HmongZa.com: Replying To Tsuj Npuam Taig Laig Nyag thiab Vij Sub Vij Sw yog dabtsi? - HmongZa.com

hu ua Teev, nws yog neeg siab phem kawg. Nws ua tej yam tim tsis taus lub ntuj. Nws muab cov poj niam los ua* ua npua tas, nws muab riam los phais lawv thiab muab txoj nyhuv me nyuam lis coj los saib. Nws thiaj pom tias txoj nyhuv me nyuam mus txog hauv lawd, ncau ua ob ceg. Yog muaj me nyuam rau ces sab laug mas yog tub, muaj rau ces sab xis mas yog ntxhais. Lawv huab tau nyiaj kuv phem ntau ntau kawg. Thaum lawv yuav rov los, Vaj Tuam Thaij txwv tsis pub leej twg tham tej ntawd rau Paj Cai paub.

Yog peb leej twg ho xav paub kom meej thiab tseeb txog YHVP thiab Asmiskas kev ua tsovrog nyob Lostsua, yeej meem taug qhov link no mus. Thaum mus txog tov lawm ces koj mus SEARCH UNDER THE KEY WORD "Vang Pao" xwb.

Cov neeg nkawg xaiv siv hlwb li cas thiaj noj tau lawv tus yeeb ncuab

CIA 1968

Gathering Intelligence in Laos in 1968

Learning Quickly on the Job

Frederic McCann

“I was sent to interview refugees and ralliers who had fled from the communist Pathlet Lao guerrillas.”

In 1968, I was sent from Tokyo to Laos to interview refugees and ralliers from the communist Pathet Lao guerrillas who had fled to the protection of royalist Gen. Vang Pao's army of Meo hill tribe “irregulars.” Busy with things Japanese, I knew little about the conflicts in former French colonial Indochina except that the insurgent Pathet Lao were supported and supplied by the North Vietnamese. The only thing going for me was that I had studied French in high school and college.

Passing through Thailand, I was given a knapsack for all my worldly possessions, a set of fatigues, a pair of boots, and a baseball cap, which I later exchanged for an Australian bush hat. Vang Pao, who supported the Royal Kingdom of Laos in the expanding local war, had crossed eastward across the Plaine des Jarres in northern Laos. I was ferried to various Laotian towns, whose names I cannot recall, passing through a bleak, mountainous countryside. After receiving the requisite handshake from Vang Pao, I finally settled into a small Royal Lao Army outpost called Pha Khao, located in the southern part of the Plaine des Jarres.

Since there were only a few intelligence officers in Laos during the Pathet Lao rebellion, I hope this anecdote will help to convey the flavor of that time.[1]

Author, on one of the ancient clay vessels in the
Plaine des Jarres, 1968.

First Lesson

On my first day on the job, I met my interpreter, a spit-and-polish Thai captain named My. He had received some military training in the United States and spoke good English. Unfortunately, he had not been exposed to American standards of intelligence work and proceeded to mistreat the Laotians I had selected to interview. With open disdain, he would gruffly order them to stand up, sit down, and not speak unless spoken to. Since he communicated in Lao, it took me awhile to realize that he was frightening the interviewees to the point that providing me with information was the last thing that interested them. This was my introduction to the myriad racial animosities germane to the Indochina peninsula.

After two wasted days of frightening Laotians, I called a halt to the interviews and asked Captain My to take me through the refuge camp. It was the same kind of camp that surrounded all Royal Lao Army posts, inhabited by hangers-on seeking food, work, or maybe information that could be put into the rat-line to the enemy. The locals were openly curious about me as I walked around bowing to the elders, patting little boys on the head, and repeating the only Lao words I knew, which were the equivalent of “good day.” We came upon a soldier washing a Pathet Lao uniform. As I approached, he sprang to attention and gave me a French military salute. I returned an American salute and greeted him with “good day” in French. When I asked the captain why I had not had the opportunity to interview this man instead of the poor farmers and their wives with babies at the breast, I received a sheepish response that this Pathet Lao soldier had only entered the camp late the previous night and had not “been processed.”

Second Lesson

I immediately drew the conclusion that someone at the camp was in charge of my activities and it wasn't me. We changed that on the spot with a few strong words to Captain My. I instructed him to take this soldier to the warehouse for new clothes and shoes and get him a meal at the mess hall, and keep me informed of all new military arrivals in the camp. I nodded to the soldier and asked My to give him my name and tell me his. He said his name was Thanh, and he repeated my name as “Mister Fred.” We shook hands and My told him that we would talk after he had eaten. Thanh readily agreed.

Before interviewing Thanh, I rearranged my office with three chairs around a coffee table. I explained to Captain My that he would sit off to one side and truly be the interpreter, which was absolutely essential because neither Thanh nor I had a full command of the French language. I instructed him never to speak to Thanh unless I told him to do so and to say exactly what I said. Thanh and I would attempt to converse in French, but if we could not find the right word, I would say the word in English and My would say the word in Lao to Thanh. We would then try to continue to converse in French. My was a bit stiff about all this but cooperative.

Testing A New Approach

When Thanh arrived at my office, I instructed the escorts to return to their posts, saying that Captain My and I would bring the detainee back. It took some doing for the captain to carry out my wishes, but eventually the escorts complied. This brief skirmish was not lost on Thanh and, I think, helped him decide that I was in charge of the interview even though we were on a Royal Army base.

I showed Thanh to a chair and offered him a cigarette. When he took it, I placed the pack in front of him, indicating it was for him. When I took out a fresh pack for myself, I saw a smile cross his face. It was clear that he was not used to the simplest of kindnesses.

I explained to Thanh that I wanted to talk to him about his life and his time as a Pathet Lao soldier. I outlined My's role, which was to assist us. Thanh would speak directly to me in French and only use the interpreter when necessary. Thanh and I both recognized the challenge.

We got off to a great start. Thanh was about 21 years old. He had been born in Vientienne, the capital of Laos. Three years before, the Pathet Lao had kidnapped him while he was a student at the French Pedagogical Institute in Vientiane, leaving behind a pregnant wife. His captors had first taken him to the Pathet Lao stronghold in Sam Neua Province. Later, he had received training as a finance officer in Hanoi. His most recent assignment had been to distribute Pathet Lao funds to various units of the guerrilla force. Thanh stated that he had defected to the Royal Army outpost with the hope of joining his wife and seeing his child.

Debriefing

Because of his finance duties, I suspected that Thanh knew the current location of each Pathet Lao unit, its strength, and maybe the name of the commanding officer. To involve Captain My in my intelligence gathering activity, I explained to him that I wanted to create an Order of Battle (OB) for the Pathet Lao force. I asked him to obtain a map of Laos and work directly with Thanh to put all of his knowledge directly on the map. I conveyed to the captain that his military experience was most important and my role in this activity was unnecessary. “So, please work directly with Thanh, and treat him in a friendly way like you would a fellow officer,” I requested. While he went for the map, I explained our plan to Thanh.

Both men were up to the task and created an Order Of Battle in French and English within a day or two. When the OB was sent to Gen. Vang Pao, he made a special trip to Pha Khao, congratulated Captain My, and made Thanh an officer in his irregular army. This action was unique because his force was composed of ethnic Meo while Thanh was an ethnic Lao. (I heard later that the general had been encouraged to integrate his force and that he often pointed to this event as his first step.)

These fortunate developments changed my relationship with Captain My. In short order, he came to me and, in private, said that he now understood my way of obtaining cooperation and useful information. He thanked me for the lesson and from that day became “my captain.” He started calling me “Papa Fred,” because I had begun to grow a gray beard à la Ernest Hemingway.

Unfolding events also solidified my relationship with Thanh. While he was preparing the OB, I asked the Royal Lao Army to locate his wife in Vientiane and bring her and their child to Pha Khao, if she wanted to come. Without telling Thanh, I took him to the airstrip when the plane arrived. When he saw his family, he embraced his wife and scooped up his child. Then he came to me and thanked me. With a wink, I said “I am now your mandarin and you must obey me.” He saw the humor of my being a Chinese lord and replied, “I will serve you loyally as long as you fill my rice bowl and protect me.” We began a great relationship for two men who could barely converse in a third language with one another.

One Thing Led to Another

One morning, Thanh came to me and informed me that a Pathet Lao officer had rallied the night before. His name was Sung, and he had been Thanh's superior officer. As the senior finance officer, Sung had had daily contact with the Pathet Lao leadership.

Unfortunately, when he rallied, he was carrying a knapsack full of Pathet Lao money. When a Royal Army officer tried to take the money, Sung began to fight and broke the officer's arm. Consequently, Royal Lao soldiers took Sung to a cave in a nearby mountain and beat him, intending to kill him the next day.

I immediately went to the post commander and told him that I would not remain on the post if they killed a rallier. I charged that such a killing would shut off the flow of ralliers from the Pathet Lao, which General Vang Pao would not look kindly upon. Lastly, I told him that Sung might have crucial information on the Pathet Lao leadership and I wanted to interview him. The commander agreed to turn Sung over to Captain My after the noon meal.

Sung was brought to me in chains. I insisted that he be freed and that his guards return to their posts. It took Captain My some time to carry out my wishes, but he was successful. Thanh was in the room and welcomed Sung warmly. He explained to Sung that I had saved his life and he suggested that he cooperate with me. Sung was apprehensive but agreed.

We began to produce reports on the Pathet Lao leaders, including their attitude toward the peace negotiations taking place in Paris. Of unusual interest was their use of narcotics, given to them by their Vietnamese wives, who reportedly had been trained in China on how to administer the drugs and control their husbands. Throughout, Sung was cooperative and informative.

A New Twist

One day when Thanh, Sung, and I were sitting in my office, Captain My came into the room and interrupted us. “I have just interviewed a new arrival who has told me that the Pathet Lao plan to overrun this camp next week,” he told me in English. I asked him to tell Thanh and Sung in Lao, and he did so. When he finished, Sung spoke quietly to Thanh, and I saw My place his hand on his weapon. Immediately, I asked Thanh what Sung was saying. He replied, “Sung says that the Pathet Lao will overrun this camp 10 days after the full moon and that will be the third day of next week.”

Needless to say, we all recognized the seriousness of Sung's knowledge of the pending attack. I pushed my chair back from the table and placed my hand on Captain My's arm because he had begun to speak directly to Sung. I asked Thanh to ask Sung how he knew about this plan. Sung spoke at length to Thanh, during which time the captain put his hand on his weapon again.

The scene became tense. I was the only one who did not know why. Thanh slowly told me the following: “Sung says that he did not come here as a deserter. He got caught stealing the foreign exchange holdings of the Pathet Lao, and they sent him here on a mission rather than put him in jail. The bag of Pathet Lao money was a smoke screen. He was sent here to kill you. But, since you saved his life, he promises never to hurt you.”

I asked Thanh if Sung would tell us if the information he had provided about the Pathet Lao leadership was true. Thanh asked, and Sung nodded. Sung had become very quiet. He sat with his head bowed in embarrassment. Thanh relayed, “Sung says that his information is true, and it seems true to me based on my limited observation of the leadership.”

I suggested to Captain My that he return Sung to detention so that we could concentrate on preparing a report to the base commander. When Sung stood up, he spoke briefly to Thanh who translated for me: “Sung says that he has watched us shake hands with each other and he has never done that. I have been coaching him how to do it, and he would like to shake your hand as a sign of mutual respect.” I stood up and extended my hand, which Sung took and said, “merci.” I returned the handshake and repeated “merci.”

The Ultimate Lesson

This exchange made me realize that I had never been briefed on the potential dangers of being in Pha Khao. Up to that point, US intelligence had been unaware that the Pathet Lao would go to the extreme of targeting non-combatant Americans.

After briefing a skeptical base commander about the possibility of an attack, I returned to my office and informed Vientiane by wire of my report. Since the end of my short-term assignment was overdue, I requested air transportation to the camp in Thailand where I had left my clothes and where I could catch a plane to Bangkok and on to Hong Kong, where my wife was waiting. While in Bangkok, I read that the Pathet Lao had indeed overrun the base at Pha Khao. I hoped that my two Lao friends had managed to escape, but I was never able to find out.

Sobered by my personal experience, when I returned to Laos five years later in another capacity, I was not surprised to hear that the Pathet Lao had broken a truce they had agreed to and violated the rules for their participation in a coalition government. Nor was I surprised later at their ruthlessness in wiping out the Meo tribe when they took over the government of Laos in 1975.

[1]This anecdote, written 30 years after the event and completely from memory, was initially prompted by a notice that the Library of Congress was creating a collection of personal stories of military experiences.

Frederic McCann served in the CIA Directorate of Operation

Peb ho mus nyeem ib tug neeg uas muaj txiaj ntsig rau communist seb nws lub neej suaj kaum li cas es lawv ho yuav muaj siab thiab siv zog ua luaj.

Pab pab Nyab Laj thiab Communists es tau dab tsi

Tsab no yog tsab kawg ntawm Time Megazine uas tham txog Hmoob hauv Tsovrog Vietnam lawm. Kuv paub hais tias tshuav ntau nyob tom New York Time, tab sis lawv muag kim heev ces yuav tsis taus los rau peb nyeem.



But in the jungles the fighting continues

Moved by an overwhelming sense of pity and concern, representatives of 50 nations met last week in Geneva for a two-day United Nations conference on Indochina's refugees. To underline the importance that Washington gives to this ever growing tragedy, the U.S. delegation was led by Vice President Walter Mondale. He condemned Viet Nam as the sole cause of the Indochina exodus, and reinforced President Carter's promise that the U.S. would begin naval and air operations to pick up thousands of "boat people" who have fled Viet Nam in overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels. One ranking U.S. official estimates that since last May 30,000 to 50,000 people have drowned each month in their attempts to escape. Mondale also said that the Administration would ask Congress for additional funds for refugee relief for this year, bringing the total to $917 million.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Denmark's Poul Hartling, received a pledge from the participating nations that they would take in 250,000 refugees this year. The promises of help, in fact, got under way before the conference. Canada announced earlier in the week that it would accept 50,000 refugees by the end of 1980, Britain that it would absorb 10,000 from overcrowded Hong Kong. The U.S. had already increased its quota from 7,000 to 14,000 a month.
To guarantee the conference's success, there was a prior agreement that it would concentrate on humanitarian solutions and avoid, as much as possible, political recriminations. This was done primarily to ensure the presence of Viet Nam, whose policies of brutal repression and wholesale expulsions have been responsible for the flood of refugees. Arriving in Geneva, Viet Nam's unctuous Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien pledged his country's "full cooperation" at the conference, provided that "our national sovereignty will be respected and financial help extended."

Violating the no-politics rule of the conference, China's Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Wenjin accused Hanoi of "militarism, genocide, creating and exporting refugees, causing human disasters and spreading anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia." Although China claims to have accepted 230,000 refugees, Zhang offered to take an additional 10,000 "if they choose to come." He also pledged $1 million for U.N. refugee relief.

Malaysia and Thailand were surprisingly subdued in their criticism of Viet Nam, though as the principal countries of "first asylum," they have already absorbed more than half of the 380,000 refugees now scattered throughout Southeast Asia. But U.S. diplomats estimate that at least 1 million more people may soon be joining the exodus, principally from Viet Nam. That massive an outpouring would completely swamp the already overtaxed resources of the two countries. It was Thailand's forced repatriation of refugees from Cambodia last month and Malaysia's refusal to accept any more boat people that prompted the Geneva conference.

The refugee crisis is only the most dramatic in a sequence of events that has reshaped the politics of Southeast Asia since the fall of South Viet Nam to Hanoi and of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Led by a group of aging revolutionaries who have been almost continuously at war since 1945, Hanoi has been pursuing Ho Chi Minh's goal of an Indochinese federation under Vietnamese domination. Backed by the Soviet Union, Viet Nam last December invaded Cambodia (Kampuchea), its former ally. Though an international pariah because of the brutal policies of the ousted Pol Pot regime, Cambodia received some verbal support from other Southeast Asian nations that fear Hanoi's expansionism, while China reacted in February by invading Viet Nam, its own former ally. As a result, hundreds of thousands of additional refugees were created.

The history of Southeast Asia, in fact, is a story of peoples on the move, with often disastrous consequences as one group has triumphed over another. As a migratory heritage and changing military fortunes offered scant geographic stability, ethnic purity became highly important as a means of national survival. Defeat could mean cultural obliteration and slavery for a generation or more—a debt to be repaid in kind.

Some of these peoples have all but disappeared: the Chams of central Viet Nam, for example, or the Mons of Burma. The prime survivors of the murky wars of attrition were the Vietnamese and the Thais. In the 19th century, Viet Nam and Thailand were on the verge of dividing a hapless Cambodia when the French intervened; 100 years of colonial rule postponed a historic process of ethnic competition. That process was redefined in cold war terms by John Foster Dulles. In what became known as the "domino theory," Dulles in 1953 noted, "If Indochina should be lost, there would be a chain reaction through the Far East and South Asia." The next year, President Dwight Eisenhower predicted, "The loss of Indochina would lead to the loss of Burma, Thailand, in fact all of the great peninsula on which they are situated."
So far, that has not happened. Nor, in the opinion of experts in the area, is it likely to happen soon, even though Viet Nam's smaller neighbors would be hopelessly outmanned and outgunned in a major war without China's intervention (see following story). Nonetheless, the possibility of an unintentional incident's ballooning into a regional or international crisis is alarmingly present. As a result, the U.S. has revived the almost moribund Manila Pact (whose now defunct military organization was called SEATO), which pledges Southeast Asian and Western countries to mutual security consultations in case of attack on any of its signatories. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance told a meeting of ASEAN* Foreign Ministers in Bali in early July, "We are committed morally and by treaty to support the ASEAN states. We have made this clear to all concerned—and directly to the Soviet Union and Viet Nam. The U.S. is a Pacific power. We will defend our interests and stand by our commitments in the region."

Viet Nam is the focal point of these regional tensions. Its foreign ventures have cost Hanoi dearly. Contrary to their expectations, Vietnamese military commanders have seen their Cambodian campaign extend well into the rainy season, and there is no end in sight. Viet Nam's own economy is in bad shape, in part because of the Cambodia war, but also because of several bad crop years compounded by gross mismanagement. Viet Nam suffered enormous damage to its northern provinces during its fierce one-month war with China. Factories, schools, office buildings and other structures were demolished. Though the war has been over for several months, normal life has yet to return to the devastated areas.

Hanoi's biggest headache is in Cambodia, where elements of four Khmer Rouge divisions loyal to deposed Premier Pol Pot are still able to terrorize civilians and harass Vietnamese units immobilized by the monsoons. Last month Khmers thought to be loyal to Hanoi's new regime in Phnom-Penh expelled the Vietnamese garrison from the river port of Kratie. Though the town was quickly recaptured, the startled Vietnamese began to transfer Pathet Lao troops from Laos as a means of guaranteeing village security.

Hanoi, in effect, is trying to fill one pocket by emptying another. The Pathet Lao troops are needed in northern Laos, where Chinese-supplied tribesmen are smuggling rifles to anti-Communist Meo guerrillas. According to Western and Thai intelligence, the insurgents last month killed 200 Pathet Lao troops assigned to guard a new highway.

Meanwhile, Cambodia continues to hemorrhage, in what some observers believe may be the death throes of the Khmers as a people. A nation that once numbered between 7 million and 8 million people is now believed to total only 4 million to 5 million. Much of the country's farm land has been devastated by war, and refugees report that the Vietnamese forces are shipping to their own country what little rice is now being grown in Cambodia. French doctors who recently visited the country fear that it could be swept by bubonic plague.

"Pressure on Viet Nam is the only way we can improve the situation," says one Western ambassador in Bangkok. But who can apply that pressure? The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Hanoi—a fact that some observers believe pushed Viet Nam even further into Moscow's orbit. China, of course, has just fought a war with Viet Nam, while Moscow openly supports Hanoi's attempt to subdue Cambodia, The worldwide outcry over the refugees has only just begun to have an effect on Hanoi—but as for getting out of Cambodia, the Vietnamese so far have been adamant. Ironically, it is Politburo Member Le Due Tho, the winner along with Henry Kissinger of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, who is said to be directing Viet Nam's civil operations in Cambodia.

If there is a vulnerable domino in Southeast Asia, it is Thailand. Except for a friendly southern border with Malaysia, Thailand is surrounded by enemies, new and old: Cambodia, Laos and Burma. Above all, the Thais fear the Vietnamese. Hanoi has repeatedly warned Bangkok to stay neutral in the Cambodia war, and complained that Pol Pot forces are being harbored in the crowded refugee camps. Well aware that the Vietnamese have ten divisions arrayed along the Thailand-Cambodia frontier, China has made both public and private gestures of support for Bangkok, including the offer of troops in case of invasion. Such proposals only embarrass the Thais, who are determined to maintain their traditional independence.

The 45 million people of this France-size land call their country Muang-Thai, which means land of the free. Thailand, in fact, is the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized by a Western power. For centuries the country has managed to survive the ambitions of would-be occupiers through a combination of diplomatic guile, compromise, opportunism and sheer luck.

More than 90% of Thais are practicing Buddhists, and the symbols of religion are omnipresent: young men in saffron robes practicing the 227 rules of tripitaka (the summation of Hinayana Doctrine), temples that dominate the jumbled skyline of humid, traffic-jammed Bangkok. Another symbol of Thai unity is the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 51, whose official title is King Rama IX. A talented jazz saxophonist who was born in Cambridge, Mass. (where his father was a medical student), the shy monarch travels constantly throughout the country. He personally hands out diplomas to all graduates of state universities and military colleges. That is no mean chore: 20,000 got their degrees in Bangkok alone last year.

The King is considered above politics. The task of governing his peculiar land of serenity and violence, of beauty and disorder, is in the hands of Premier Kriangsak Chomanan, 61. A retired army general who came to power in a 1977 army coup, Kriangsak has found it hard to manage a largely agricultural economy that is plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. He has also had to give a great deal of his attention to the threat posed by war at Thailand's doorstep, and the persistence of Communist insurgency, especially in the south.

Because of its even, tropical climate and predictable rainfall, Thailand has become one of the world's leading agricultural nations. It is the world's fourth largest producer of sugar and the third biggest rubber exporter. This year Thailand expects to become the world's leading rice exporter. Ironically, the country's farmers remain among the poorest in Asia, a factor that Kriangsak recognizes as a serious threat to internal security. The most oppressive exploiter of the farmer is Bangkok itself, which by government decree keeps the rice price paid to the farmer well below world levels. The "rice premium" has been a favorite tool of Thailand's military rulers. By lowering the urban consumer's cost of living, the Premier has ensured political stability in Bangkok.

Keeping the countryside poor, however, is no longer an option for Bangkok. Kriangsak declared 1979 as the "year of the farmer" and launched an ambitious $2 billion rural reform program to be renewed annually. Said Kriangsak: "Thai farmers will eventually be standing proud and tall in the coming decade."

Nevertheless, security is the Premier's main concern, as he explained last week in an interview with TIME'S Hong Kong bureau chief Marsh Clark and correspondent David DeVoss: "Close to our borders there is a full-scale war. We have Communist subversion within the country. Added to that there is the refugee problem that undermines our stability. We need arms to preserve peace. Tell the U.S. Congress to come to Thailand to see the situation. Giving us a foreign military sales credit of $24 million is not enough. Thailand faces a war situation. It deserves a higher priority. We need antiaircraft weapons, tanks, TOW missiles. We are a little impatient."

Within the past year, Kriangsak has responded to invitations from Washington, Moscow and Peking by making official visits to all three capitals. The interest in Thailand shown by the superpowers goes well beyond their concern to have amicable diplomatic relations with Bangkok. It is a tacit admission that turmoil in Southeast Asia could be as great a threat to the peace and stability of the world as a crisis in the Middle East.

Time Megazine 1977



War still simmers on in Southeast Asia. It has been more than two years since Communist forces conquered South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, but Indochina's new regimes continue to face tenacious internal resistance. Some Indochinese resist by becoming refugees. The harsh economic conditions and political repression in their homelands are so unbearable that they will take extraordinary risks in hopes of finding refuge abroad (see following story).

Others resist more directly by heading for the hills and jungles to mount armed insurgencies. Emulating the tactics of the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge or the Viet Cong, supporters of the old regimes are carrying on a guerrilla war that the new Communist police states have so far been unable to bring under control.

In southern Viet Nam, the U Minh Forest, the Central Highlands and the area bordering Cambodia's Parrot's Beak, are proving as inhospitable to Hanoi's troops as they were to America's. Tattered groups of militant Hoa Hao Buddhists, disgruntled peasants and bitter former soldiers of the fallen Thieu regime in Saigon have established strongholds in these areas. Around Dalat, for instance, up to 2,000 veterans sporadically battle the forces of the new rulers. The fighting has been serious enough for circumspect Hanoi newspapers to admit that "veterans do not hesitate to open fire on security forces."

Hanoi has been unable to devote its full attention to these pockets of armed resistance because much of its army is tied down battling a onetime ally: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who are trying to annex Vietnamese districts contiguous to Cambodia in order to regain control over the tens of thousands of Cambodians who fled the new Phnom-Penh regime. Viet Nam's Quang Due province has been repeatedly attacked by the Khmer Rouge, while Hanoi's forces have made counterthrusts into Cambodia's Svay Rieng. Neither government seems to have clear control of Chau Doc province.
The most difficult situation for the Communists is in Laos. Most Laotians originally welcomed the Pathet Lao regime that replaced the monarchy in 1975, assuming that their new rulers would be as typically languid as the old ones. But the gray-uniformed Pathet Lao—backed by 15,000 Vietnamese troops and 500 Soviet advisers—immediately began building the country according to a socialist blueprint.

The easygoing Laotians were shocked by the imposition of a six-day work week, capped by mandatory political indoctrination on Sundays. Small family farm plots were merged into large communes. Peasants, who never before had paid taxes, suddenly found themselves forced to turn over 8% to 30% of their rice crop to state warehouses. A census was taken of barnyard stocks, and peasants were warned that they could not eat any chicken—even those dying of natural causes—without permission from a local Communist cadre.

The harvest of these policies has been widespread disillusion and anger. Some 90,000 Laotians have already fled across the Mekong River to Thailand, and an additional 1,000 leave each month. Thousands of others actively oppose the regime; as a result, nearly half of Laos, including much of the fertile Mekong Plain, is contested by insurgents. TIME Hong Kong Correspondent David DeVoss reports that in the north, some 4,500 fiercely independent Meo hill tribesmen operate out of the former CIA base in Long Cheng. Although they have only 3,000 rifles and a dwindling cache of ammunition, they have made most of the mountainous area uninhabitable for Communist troops. Blia Ya Moi, a former leader of the anti-Communist forces, explained to DeVoss that "we have to make every bullet useful; one bullet for one life." Blia closely watches events in Laos from the Nong Khai refugee camp in Thailand.

Hiding Rice. Pressure by the Meo insurgents has closed Highway 4 from Paksane to Xieng Khouang and Highway 7 across the Plain of Jars. Highway 13 between Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang is so unsafe that government traffic can move only in armed convoys. South of Vientiane, Pathet Lao patrols, supported by the air force's nine T-28 fighter-bombers, manage to keep Highway 13 and Route 8 open during the day, but the Meo have full control after dark. In the south, at least 1,500 Royal Laotian army veterans and disgruntled peasants are carrying on another guerrilla war. "Our rural population is almost completely behind the rebels," one Vientiane resident told DeVoss. "People hide rice from the government and offer it to the rebels. Villagers celebrate when one of their young heads for the hills to fight."

The morale of the Pathet Lao forces has been hurt by the failing Laotian economy. Some government troops are so desperately poor that they have sold their uniforms for money to buy food. In an implicit confession of weakness, the Pathet Lao leaders have sought outside help from what is grandly called the "International Liberation Army." The number of Soviet advisers in Laos has risen to 1,200 (Moscow is eager to maintain an influence in Laos to prevent it from falling into Peking's orbit) and Viet Nam's forces increased to about 40,000 troops. In early June, five battalions of Vietnamese regulars took up positions along the road from Vientiane to Thakhek. But as Hanoi's presence grows, so does the traditional Laotian hostility to the Vietnamese. In early spring, Vietnamese troops killed 20 Pathet Lao soldiers who had tried to inspect a convoy of wood heading for Viet Nam. Observes a Western diplomat in Bangkok: "Now even the Communists in Laos are grumbling about the Big Brother Vietnamese."

Diplomats and military experts agree that the scattered insurgencies have almost no chance of succeeding, in the long run. Without Western military supplies or even moral encouragement (and there is absolutely no evidence of either), even the aggressive rebels of Laos will eventually succumb to superior forces. Still, the Communists are discovering, as French colonialists and U.S. administrators learned to their sorrow, that it is a lot easier to proclaim a government in Indochina than to operate one successfully.

Time Megazine 1972



For a while, the small town of Keng Kok in southern Laos seemed relatively safe from war. There was a fluid "front line" ten or 12 miles away, patrolled by troops of the North Vietnamese Army's 29th Regiment. They were reckoned to pose no threat to a town with only a market, a hospital and barely 5,000 inhabitants. In the early morning hours of Oct. 28, Keng Kok's immunity suddenly came to an explosive end. Two North Vietnamese companies, aided by local Pathet Lao allies, slipped into the town. Two missionaries trying to escape in their pickup truck were stopped at an NVA roadblock; they were eventually marched away to an unknown fate. When Royal Laotian Army troops managed to retake the town four days later, they found the charred bodies of two other missionaries, both of them women, tied to posts in their burned-out house. Nearby, the body of a young Lao who had evidently tried to help the women was found stretched out on the ground, shot through the chest.

Keng Kok was not a random, eleventh-hour casualty in a fading war. Shortly before the attack, Hanoi had ordered North Vietnamese units in Laos, and the pro-Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas who fight alongside them, to be ready, in the event of a quick ceasefire, to seize a number of towns and cities still in government hands. Evidently the 29th jumped the gun; the early cease-fire that Hanoi had been planning on did not materialize, and the actual strike order was never given. Even so, Laotians worry that when "peace" does officially come to Viet Nam their country may face another and more agonizing stage of the war.

Path to Peace. Of all Indochina's savaged battlegrounds, dream-like Laos should have the easiest path to peace. Unlike Viet Nam, the country is not riven by irreconcilable rivalry between northerners and southerners, between Catholics, Buddhists and Communists or even—in a country with the acreage of Britain and the population of Brooklyn—between the landed and the landless. "If we could speak as one Laotian to another," Interior Minister Pheng Phongsavan told TIME's Peter Simms in Vientiane last week, "we could solve our problems without any great difficulty." That has not been possible, Phongsavan complains, because "the Pathet Lao are always looking over their shoulders to get their instructions from Hanoi."

After two months of fitful negotiations in Vientiane, there has been scant progress in the talks between the Pathet Lao and the U.S.-backed but nominally "neutralist" government of Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma. Souvanna wants the pro-Communist rebels to join in the tripartite government that was set up by the Geneva accords of 1962. The Pathet Lao demand a two-thirds share in the government, and they have a large but unacknowledged North Vietnamese military presence to back their claim. What is fundamentally at issue is whether Laos will emerge as a reasonably independent buffer state that might help to bring some stability to Indochina, or as an out-and-out fiefdom of Hanoi.

The answer will not begin to be apparent until Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris finally agree on an overall Indochina peace plan (see THE NATION). Even so, reports Simms after extensive interviews with government and Pathet Lao leaders in Vientiane, the odds seemed heavily weighted in the direction of a North Vietnamese fiefdom. Government leaders, says Simms, seemed "completely despairing" about the possibility of being left with North Vietnamese forces still entrenched on Laotian soil. The Communists, by contrast, eagerly welcomed a ceasefire. The Pathet Lao spokesman in Vientiane, Soth Pethrasy, said confidently, "We are the party of victory."

Despite lavish if clandestine American support of pro-government forces, the Communists today control roughly four-fifths of Laos' territory and one-third of its 2,800,000 people (see map). This has been achieved not by the feckless Pathet Lao but by the North Vietnamese, who have at least 65,000 soldiers in Laos—more proportionally than they have in South Viet Nam. Furnished with tanks, long-range Soviet-made 130-mm, guns and what Western observers describe as "some of the finest and most highly motivated infantry in the world" (see story, following page), Hanoi's forces in Laos are more than a match for the 80,000 Royal Laotian Army troops, Thai mercenaries and CIA-supported Meo tribesmen who oppose them.

No Lever. Experts agree that there is no road, airport, town or city in the country that the North Vietnamese could not capture and at least hold for a while. U.S. and Laotian officials worry that the Communists will try to make good on Pathet Lao claims of "victory" on the eve of a ceasefire, by seizing several important cities, perhaps even Vientiane or Luangprabang, the seat of the country's constitutional monarch, King Savang Vatthana.

Hanoi has never admitted the presence of its forces in Laos, where they are barred under the terms of the 1962 accords. Souvanna worries that "we have no lever to force them out," and he has some understandable doubts that Hanoi would honor a new great-power agreement requiring the withdrawal of "all foreign" troops from the country. In 1962 only 40 North Vietnamese troops marched out of Laos through the prescribed International Control Commission checkpoint—and 30 of them claimed that they had merely been building a house for Souvanna. Thousands of other NVA troops either slipped back to North Viet Nam in secret or stayed behind to help organize the Pathet Lao.

Souvanna told Simms that whatever happens, "we shall certainly survive." But time is not on his side. In dusty Vientiane, Simms found "no dearth of traffic, from expensive Mercedes, to ex-army Jeeps, to whole schools of motor scooters. It takes a little while to discover that something is not quite the same as in most cities. Then one gradually notices that the driver of the black Mercedes is a beautiful Laotian girl wearing the traditional skirt of glossy silk, heavily embroidered in gold, and that the driver in the Jeep behind her, wearing a pair of smart Levi's, is also a girl. Then one realizes that there are far more women drivers than one would normally see—except, that is, in a small country that is losing 500 to 600 soldiers a month, killed, wounded or missing in action."

Nov yog ib tug tubrog Nyab Laj piav txog nws txoj kev ua tsovrog tom tog communist. Peb ho saib seb lawv txom nyem li cas.

Time Megazine 1972



Laos was supposedly neutralized by the 1962 Geneva accords, but it is actually overrun by an antipasto of Asian troops. U.S.-supported mercenaries from Thailand and opium-growing Meo tribesmen from the northern hills help out the Royal Laotian Army. China has something like 20,000 troops in the country; they build roads while keeping a jealous eye on the North Vietnamese. Since 1952 Hanoi has had troops in Laos, which it used to describe as "deserters" and "volunteers." Now that it has the biggest single army in the country—65,000 troops—it does not acknowledge them at all.

To find out what life is like in the NVA, Simms interviewed one of only 158 NVA soldiers who have been taken prisoner in Laos. His report:
Tran Van Dai, 18, lost an eye during his few brief months of fighting in Laos. A rice farmer's son, he was drafted out of a small North Vietnamese hamlet about two years ago, even though he was so frail that he was allowed to carry only 80 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, rather than the usual 200. After hurried training—eight weeks instead of the usual six months—he was marched south and told that he was going to fight in a "great war." Last April his unit crossed into Laos on Route 559—the Ho Chi Minh trail—and moved down the trail from one numbered station to another for nearly three months. Strangely enough, they never encountered any U.S. bombers, but they did come across a unit from Haiphong that had lost about half of its 600 men in an air attack.

On the trail, Dai was issued rice and dried salted meat daily, plus two pounds of sugar and a pint of milk every 45 days. The officers were regularly issued ginseng root, the ancient Oriental aphrodisiac and cureall. On occasion, the troops would sell their clothing to buy chickens or a suckling pig.

By June Dai's unit began to move cross-country toward "Front 698" in south Laos, and life became tough. "We had nothing except 250 grams of rice and some salt. If we were lucky we found bamboo shoots and cooked them. There was no milk or sugar." Illness claimed 20% of the unit. Many of the wounded died en route to a field hospital, a seven-or eight-day stretcher trip. Surrounded, out of food and low on ammunition after hard fighting near Khong Sédong, Dai and some of his comrades surrendered.

Dai's gripes? Only officers were allowed to have radios. And then there were Dai's Laotian allies, the Pathet Lao. "All they wanted in life was a wristwatch, then a motor scooter and other luxury items," he complained. "They weren't serious. The ones I saw were just fooling about. All the old hands said that the NVA did all the fighting and the Pathet Lao just sat around."

Time Megazine 1972



The publisher of this modest-looking paperback recently explained its meager promotion budget by telling the author, "The war just isn't selling any more." Maybe not in the bookstores, but it's still going strong in Southeast Asia.
The war Fred Branfman writes about is the U.S. bombing campaign in Laos, hardly an overworked subject, and the "voices" he records have rarely been heard. They come from the ground beneath the air war, and they belong to peasants who lived on the Plain of Jars in Laos' verdant Xieng Khouang province, one of the secret battlefields of the war. Eight years ago, the U.S. Mission in Laos designated their farms and villages part of a new Communist "social and economic infrastructure"; in the years since, the Air Force has bombed them with increasing intensity.

In May 1964, the area fell under the control of the Pathet Lao and a small number of North Vietnamese army troops and advisers. For the next 5 ½years U.S. airpower bore down on the Plain of Jars, ostensibly to support the efforts of CIA-backed Meo tribesmen to recapture the province. Bombers flew daily and sometimes hourly attack sorties, a total of 25,000 missions, dropping an estimated 75,000 tons of napalm, white phosphorus, antipersonnel bombs and high explosives—more than a ton for every Pathet Lao guerrilla, NVA soldier and civilian in the area. The bombing was intended to harass the Communists and drive the local population out of the Plain of Jars into southern regions controlled by the Royal Laotian government. Throughout that period, the air war over the Plain of Jars remained an official secret on two of the sides involved. North Viet Nam has never admitted that its troops are operating in Laos; until October 1969, the U.S. repeatedly denied it was bombing in northern Laos; then it insisted that civilian targets were rarely if ever attacked.

Over the years some 60% of the population of the Plain of Jars has been evacuated to refugee camps elsewhere in Laos. Branfman, a former International Volunteer Services education adviser and Lao-speaking freelance journalist, visited more than a dozen camps around the capital of Vientiane between September 1969 and February 1971, when he was abruptly expelled from Laos, he believes at the request of the CIA. Before he left, Branfman was able to interview more than 1,000 refugees. He collected folk songs and poems about the air raids, as well as 30 handwritten eyewitness accounts, 16 of which are incorporated here and illustrated with the refugees' drawings of broken bodies, burned huts and attacking planes.

Peasants who previously had barely known what an airplane was quickly learned to distinguish a T-28 from an F-105: "In the eleventh month of 1968, two F-4H planes flew over and bombed my village for 45 minutes," writes a 16-year-old. "They dropped eight napalm bombs, the fire from which burned all my things, 16 buildings along with all our possessions inside, as well as maiming our animals. Some people who didn't reach the jungle in time were struck and fell, dying most pitifully."

A 69-year-old former monk describes the destruction of a pagoda he had helped build in 1916, and a young man testifies to how successful the bombing was in driving the population out of Pathet Lao territory: "We saw that it wouldn't end, and we fled to the side of the government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister. Because the war was so severe, we had to flee from our homes, rice fields and paddies, cows and buffalo and come here in poverty."

Black Crows. Such testimony firmly establishes that of all the warring forces that raged around them — from al Pathet Laotian Lao to Army Meo regulars — tribesmen the and Roy peasants of the Plain of Jars most hated and feared the "black crows" of the U.S.

Air Force. Despite inevitable repetition, and the primitiveness of their writings and drawings, the peasants make that point far more vividly than Western antiwar critics with all their articulate and occasionally overwrought outrage — Author Branfman included.

The eyewitness accounts collected here also make shabby all official U.S. doubletalk intended to deny or obscure what has actually been inflicted on Laotian civilians by American airpower, especially since 1968. Branfman ends his book by quoting without comment a May 1971 letter to Michigan Senator Robert Griffin from David M. Abshire, Assistant Secretary of State for Con gressional Relations: "The rules do not permit attacks on nonmilitary targets and place out-of-bounds all inhabited villages . . . We deeply regret the fate of all victims of the war, both those killed by North Vietnamese action and those whose lives have been lost or dis rupted as a consequence of the defense of their country."

Time Megazine 1972



WITH the next-to-final phase of the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam in sight at last, the war suddenly appeared to be not dwindling down but rapidly building up again. Last week, even as President Nixon was announcing the pullout of 70,000 more G.I.s by May 1, the North Vietnamese were carrying out an ominous new offensive in each of Indochina's major battlegrounds.

> In Laos, Communist troops scored a stunning victory by forcing the evacuation of Long Cheng, the celebrated CIA base near the Plain of Jars. They also scattered the battered remnants of the U.S.-backed army of Meo tribesmen that was, until recently, the only force that could keep the Communists in check in Laos.

> In Cambodia, government troops continued to give ground to the North Vietnamese troops, who now control most of the northeastern countryside. At Krek, 2,500 Cambodian troops simply fled when the 10,000 South Vietnamese troops that had been operating with them in the former Communist "sanctuaries" were abruptly called home by Saigon. The Cambodians reportedly left so much equipment behind that U.S. aircraft were called upon to bomb it before it could be captured by the North Vietnamese.

> In South Viet Nam, Saigon forces took up defensive positions, primarily astride infiltration routes and around major cities and military bases, to await a sizable flare-up in Communist activity that is expected to peak at the time of the Tet holidays, which fall in mid-February. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese moved mobile missile launchers right up to South Viet Nam's northern frontiers, and the air war continued. The U.S. last week conducted its seventh "protective reaction" strike of the year against SAM sites in North Viet Nam.

Despite the poor results of the recent bombing, U.S. military officials insisted that the enemy was capable only of "cheap victories" in unimportant territory. Perhaps so, but the renewal of the ground war should dispel the notion, widespread in the U.S., that the fighting is over, at least for the American G.I. Technically, U.S. troops are indeed in a "defensive" posture, as the Administration calls it, because their main job is to protect American facilities. But for a good number of the 139,000 G.I.s still in Viet Nam, that job means endless patrols out in the boondocks under conditions that look very much like war.

In all probability, the last U.S. Army combat unit in Viet Nam will be the 7,000-man 3rd Brigade of the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile), which is responsible for the security of a vast area of Vietnamese countryside surrounding the huge American installations at Bien Hoa, Long Binh and the Tan Son Nhut airbase outside Saigon. Recently, TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch joined one 3rd Brigade company as it pushed off from a fire base 35 miles east of Saigon to begin a patrol in search of North Vietnamese infiltrators. His report: Nobody in Charlie Company wanted to be where he was, and when we walked off Fire Base Hall and into the jungle, it was easy to sympathize. We marched as a company for an hour, then divided into three platoons. After two miles, the jungle gave way to incredibly thick undergrowth—not high enough to block out the sun and too dense to move through, either quickly or silently. Napalm strikes had killed all the tall trees whose shade once kept down the growth on the jungle floor.

Charlie Company was fresh from a weekend in the seaside resort of Vung Tau—a prized opportunity for revelry and relaxation that comes only once every 45 days. The company has no barracks, no dress uniforms (they are stored in boxes at Bien Hoa) and no personal possessions (letters are the only personal items allowed in the field). The Vung Tau weekend, which the men enjoy in fatigues, is the only break in an endless cycle of ten-to 15-day patrols and three-day rests on a fire base with no hot showers and few other amenities.

No Hammocks. We are supposed to patrol until 5 o'clock, when the rules say that the night defensive position should be set up. If a unit moves after 5, there is a danger that a contact might run on after darkness, making air support more difficult. But at 5 it is pouring rain, and we are still in scrub, which is not good for a night position because there are no trees big enough to stop enemy mortars. It is close to 6 when we find a few trees, and everybody starts putting up his hooch. I pull out my hammock. "No hammocks," says Sergeant Henry A. Johnson, a Virginian who has a master's degree in communications. "The C.O. doesn't allow them. Too vulnerable to mortars. The C.O. believes in being cautious."
"Line One." When we move out at dawn next morning, everyone is a bit more nimble, perhaps because the Vung Tau hangovers are gone. We walk all morning, stopping for a ten-minute break each hour. At the noon break, the radio sputters with orders from the battalion commander to a unit that has made contact with the enemy five miles away. There was an ambush; one American was killed when he walked into an NVA bunker complex. Another is wounded and a helicopter is down. The battalion commander, flying overhead in his helicopter, says he is going in to pick up the downed pilot. His chopper is loaded with electronic gear and it is too heavy for any task that requires acrobatics. "Jesus, Colonel, be careful," whispers the radio operator, Pfc. Erik Lewis, 21. The rescue is successful.

Lewis tells me that a "Line One" (meaning a G.I. combat death in army jargon) "happens just rare enough so that nobody at home knows about it. But if you're out here, your peace outlook goes straight to zero." And, he adds, "I'm going to kill as many of those mothers as I can."

Charlie Company's commander. Captain Thomas D. Smith, was a young lawyer about to open an office in Omaha when he was drafted in 1966. Since then Smith, who is about to turn 30, has seen a number of "Line Ones." In the first two weeks of the new year, the 3rd Brigade suffered two killed and 34 wounded in skirmishes with its chief opponent, the 33rd NVA regiment, which prowls the jungles east of Saigon. The only way to stay alive in the jungle. Smith believes, is to keep moving. "You stop pushing and they'll walk all over you," he says.

At 10 a.m. on the third day, we are crouched over a small stream refilling canteens when the radio crackles: we are going to be dropped by copter into the area where the G.I.s had been ambushed yesterday. We move to the nearest landing zone —and wait. Finally, at 1 p.m. the helicopters show up to ferry us in a flotilla of six-man groups to the assault landing zone. I ride in the third chopper (the fourth or fifth is thought to be the most desirable) with Sergeant Henry R. Campbell of Newington, Conn., who won a Bronze Star in a firefight last October. Campbell is modest about his star ("Hell, all I did was put out all the firepower I could"), but he is also wryly amused by the Stateside impression of the nature of the war.

"My mother can't believe I'm in danger," he says as he sits in the door of the chopper with a machine gun across his knees. "She says the President says it's all defensive now, so how could it be dangerous?"

We land in elephant grass in a clearing. The only thing to be heard besides the rotor blades is the feeble stutter of the door gunner's machine gun. The landing zone is "cold" —meaning that there are no enemy about—but the troops find fresh tracks almost immediately. We follow the trail until shortly after 5. when another night position is set up. The forward artillery observer calls in artillery strikes on an area that he thinks the enemy might have moved into. He orders the strikes for 10 p.m. —like booking a telephone call—and waits up for them. Everyone else sleeps.

Too Much Rain. At dawn we set off again. When we finally reach the ambush site, we find only some rice left behind by the NVA, a pair of bloody trousers, a B40 North Vietnamese rocket case and a document nobody can read. It is four days since we walked off Fire Base Hall. There has been no contact but several scares, a lot of heat, a surfeit of leeches, too much rain for the dry season, and a wearying round of days that begin at 7 and end twelve hours later, when the light fails. Charlie Company is one-third of the way through its patrol. Ten more days exactly like the four before, and Charlie will be taken back to a fire base, to stand in reserve in case another unit needs assistance. Three days on the base, and ten more in the field. When I get a helicopter to leave, I am handed letters to mail from more than half of the company. "If we're not here," asks Sergeant James Wiggins, "how come they're getting these?"