Overview
The Geneva Conference established Laotian neutrality. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), however, continued to operate in both northern and southeastern Laos. There were repeated attempts from 1954 onward to force the North Vietnamese out of Laos but, regardless of any agreements or concessions, Hanoi had no intention of abandoning the country or its Laotian communist allies.
The North Vietnamese established the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the southeast of Laos and paralleling the Vietnamese border. The Trail was designed for North Vietnamese troops and supplies to infiltrate the Republic of Vietnam and to aid the National Liberation Front.
The North Vietnamese had a sizable military effort in northern Laos, while sponsoring and maintaining an indigenous communist rebellion, the Pathet Lao, to put pressure on the Royal Lao Government.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to disrupt these operations in northern Laos without direct military involvement, responded by training a guerrilla force of some thirty thousand Laotian hill tribesmen, mostly local Hmong tribesmen along with the Mien and Khmu, led by Royal Lao Army General Vang Pao, a Hmong military leader. This army, supported by the CIA proprietary airline Air America, Thailand, the Royal Lao Air Force, and a covert air operation directed by the United States ambassador to Laos, fought the People's Army of Vietnam, the National Liberation Front (NLF), and their Pathet Lao allies to a seesaw stalemate, greatly aiding U.S. interests in the war in Vietnam.
The status of the war in the north throughout the year generally depended on the weather. As the dry season started, in November or December, so did North Vietnamese military operations, as fresh troops and supplies flowed down out of North Vietnam on newly passable routes, either down from Dien Bien Phu, across Phong Saly Province on all weather highways, or on Route 7 through Ban Ban, Laos on the northeast corner of the Plaine des Jarres (commonly called "the PDJ"). The CIA's Clandestine Army would give way, harrying the PAVN and Pathet Lao as they retreated; Raven FACs would direct massive air strikes against the communists by USAF jets and RLAF T-28s to prevent the capture of the Laotian capitals of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. When the rainy season six months later rendered North Vietnamese supply lines inoperable, the Vietnamese communists would recede toward Vietnam.
The war in the southeastern panhandle against the Ho Chi Minh Trail was primarily a massive air interdiction program by the USAF and United States Navy because political constraints kept the trail safe from ground assault from South Vietnam. Raven FACs also directed air strikes here in the southeast; other Forward Air Controllers from South Vietnam, such as Covey FACs from the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron and Nail FACs from the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron, also directed strikes. Other air strikes were planned ahead. Overall coordination of the air campaign was directed by an Airborne Command and Control Center.
The existence of the conflict in Laos was sometimes reported in the U.S., and described in press reports as the CIA's "Secret War in Laos" because details were largely unavailable due to official government denials that the war existed. The denials were seen as necessary considering that the North Vietnamese government and the U.S. had both signed agreements specifying the neutrality of Laos. U.S. involvement was considered necessary because the DRV had effectively conquered a large part of the country and was equally obfuscating its role in Laos. Despite these denials, however, the Civil War was actually the largest U.S. covert operation prior to the Afghan-Soviet War, with areas of Laos controlled by North Vietnam subjected to years of intense US aerial bombardment, representing the heaviest bombing campaign in history. Overshadowing it all was the struggle of the Cold War, with the United States' policy of the containment of communism and the policies of the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union of spreading communism via subversion and insurgency.
Read more about this topic: Laotian Civil War