History of Laos Since 1945 - Laos As A Battlefield

Laos As A Battlefield

Between 1964 and 1968 the conflict in Laos was essentially between the U.S.-supported government forces and the Pathēt Lao, supplied by Vietnam. The Pathēt Lao in these years was not a real threat to the government. The real problem for the government was corruption and warlordism within the national army. Regional army commanders did not cooperate with each other effectively and spent more time on political maneuvers than on fighting the Pathēt Lao. Suvannaphūmā's government was an unwilling prisoner of events. Suvannaphūmā continued to argue for a neutralised Laos, and both sides paid lip-service to this ideal, but neither was prepared to yield any part of its strategic position to achieve it. In particular, the North Vietnamese had no intention of withdrawing any part of their army from the areas of the country it occupied.

Suvannaphūmā remained in office, despite frequent threats to resign, because both the U.S. and the North Vietnamese preferred him to anyone else. The U.S. no longer bothered opposing his neutralist views because, as the paymasters of the Lao army, they could ignore him and conduct the war as they saw fit. The North Vietnamese on the other hand didn't really consider Laos an independent country. They considered it an underdeveloped region of their empire that needed their guidance. As in Cambodia, as long as neutralism meant the departure of the Americans and left the North Vietnamese army in the territories it controlled, they favoured it.

In 1968 the North Vietnamese army pushed the Pathēt Lao forces aside and took over the fighting of the war. In January North Vietnam sent its 316th Division forward toward the Nambac Valley, where seven of the government's best military units were located. The valley was surrounded and pounded with artillery until the base eventually fell. The battle effectively ended the role of the Royal Lao Army for the next several years. While the Pathēt Lao were an ineffective force, the North Vietnamese army with its Soviet-provided field artillery and tanks was beyond anything that the Lao Army could deal with. The government disbanded all its forces greater than the size of a battalion and disengaged from the conflict.

Between 1968 and 1973 Laos effectively ceased to exist as an independent state. It became a battlefield in the war between the United States and North Vietnam. The Hmong militias and Thai Army forces, on one side, and the North Vietnamese Army with the assistance of the Pathēt Lao, on the other, were engaged as auxiliary fighters. The country was divided into two zones: one - comprising about two-thirds of Laos but containing only about a quarter of its population - effectively controlled by North Vietnam, and the other - consisting of little more than the Mekong Valley but containing most of the Lao population - effectively controlled by the U.S. The Pathēt Lao, for reasons discussed earlier, were willing collaborators in the Vietnamese control of their zone of operations. They knew that the only way they could hope to take power in Laos was via the power of the North Vietnamese. While it is often said that Laos was a vital supply route for North Vietnam, the reality was not quite so tidy. Portions of Southern Laos were useful to North Vietnam, but North Vietnam occupied large sections of the country that had nothing to do with supply routes.

The U.S. objective in Laos was to push government control as far eastward as practical. It sought to prevent the North Vietnamese and Pathēt Lao forces holding the Plain of Jars. After 1968, the US accomplished this mainly through Vang Pao's Hmong militia. The other U.S. objectives were intelligence gathering and interruption of North Vietnam's use of the Ho Chi Minh trail, and for this it relied on air power. During this period Laos was bombed more heavily than any other country ever has been in history: virtually every town and village in the Pathēt Lao zone was destroyed and most of the population made refugees. The North Vietnamese objectives were more complicated. Their primary goal was to keep the Ho Chi Minh trail in the south open, and to prevent the U.S. using Laos as a base for raids into North Vietnam. The war degenerated into the two sides pushing each other into or out of the Plain of Jars.

In 1969 Richard Nixon became President of the U.S. and began the long process of winding down the Vietnam War and finding a political settlement. But this brought no immediate respite in Laos. The new administration pursued the same goals by the same means, and in fact during 1969 and 1970 the bombing campaign increased in intensity. The extension of the war to Cambodia in 1970, which closed North Vietnam's supply routes through that country, made the Ho Chi Minh trail even more crucial to the course of the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1969 the North Vietnamese attempted to hold the Plain of Jars through the rainy season. This led to a coordinated campaign that lead to a disastrous defeat of the North Vietnamese. Under constant pressure, their resistance collapsed in the Plain of Jars. They abandoned millions of dollars worth of military equipment and were chased almost to the North Vietnamese border. The success however was short-lived. The North Vietnamese launched a two-division counteroffensive led by a large tank force. All the gains of that year were lost back to the North Vietnamese.

In March 1970 the Cambodian government of Lon Nol ended the policy of ignoring the Vietnamese presence in the country. The port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia, which had effectively been a North Vietnamese Army supply terminal for years, was closed by the government. This action had the effect of making the supply routes from North Vietnam through Laos even more important to the North Vietnamese. In the spring of 1970 the North Vietnamese Army began advancing westward deeper into Laos than ever before. During the same year, units of the Thai Army entered the conflict. These so-called Unity Battalions were in theory volunteers, but were effectively Thai regulars.

In 1971 the Royal Lao Army came back into the conflict. The North Vietnamese advance deep into the country destroyed the status quo and prompted the Army back into action. In July the Thai and irregular forces attempted a repeat of the successful 1969 offensive into the Plain of Jars. But the North Vietnamese had learned from their previous mistakes and withdrew in good order ahead of the offensive. While much territory was captured, no serious damage was done to the North Vietnamese Army. The Thai and irregular forces built a chain of fortifications down the middle of the Plain of Jars. In 1971 the U.S. sponsored an invasion of southern Laos by the South Vietnamese army, with the aim of severing the trail and shoring up the South Vietnamese government as the U.S. withdrew its combat troops. The invasion was bitterly resisted by North Vietnamese and was decisively defeated. The North Vietnamese also retaliated by capturing several provincial capitals which it had previously surrounded but not tried to take.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed in Laos in the course of the war, most of them Lao civilians. While the ethnic minorities who mainly populated the mountains of the Pathēt Lao suffered terribly as a result of the U.S. air war, the majority of the Lao-Lum people in the Mekong Valley towns were little effected in a military sense. The influx of U.S. personnel and money (an estimated $US500 million in U.S. aid alone) produced an economic boom in the towns as service industries grew to meet the demands of the war and the large resident American civilian population. Lao generals and politicians, led by Phūmī Nôsavan until his fall from power in 1965, grew rich on corruption, drug dealing, prostitution and smuggling, and large numbers of ordinary Lao moved into the cash economy for the first time, particularly in Viang Chan, which grew rapidly. The war also exposed the Lao to the full force of western popular culture for the first time, with an effect that both the Pathēt Lao and conservative Buddhists regarded as deeply corrupting of Lao tradition and culture.

During these years the Pathēt Lao sought to project an image of moderation both domestically and internationally. Suphānuvong, as head of the Lao Patriotic Front, was the public face of the Pathēt Lao, while the Communist Party and its leader Kaisôn remained in the background. At its 1968 congress, the Front issued a 12-point program which made no mention of socialism, but called for a Government of National Union and free elections, and promised respect for Buddhism and the monarchy. The fact that Suphānuvong was a royal prince as well as a communist seemed to many Lao a reassurance that the Pathēt Lao in power would pursue a moderate path. In the Pathēt Lao zone, the communists followed conspicuously moderate policies, although there were some attempts at collectivising agriculture where this was possible. The Pathēt Lao were effective providers of basic services, despite the difficulties created by the endless bombing, and also effective at mobilising the upland minorities, whom they treated with far greater respect than any Lao government had ever done. Most notably, the Pathēt Lao were free from corruption. On the negative side, as most Lao knew, their policies were largely driven by the North Vietnamese.

In January 1973, following Nixon's re-election, a peace agreement was announced between North Vietnam and the U.S. Following the pattern which had been established in Geneva in 1954, a peace settlement in Laos was agreed on as a side issue to the Vietnam question. The two sides in Laos had been in informal discussions since the previous July, and once their respective patrons had consented, they quickly signed a ceasefire and announced an Agreement on the Restoration of Peace and National Reconciliation. The main provisions were the formation of a Third Coalition government, with Suvannaphūmā as prime minister and 12 ministers from each side. The National Assembly, which had long lost its political legitimacy, was to be replaced by a Consultative Council of 42 members - 16 from each side plus ten agreed nominees. This body, to be chaired by Suphānuvong, was given equal status with the government, making Suphānuvong in effect co-ruler of the country.

There was no mention of the Pathēt Lao giving up de facto control of its zone. Its armed forces were to be integrated into the national army in theory, but the timetable was never really certain. While the agreement required the North Vietnamese Army to leave Laos, the Vietnamese never left. The arrangements reflected the vastly strengthened position of the Pathēt Lao since the Second Coalition government. In recognition of this, the rightists attempted a last-gasp coup in Viang Chan in August, but it quickly collapsed, since by then many Lao recognised that it was only a matter of time before the Pathēt Lao took power.

During 1974 and 1975 the balance of power in Laos shifted steadily in favour of the Pathēt Lao as the U.S. disengaged itself from Indochina. Suvannaphūmā was tired and demoralised, and following a heart attack in mid 1974 he spent some months recuperating in France, after which he announced that he would retire from politics following the elections scheduled for early 1976. The anti-communist forces were thus leaderless, and also divided and deeply mired in corruption. Suphānuvong, by contrast, was confident and a master political tactician, and had behind him the disciplined cadres of the communist party and the Pathēt Lao forces and the North Vietnamese army. The end of American aid also meant the mass demobilization of most of the non-Pathēt Lao military forces in the country. The Pathēt Lao on the other hand continued to be both funded and equipped by North Vietnam. In May 1974 Suphānuvong put forward an 18-point plan for "National Reconstruction," which was unanimously adopted - a sign of his increasing dominance. The plan was mostly uncontroversial, with renewed promises of free elections, democratic rights and respect for religion, as well as constructive economic policies. But press censorship was introduced in the name of "national unity," making it more difficult for non-communist forces to organise politically in response to the creeping Pathēt Lao takeover. In January 1975 all public meetings and demonstrations were banned. Recognising the trend of events, influential business and political figures began to move their assets, and in some cases themselves, to Thailand, France or the U.S.

In 1975, the Pathēt Lao forces on the Plain of Jars supported by North Vietnamese heavy artillery and other units began advancing westward. In late April, the Pathēt Lao took the government outpost at Sala Phou Khoum crossroads which opened up Route 13 to a Pathēt Lao advance toward Muang Kassy. For the non-Pathēt Lao elements in the government, compromise seemed better than allowing what had happened in Cambodia and South Vietnam to happen in Laos. A surrender was thought to be better than a change of power by force.