Royal Lao Army - History

History

The ARL traced back its origins to World War II, when the first entirely Laotian military unit, the 1st Laotian Rifle Battalion (French: 1ér Battaillon de Chasseurs Laotiens – BCL), was raised early in 1941 by the Vichy French colonial authorities. Intended to be used on internal security operations to bolster the local colonial constabulary force, the ‘Indigenous Guard’ (French: Garde Indigène), the 1st BCL did not see much action until after March 9, 1945, when the Japanese Imperial Army forcibly seized control of French Indochina from France, including Laos. The battalion then retreated into the mountains, where they linked with the Laotian irregular guerrilla fighters (French: Maquis) operating there. These guerrillas were supplied, trained, and led by teams of Free French agents who had been trained in special jungle warfare by the British SOE in India and were subsequently parachuted into Indochina in December 1944 with the aim of creating a local anti-Japanese resistance network. Under the command of their Free French cadres, the battalion’s Laotian soldiers engaged in guerrilla actions alongside the irregular ‘Maquisards’ against the Japanese occupation forces in Laos until Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945. In November of that same year, the various Laotian guerrilla groups were consolidated into four regular light infantry battalions and, together with the 1st BCL, integrated into the newly-founded French Union Army.

Meanwhile, confronted in early May 1945 with the Allied Powers’ victory over Nazi Germany and sensing their own imminent defeat, the Japanese military authorities in Laos began stirring up local anti-French nationalistic sentiments. In October of that year, a group of supporters of Laotian independence led by Prince Phetsarath deposed King Sisavang Vong and announced the formation of a new government body, the Committee for Independent Laos (Lao Language: Khana Lao Issara) or Lao Issara for short. Taking advantage of the temporary absence of French authority in the country’s main cities, the Lao Issara promptly established an armed defense force to exercise its authority with the support of Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh Hanoi-based government in the Tonkin and the Nationalist Chinese. The Lao Issara ‘Army’ was essentially a lightly-armed militia force, provided with an mixed assortement of small-arms captured from the Japanese, looted from French colonial depots, or sold by the Chinese Nationalist Army troops who occupied northern Laos under the terms of the 1945 Potsdam Conference.