, three-year primary education for all children. More than 95,000 pupils were enrolled in 1,463 primary schools (grades 1–6) by 1958, though this corresponded to only about one-third of the estimated 300,000 students eligible for primary education at the time.Footnote 8 Only Vientiane had a lycée (up to grade 13), and that one school had only been upgraded from a lower-level collège in 1947. Health infrastructure was rudimentary and included just six hospitals (all located in major towns) in 1950.Footnote 9 Transport and communication infrastructure was lacking; in the mid-1950s barely 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) of roads (85% of which were unsurfaced) crossed the country.Footnote 10 Large-scale industries or commercial agriculture were virtually nonexistent. Most consumer goods were imported from neighbouring Thailand and then sold mainly or exclusively in urban areas, which remained mostly isolated from the rest of the country. Improvements in air transportation put the capital on the regional airline map (though services only included allied nations). By 1959, four international commercial airlines operated flights from Vientiane to Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Saigon. Royal Lao Air was founded in 1962, serving both domestic and regional destinations.
The country was underdeveloped by the standards of a modern economy, though in the minds of most inhabitants such a yardstick probably meant little. The overwhelming majority of the population were peasants whose livelihood relied on subsistence farming and, in some areas, on small-scale trade. The state in the nominally RLG-controlled regions barely existed in peasants’ daily lives, except through the presence of a teacher and, very occasionally, a nurse staffing a rural dispensary.
In the absence of substantial revenue streams – the taxation system was notably ineffective – and facing rising expenditures, the RLG constantly ran chronic budget deficits and required foreign aid for its economic survival. By the mid-1950s, the United States was by far the largest source of development assistance to Laos. The United States Operations Mission (USOM), the American economic aid program in the country, was launched in January 1955 in Vientiane. It expanded to include a “civilian” military assistance program headed by a Programs Evaluation Office (PEO) set up in December of that year, which operated as a quasi-Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) comparable to that operating in South Vietnam. An actual MAAG would be officially established in Laos in 1961. Between 1955 and 1963 Laos received a higher amount of aid per capita than either the Republic of Vietnam or Cambodia.Footnote 11 Three-quarters of US aid was used to fund the army and the police. In 1955, the United States provided the entire military and police budgets and oversaw the expansion of the RLA from 15,000 to 25,000 soldiers a year later. Other state institutions received a much smaller share of the funding: aid for development projects (education, rural development) accounted for only about 10% of the total US assistance between 1955 and 1957.Footnote 12 These funds were often misdirected, resulting in wasteful and counterproductive projects.
In late 1957, in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, J. Graham Parsons, the US Ambassador to Laos, launched Operation Booster Shot as part of the battle of “winning hearts and minds” in the rural areas. Parsons, who aggressively opposed Souvanna Phouma’s efforts to build a coalition government, believed that “neutralism was synonymous with anti-Americanism.”Footnote 13 He was also fearful that Pathet Lao gains in the elections would hand them the control of rural areas. Parsons’ program lavished more than $3 million on highly visible economic aid projects to villages. But such opportunistic initiatives often backfired, reinforcing in the minds of Lao villagers the reality of their country’s dependence on foreign aid and the United States’ unsubtle influence in Laos. This resentment was readily exploited by the Pathet Lao in its propaganda. The leftist camp’s electoral gains in May 1958 actually reflected a de facto reality: the country was effectively divided between the Vientiane-based RLG backed by the United States, and the Pathet Lao supported by the DRVN. The politicization of the Lao countryside was bluntly described by French officials as a state of pourriture (rot), with zones pourries (contaminated zones) that were Pathet Lao-controlled.Footnote 14 No longer an open military conflict, the struggle between the Vientiane regime and the Pathet Lao government morphed into a political contest and, on the ground, a hide-and-seek pursuit of Pathet Lao activists, who remained elusive by blending into the population.
The massive influx of American dollars into a newly independent country with nascent political institutions and basic socioeconomic infrastructure had a corrosive effect. Generous salaries paid to soldiers and police officers (real or on a fictitious payroll) were spent on imported goods that flooded the markets, creating a novel consumer and entertainment economy. There was a surge in the construction of new offices, schools, hotels, movie theaters, embassies, apartments, and houses in Vientiane (often to accommodate newly arrived foreigners). The overall effects were rising inflation and a growing trade deficit. The considerably overvalued Kip, the national currency, was manipulated through exploitation of the black-market exchange rate and import licenses by well-connected businessmen (mostly Chinese, but also including members of the Lao political leadership). This contributed to the expansion of an affluent urban elite in an overwhelmingly materially poor country by the late 1950s.
The impacts of US aid were not limited to the social and economic realms. The influx of dollars also heightened ambitions and deepened divisions among the Lao political elite. In particular, anticommunist politicians and army officers, and others who opportunistically echoed the United States’ Cold War rhetoric, were able to consolidate their power, wealth, and influence by channeling US funding to their networks of clients.
Phoumi Nosavan was one such phu nyai (literally, “big man”). A major general of the RLA from southern Laos, he was a leading member of a staunchly anticommunist and pro-American political organization, the Committee for the Defence of the National Interest (CDNI). Phoumi was firmly backed by the Pentagon and the CIA who saw him as “their man” and the best challenger to Souvanna Phouma’s neutralist line at the end of the 1950s. The United States, with its mighty finances and political maneuvers, helped the army to carve out a central place in Lao politics.
Nevertheless, the interwar period was characterized by a certain optimism born of a sense of living at the beginning of a new era. In the words of a former senior Lao civil servant: “We were so optimistic. Everything was in front of us. The country was peaceful and we felt we could create the world anew.”Footnote 15 Public works began on government buildings, roads, and schools. The construction of the National Assembly started in late 1952. A school of public administration, a school of medicine, and a teacher-training school (later to become the National University of Laos) were opened in the late 1950s. Key emblems and institutions of national sovereignty were created in the early 1950s, including the National Police (1951), the National Treasury (1952), the Customs Department (1952), and the National Postal Service (the first Lao stamps were issued in November 1951). In the same period, a Literature Committee – later the Royal Lao Academy – was established. Under its auspices, a Lao-language dictionary by the prominent historian, Maha Sila Viravong, was published, as well as many pieces of traditional Lao literature and books on Lao grammar, religion, and culture. The Kingdom of Laos entered the young community of independent Southeast Asian nation-states eager to bolster their national identities. Laos’ National Games – initiated by Phoumi Nosavan and first organized in 1961 – offered a spectacular and unique stage for the display and performance of national unity (samakki) and progress (charoen) from all the kingdom’s provinces and their athletes.Footnote 16 Phoumi was by then the strongman of Laos, wielding power through patronage and the threat of physical violence, but also by crafting images and discourses – however staged and short-lived – of a national leader ruling over a bounded territory and a united people.
The Building of a Party-State and the Making of a “New People”
In addition to military and political training, the Vietnamese communists supported the Pathet Lao forces by means of considerable financial and material assistance. The LPP in the late 1950s had only a few hundred members and limited combat forces; the early growth of the Pathet Lao military and political apparatus was sustained only through the extensive support of the DRVN. After the signing of the Geneva Accords, the Vietnamese left hundreds of “advisors” behind in Phongsaly and Huaphan provinces. They were part of a special military advisory group to aid the Pathet Lao Army known as Đoàn 100 (Group 100) created on July 16, 1954, less than a week before the conclusion of the Geneva negotiations. Đoàn 100 oversaw the transformation of the Pathet Lao into a military and political force strong enough to withstand outside pressure by the late 1950s. The Vietnamese communists never envisaged the Lao Revolution as anything other than a Vietnamese-led effort, since they viewed Indochina as a single battlefield. From Hanoi’s perspective, their Lao and Cambodian comrades had to be guided and led by the Vietnamese if they were to carry out their share of a genuine Indochinese revolution.Footnote 17
Đoàn 100 oversaw the creation of infantry, technical, and logistical battalions and the recruitment and training of thousands of Pathet Lao soldiers operating at all levels, from the province down to the village. Basic health infrastructure (i.e., training of medical personnel and construction of provincial hospitals) was developed in the mid-1950s for cadres, military officers, and soldiers, with the assistance of the DRVN. These foundations were expanded in the 1960s and 1970s to provide health services (health facilities, medical schools, village-based basic health care, and so on) for combatants and civilians alike in the “liberated zones” across the country.
Alongside its military forces, the Pathet Lao needed a political apparatus. Between late 1954 and 1957, Đoàn 100 selected and taught hundreds of cadres and military officers via intensive courses in political propaganda, administration, mobilization techniques, and ideological indoctrination in newly built schools in Phongsaly and Huaphan. Some Pathet Lao recruits studied in Vietnamese military and political institutions (albeit in more limited numbers). The top-ranking members of the LPP – Souphanouvong, Kaysone Phomvihane, Nouhak Phoumsavanh, and Sisavath Keobounphanh, among others – all had close ties with the Vietnamese communists that dated back more than a decade. In contrast to the vexed relations between the Vietnamese Workers’ Party and the Communist Party of Kampuchea, no serious divergence seems to have disturbed this partnership.
The return of a hard-line pro-American government in Vientiane in 1959 temporarily marked the end of the “legal [political] struggle” in Laos for the Vietnamese and Lao communist leaders. Pathet Lao leaders – chief among them Kaysone, who was also the commander-in-chief of the Pathet Lao Army – exhorted their troops to strengthen their minds and bodies in order to withstand a protracted armed struggle.Footnote 18 Meanwhile, the DRVN upgraded Đoàn 100 to form a new Vietnamese advisory unit, known as Đoàn 959. Based at Na Kay, inside the border of Huaphan, it directed the reinforcement of Pathet Lao political and military structures across eastern Laos.
The communist revolution began in the eastern regions of the country and slowly spread westward, only moving into the lowland and urban zones of the Mekong Valley at the end of the war in the 1970s. The LPP strove to build a new society in the mostly mountainous and less populated areas it controlled, with the construction of a future socialist state forming its leadership’s vision. The communists used appeals, propaganda, and coercion to mobilize and organize civilians to contribute to the war effort as farmers, taxpayers, porters, teachers, and soldiers. In this way they succeeded – albeit slowly and painfully – in building a society that not only fit their wartime needs but could also be incorporated into the future postwar socialist state. After the Geneva Conference, thousands of Pathet Lao recruits traveled to Phongsaly and Huaphan provinces to be trained as students, soldiers, or cadres. The majority of these men and women had humble and ethnic-minority origins, and they were marked by the depth of their devotion to the revolutionary struggle against the Americans and their RLG allies.
In the districts (muang), subdistricts (tasseng), and villages (ban) that lay inside the Pathet Lao “liberated zones,” old officials and elders were abruptly removed and replaced by the “correct” leadership. Revolutionary cadres were determined to stamp out – by violence if necessary – the customs, attitudes, and “superstitious” religious practices of villagers that were deemed to be obstructing the foundation of a socialist society. On the other hand, the Lao revolutionary movement attempted as early as the 1950s to assert its political legitimacy among the population by attracting the support of the Buddhist Sangha (or at least some of its members) for its ideological cause and political and social programs. Prince Souphanouvong and Phoumi Vongvichit were very aware of the political potential of the Sangha and the use of Buddhist symbols. They strove to bring Buddhist and Marxist ideologies together discursively as, in their view, they shared identical principles, including that of intrinsic equality among all individuals.
Education was a high priority for the Pathet Lao. The resistance government of 1950 had included a ministry of education. Contrary to the RLG’s notion of “neutral education,” in the words of Kaysone Phomvihane, education “always aimed to serve the political duties of the Party” by supporting indoctrination and management training, as well as serving as an instrument of class struggle.Footnote 19 The education campaign was focused on the spread of basic adult literacy and primary teaching. It was estimated that 10 percent of the adult population was enrolled in the “people’s education” (pasaseuksa) program – teaching both academic and political subjects – in the communist-administered zones in 1969.Footnote 20 In tandem with the nationalist appeal to fight against the “American imperialists,” the Pathet Lao employed the positive appeal of the promise of education for the young recruits. Makeshift primary schools were built in the liberated districts and provinces wherever possible. Teachers were rapidly trained and sent to the more remote villages to educate an overwhelmingly illiterate population. By the late 1950s, several secondary schools with dormitories had been built and supplied with textbooks. The most promising students were also sent to the DRVN, where they studied in boarding schools (some of which, in the vicinity of Hanoi, were reserved exclusively for hosting Lao children).Footnote 21
The mentality of Pathet Lao recruits, especially the younger ones, was forged by their shared experience with this educational apparatus, as well as by the everyday experience and strains of the liberation struggle. Mayoury Ngaosyvathn, a Lao academic, recalled: “A woman was simultaneously a worker, a member of the militia, a vegetable farmer, and a student or a teacher attending classes, in conformity with the motto, ‘study well and teach well.’”Footnote 22 Learning together in adversity provided at times the best environment for forging a new community in which Lao individuals of varied ethnic and regional origins felt united around the same cause as never before. Collective education certainly did not produce the same effects on all young students (resentment and evasion were common). Nevertheless, war and revolution in the countryside of eastern Laos offered social mobility to people of diverse ethnic origins and often humble socioeconomic backgrounds, and thereby contributed to their integration into society after the seizure of power by the communists in 1975. From the mid-1950s, a revolutionary Laos was built through the creation of political institutions and military structures, territorial consolidation, and mass mobilization. It also took shape in the minds and imaginations of its followers.
Renewed Civil War and the Crisis of 1959–62
On August 9, 1960, a coup d’état led by Captain Kong Le of the RLA exploded onto the Lao political landscape. The objectives of the young commander of the 2nd Paratroop Battalion were simple, yet daunting: stopping the fighting among the Lao and restoring neutrality and peace to the country. The coup that nobody expected brought Souvanna Phouma back to power after Kong Le called for him to be reinstated as prime minister.
This was not an ordinary putsch. Kong Le was celebrated by Vientiane residents, especially the youth and civil servants, as a savior who stood up to foreign interference and against the greed and corruption that enriched a minority (including army officers, much to the captain’s disgust). Kong Le, for his audacious and idealistic action, entered Lao historical folklore. But his coup left unresolved the perennial frailty of Souvanna Phouma’s government. The Lao statesman’s military power base was never strong, and Phoumi Nosavan (who was defense minister in the deposed cabinet) continued to enjoy the support of most of the military regions’ commanders and had the financial backing of the CIA. Thus, despite Souvanna Phouma’s attempts to accommodate right-wing leaders, none of them joined the new government. The rift between the neutralists and the rightists further worsened after a blockade was imposed on Vientiane by Marshall Sarit Thanarat, Thailand’s prime minister and strongman. The blockade prompted Souvanna Phouma to call on the Soviet Union to airlift fuel and rice supplies to the capital. The Lao government and Moscow established diplomatic relations on October 5, 1960.
A countercoup headed by Phoumi on December 13, 1960, recaptured Vientiane after fierce fighting, resulting in hundreds of casualties and wrecking large parts of the city. Phoumi’s attack forced Kong Le and his soldiers to retreat northward where they established a base on the Plain of Jars. Souvanna Phouma went into exile in Phnom Penh. The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Thailand immediately recognized the new Lao government headed by Prince Boun Oum, from the royal family of Champassak (southern Laos), with Phoumi as his deputy and defense minister. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, China, and the DRVN refused to recognize the new regime and continued to treat Souvanna Phouma as the legitimate leader of Laos. Both the Soviet Union and China – already battling for the leadership of the global communist bloc – strongly protested the right-wing faction’s coup. In late December, a meeting between Kaysone Phomvihane and Kong Le forged a coalition between the neutralists and Pathet Lao troops against Phoumi’s army.Footnote 23 Large amounts of Soviet military aid channeled via the DRVN to assist Kong Le’s neutralist troops were, in fact, diverted to support the Pathet Lao armed forces and were soon augmented by supplies from the PRC. Laos had moved to the center of Cold War tensions and attention.
The Great Powers and the Search for a Neutral Laos
The Pathet Lao’s forces and Kong Le’s neutralist troops were far superior combatants to Phoumi’s RLA. In the first few months following the battle of Vientiane, the former seized control of the territories and population of most of northern and eastern Laos. RLA troops fought back, but were unable to stop the Pathet Lao forces, which had been transformed into a powerful regular army by the infusion of Chinese and Soviet weapons and ammunition (Figure 18.1).
Figure 18.1 Royal Lao soldiers prepare a mortar gun to try to stop the advance of communist forces (April 1961).
By contrast, the dismal performance of Phoumi’s RLA (as well as difficult terrain that would have presented a major challenge to US regular forces had they become involved) compelled US President John F. Kennedy, in power since January 1961, to consider diplomatic alternatives to military intervention. The disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 made him even less inclined to engage United States forces in a distant foreign land. Moreover, Washington could not rely on its allies’ support, as the United Kingdom and France rejected the military option. Kennedy was also fearful of provoking Chinese military intervention. Although he had run for office on the promise of a more robust foreign policy that would bolster the United States’ credibility among its allies around the world, Kennedy showed unorthodox flexibility on the diplomatic front. In a dramatic shift from his predecessor’s policy in Laos, he chose the neutralist path out of the crisis and recognized that Souvanna Phouma, ever the man of conciliation, could be part of the political solution.
This is not to deny that Cold War ideological thinking influenced the young president’s strategy in Laos. The Kennedy administration was particularly hostile toward China. By supporting a more neutral Laos, Kennedy hoped to contain China’s – perceived or real – hegemonic ambitions over the whole of Southeast Asia. The US president also continued to fund covert counterinsurgency operations in Laos. In 1959, the CIA had begun to recruit Hmong people who inhabited the highly strategic Plain of Jars in Xieng Khuang province (as well as men from other upland populations, such as the Mien and the Khmu). These fighters would become the nucleus of a new anticommunist army, born of the realization that the RLA would never be an efficient and reliable instrument despite the huge sums of money spent on it.
Kennedy’s diplomacy was encouraged by the Soviet Union’s involvement in Laos in favor of the country’s neutrality. The Soviets’ conciliatory attitude was motivated by their more pressing priority (as well as Kennedy’s) at the time: the status of West Berlin in Europe. The political leadership in both the United States and the Soviet Union were therefore determined to remove Laos as a source of tensions and a potential trigger of armed conflict between the East and the West. On April 24, 1961, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom – the two co-chairs of the 1954 Geneva Conference – issued a joint appeal for a ceasefire and invitations to twelve countries to attend an “International Conference on the Laotian Question” (known as the “Second Geneva Conference”). The conference in Geneva was convened on May 16, 1961, following a provisional ceasefire.
It was one thing, however, for the two superpowers to pledge to be responsible for their respective allies’ cooperation in acquiescing to a coalition government in Laos, but quite another for the DRVN, China, the Pathet Lao, Thailand, and the Lao rightists to actually provide such cooperation. In consequence, negotiations in Geneva dragged on. Washington, through the travails of the US ambassador to Laos and chief negotiator at the conference, W. Averell Harriman, laboriously coerced Phoumi Nosavan – still benefiting from the CIA’s (now unsanctioned) backing – into entering the neutralist government.
Moscow’s limited leverage over the Pathet Lao and the Vietnamese communist forces was evident in the events during the battle of Namtha in May 1962, when the communist troops inflicted a crushing defeat on Phoumi’s 5,000-man army. During his earlier visit to Beijing, Souphanouvong had been urged by Chinese leaders to go on the attack before joining a coalition government because “the final settlement on Laos would be decided by force.”Footnote 24 In contrast, Moscow, irritated by China’s influence over the Pathet Lao, tried to dissuade Souphanouvong from attacking the town of Namtha. This disagreement reflected the developing Sino-Soviet rift (Mao disapproved of Krushchev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the United States) that grew wider after the end of the Second Geneva Conference. In helping the Pathet Lao, Beijing aimed to roll back the United States’ containment policy against China and to increase its own influence in Southeast Asia. Beijing’s objective – shared with Hanoi – at the Geneva Conference on Laos was to buy time. By using neutralization to help their Lao ally to expand and consolidate its position, PRC and DRVN leaders aimed also to prevent the United States’ use of the territory of Laos as a military base for intervention in Vietnam and Cambodia.
An agreement on a Provisional Government of National Union between princes Souvanna Phouma, Boun Oum, and Souphanouvong was finalized on June 12, 1962. Ministry portfolios were distributed among neutralist, rightist, and leftist leaders. A ceasefire in Laos followed on June 24. On July 2, participating member states reconvened in Geneva, with the prominent neutralist political figure, Quinim Pholsena, heading the Lao delegation representing the new government of national union. Three weeks later, on July 23, the fourteen nations attending the Geneva Conference signed the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos. The Geneva Accords established Laos as a neutral state and created a tripartite government representing the three Lao factions. The possibility of peace through unity, compromise, and neutralism once again appeared to be within grasp. But this opportunity, like the others before it, would go begging.
Conclusion: The Demise of the Neutralists and the Road to War
The signing of the Geneva Accords of 1962 heralded a brief period of optimism during which the expansion of the Lao neutralization model to the Republic of Vietnam was envisaged by the Pathet Lao and its Chinese, Soviet, and Vietnamese allies, as well as by France.Footnote 25 That tantalizing prospect was short-lived, however. The end of the Diệm regime was Hanoi’s priority, and Washington was not prepared to negotiate with the DRVN, which it distrusted and considered to be Beijing’s disciple. In any case, the Provisional Government of National Union lasted less than two years. The fundamental flaw of the second coalition government was that the party that wanted (and needed) it most – the neutralists – was the weakest of all. Souvanna Phouma hoped to be able to build up a strong centrist party and army by attracting members from the right and the left. Jean Deuve, a former member of the French secret services, summed up Souvanna Phouma’s thinking:
He estimated that it would take two years, through developing little by little the influence of each ministry in each zone, by technical decisions, in the areas of health, post and telecommunications, etcetera; through multiplying personal contacts with civil servants and officers; and through bringing the King into the game. It was necessary to proceed by very small steps, and to dispel mistrust. Once the military merger was achieved – that was the key to success – the neutralist party would have to win the elections by grabbing as many adherents as possible from each wing, right and left.Footnote 26
Unfortunately for Souvanna Phouma – and for many of his compatriots – the situation developed in precisely the opposite direction. The neutralists, lacking their own resources and strong external backing, rapidly lost most of their supporters to defections either to the rightist side or to the Pathet Lao. Most critically, the neutralists’ military power base, Kong Le’s forces, split over the acceptance of US military aid, and many of them entered into an alliance with the Pathet Lao. Souvanna Phouma’s retreat from his neutralist stance was confirmed in October 1962 when he authorized the United States to maintain its (illegal) military presence in Laos and to continue to supply the Hmong irregular troops in Huaphan and Xieng Khuang provinces. The prime minister became more stridently anticommunist, openly denouncing the DRVN’s involvement in the civil war.
This political polarization that tore the neutralists apart suited both the United States and the DRVN. Each government was able to pursue its respective military strategies in Laos behind the facade of Laos’ Geneva-sanctioned – and increasingly farcical – neutralization. The DRVN continued to expand the use of the Hồ Chí Minh Trail running through eastern Laos. During 1962, Hanoi sent almost 10,000 fighters and, for the first time, heavy artillery down the Trail.Footnote 27 The CIA greatly expanded covert and illegal operations in Laos (infamously known as the Secret War). Armed, equipped, trained, and paid out of a special CIA budget, Hmong irregular forces in Huaphan and Xieng Khuang provinces were better supplied in every respect and also paid better than the RLA troops. Both covert US operations and DRVN military activities in Laos were in direct violation of the 1962 Geneva Accords. By late 1963, the Second Coalition had faded away and full-scale civil warfare had resumed.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese communist hardliners emerged victorious in tense policy debates in Hanoi, with direct consequences for Laos. For Lê Duẩn (the VWP’s General Secretary) and his allies, the time had come to intervene directly in the South via the deployment of PAVN regular forces down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. By mid-1964, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration was convinced that sustained bombing attacks, directed first against the Trail in Laos and then against key targets in the DRVN, might force the communists to cease their support for the southern insurgency and thus give Saigon time to stabilize politically and gradually gain control of its provinces. In December 1964, with Souvanna Phouma’s consent, the US Air Force launched airstrikes against fixed targets and infiltration routes throughout Laos, which soon expanded in April 1965 into a round-the-clock air campaign that would last more than three years. The fate of Laos was now linked to the outcome of the Vietnam War.
