Behind the Battle in Laos
FIELD, MICHAEL
Success of Communist tactics in the tiny Kingdom may lead to new Red plan for underdeveloped areas BEHIND THE BATTLE IN LAOS By Michael Field LONDON WHEN I FIRST visited Laos, in September 1956...
...As a Laotian, Souphannouvong must have some qualms about leading a party which not only owes its origin to foreign organization and ideas but still largely depends upon the Vietnamese Communist party (called the Lao Dong or "Labor" party) for funds and guidance...
...American technicians, working under the International Cooperation Administration program and officers of the United States Information Service certainly abound...
...Anyone who knows French officers will admit that they would be the first to protest if there were any American attempt to reverse the relationship...
...Some revelations of the organization of the Neo Lao Hak Sat and its hold on the Laotian masses were published last November in Lao Hakxa Sat, the organ of the Committee for the Defense of the National Interests, in Vientiane...
...The methods resemble those used by Mao Tse-tung when he heretically built his revolution among China's rural peasantry...
...How can a government operate a democratic parliamentary system (such as Laos undoubtedly has) when the "loyal" opposition (Neo Lao Hak Sat) interprets its role as agitator in conformity with traditional Communist policy as laid down as long ago as 1920, at the Second Comintern Congress...
...Some 800 miles of common frontier, albeit a mountainous wilderness, could presumably be regarded as a point of access for an unfriendly Western power...
...Success of Communist tactics in the tiny Kingdom may lead to new Red plan for underdeveloped areas BEHIND THE BATTLE IN LAOS By Michael Field LONDON WHEN I FIRST visited Laos, in September 1956 there was hope that what had come to be known as "the Pathet Lao problem" would soon be solved...
...Behind this, pushing it and disciplining its members, is the redoubtable Lao Dong party of North Vietnam...
...This is the threat which the Phoui Sananikone Government has to face...
...Months of laborious bargaining and a settlement reached in November 1957 have come to nought...
...My own first reaction, each time I visited Laos during the past three years, was one of incredulity that this somnolent, charmingly anachronistic place could have any political significance at all...
...The French High Command was permitted to maintain a maximum of 1,500 officers and non-commissioned officers for training the Laotian Army, and up to 3,500 men at the military base of Seno in South Laos...
...I never saw anything in Laos which could in any way justify its being dubbed an "American base...
...According to one of the young officers who runs the influential anti-Communist Committee for the Defense of the National Interests in Vientiane today, the hard core of the movement is called the Phak Khon Ngan (Workers party...
...The French have never maintained more than about 200 military instructors in Laos, and the 100 American officers now training the Laotian Army to use American-type equipment (supplied strictly in accordance with the Agreement) have civilian status and are under the control of the French military mission...
...But, as always, he evaded my inquiries about his relations with the North Vietnamese—in spite of the fact that his Vietnamese wife is a militant Viet Minh supporter...
...The same tight discipline brings simple, unlettered Laotian peasants, Meo, Tai and other tribesmen together in associations of farmers, youth, women, etc., on the well-known model...
...Hanoi is now accusing the Royal Laotian Government of "tearing up the Geneva Agreement of 1954," which ended the eight year Indochina War...
...It is nevertheless difficult to see how the steady Communization of Laos, maintained under the cover of a Hanoi-sponsored, bogus "civil war" can be halted by fair words and fair attitudes—such as those sincerely advocated once by the former Prime Minister...
...In so doing it has raised the anger of the North Vietnamese "stage managers" of the Neo Lao Hak Sat...
...For Hanoi is anxious to maintain the fiction as long as possible that Pathet Lao and its ancillary groups are the spontaneous outcome of pure Laotian patriotism...
...The architects of the Geneva Agreement foresaw well that Laos could become a bone of contention between the two blocs...
...Intimidation and punishment are used to make sure that members of the family groups (who are never allowed to resign) vote against the Government, indulge in further propaganda work, encourage people to gang up against "village capitalists" and commit carefully planned acts of violence...
...The only military supplies allowed to enter Laos are specified amounts necessary for defense purposes...
...Palhet Lao never accepted the dissolution of the Lao Issara and formed an independent "committee of Laotian liberation," under Viet Minh aegis in Viet Minh controlled territory, in 1950...
...They are conceived to use an almost untouched population of peasants and tribal minorities as an instrument to overthrow a central "bourgeois nationalist" government—like that in Vientiane—which has not yet been able to consolidate its control of a country lacking communications...
...The details are, I think, a blueprint for what may be described as the "grass roots Communization" of Asia...
...And what about the "shadow-war" in the remote interior...
...Laotians who prove their ability to withstand the rigors of Communist training (and such ruthlessness is essentially alien to the gentle Lao soul) apparently even graduate into the ranks of the Lao Dong party itself...
...Families are grouped together—sometimes as many as 50 families—and "ruled" by a Communist cadre...
...Laos are noticeably lacking in eyewitness accounts of the fighting...
...When I last saw Prince Souphannouvong, in August 1958, I found it hard to believe that this engaging Laotian nobleman was the sinister figure Western propaganda has made him out to be...
...A subscriber to French newspapers, he chatted amiably about Britain and America and said that provided American aid were used for genuinely productive ends, he saw no objection to it...
...Very different from this is the history and present activity of the Communist-backed Neo Lao Hak Sat (Lao Patriotic Front)—the name adopted by the Pathet Lao (Lao State) when they were allowed to function as a legal political party, in November 1957...
...It is often forgotten that when Ho Chi Minh, the father of Vietnamese Communism founded his party in 1930, he called it the Communist party of Indochina...
...The leader of the Communist-backed rebels, Prince Souphannouvong, had suddenly flown into Vientiane from his mountain stronghold in the northern province of Sam Neua, embraced his half-brother, Prince Souvanna Phouma, then Prime Minister, and opened negotiations for a peaceful settlement...
...Today one may get a lift on a Government plane to Sam Neua...
...But they have gone one stage further...
...Pathet Lao began as a left-wing branch of the Lao Issara (Free Laos)—the true Laotian nationalists who won their independence from France as early as July 1949...
...A policy of neutrality may seem wise for tiny Laos, on the threshhold of the Chinese giant and the Viet Minh...
...Viewed from Hanoi and Peking, a pro-Western Laos is obviously undesirable—even dangerous...
...There is no reason to assume that the "pan-Indo-chinese" nature of Viet Minh Communism has given way to a narrower nationalist view...
...It has begun again in earnest for the obvious reason that the Royal Government of Phoui Sananikone has become aware of the true nature of Neo Lao Hak Sat and of its real achievements among the approximately two million inhabitants of this incredibly backward country...
...The result of all this is the silent and almost imperceptible creation of a militant "revolutionary" peasantry in Laos fed on ready-made slogans, single-minded and incapable of normal judgment—in a word, brainwashed...
...Reports from journalists now in MICHAEL FIELD, a correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, recently completed an extended tour of Laos...
...The associations, led by convinced and trained Communists, enable Neo Lao Hak Sat to control separately and together all members of families and to build up the system of denunciation within the family which has played so important a role in the history of Asian Communism...
...It was the era of peaceful coexistence...
...And world peace may depend on its answer...
...The difficulties of reaching the troubled areas have always been almost insuperable...
...But the aims of both these groups are eminently peaceful: economic assistance and a sincere, if not often very successful, attempt to interest the lethargic Laotian in the American way of life...
...Its Communist party therefore shares this unhatched state and nestles comfortably within the respectable, protective shell of the Neo Lao Hak Sat...
...Laos is the most frustrating of places for the "man on the spot...
...As far as can be reasonably established, there has been no violation of the Geneva Agreement...
...They are obliged to attend indoctrination meetings where the Communist view of society is presented to them in crude and effective terms...
...Laos is still a nation in embryo...
...Now, three years later, Souphannouvong is under arrest in Vientiane and his followers are again in open insurrection...
...The question seems to be: How can the Royal Laotian Government defend itself against the new-style subversion without provoking armed intervention in favor of that subversion...
...The introduction of military reinforcements from outside was prohibited...
...It is a question that may well be asked one day in more than one other underdeveloped country...
...This is one of those well-known "secrets" which bedevil an honest investigator in Laos today...
...But one needs second sight to see any of the events described in the dramatic communiques from Vientiane and Hanoi...
...There was no tell-tale Marxist jargon in his vocabulary...
...Not only is the familiar Communist cell technique in use: It has been developed on a family basis (essential in a primitive society where the family is the only effective unit...
...Most emphatic of all about the seriousness of the current situation are the official voices of Communist North Vietnam...
...For months Radio Hanoi, the North Vietnam news agency (VNA) and the daily newspaper Nhan Dan have been violently abusing the Royal Government and agitating for the return of the International Control Commission which adjourned sine die in July 1958—in the face of a strong protest by the Polish member of this Indian-Canadian-Polish team...
...Prince Souvanna Phouma...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 34
