The Communist Pattern in Laos:

...officials there were some who were incompetent...

...It is less a country, however, than an agglomeration of small, lush river valleys cut off from each other by mountain ridges and limestone plateaus inhabited by elephants, tigers and gaur...

...King Savang Vatthana, though educated in France, believes that a gilded Buddhist statue in his little, hilltop royal city of Luang Prabang will protect him and the city against outside attack...

...but basically the tactics are typical of most Communist expansion movements—including a final, climactic military drive accompanied by a barrage of camouflaging talk about cease-fires, peace and coalition government...

...Particularly in the early years after 1954, Laotian officials and even a few Americans profiteered scandalously from U.S...

...If the United States and its allies had been bold and decisive immediately after the Kong Le coup and given military aid, including combat aircraft, to the Vientiane Government, the Communist tide might have been turned...

...Many of their disbanded troops buried their arms and became Communist organizers all over the country...

...Kong Le played the Communist game by supplying arms to Pathet Lao elements friendly to Communist as well as Western countries...

...Eventually, with the British and French strongly in favor, the U.S...

...attitude toward Kong Le turned out to be a mistake...

...At the 1954 Geneva Conference that ended the Indochina war, they accepted a settlement which was to prove disastrous to the new, loosely organized Laotian government...

...About half the 2,000,000 population are lowland, Buddhist Laos (pronounced as in the last syllable of allows), concentrated especially in the valley of the giant Mekong river...

...Two Pathet Lao battalions that were supposed to integrate into Government units refused to do so and eventually escaped to Vietnam border areas...

...The Prince is a member of the Luang Prabang royal family, and cast in his lot with the Communists as a guerrilla fighter in resisting the wartime Japanese occupation of Indochina...

...Just before the conference, Communistled Vietnamese, with the help of some Laotian collaborators, had invaded Laos in force, advancing to the outskirts of Luang Prabang...

...The Royal government, then headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma fa halfbrother of Prince Souphanouvong), gave the Communists two cabinet posts, occupied by Prince Souphanouvong and Phoumi Vongvichit...

...For one, the Laotian leaders with whom the U.S...

...has worked since 1954 are members of an elite class too remote from the masses to understand new stirrings and desires among the people...

...formerly a sleepy little town, in recent years it has mushroomed under the impact of the more than $300,000,000 in U.S...

...Last fall a local garrison mutiny in Vientiane, led by young Captain Kong Le, overturned a Phoumi-dominated Government and temporarily put Prince Souvanna in office as Premier...

...Vientiane, the kingdom's only real city, now has 120,000 residents...

...Even if the Communist-led forces in Laos stop advancing and agree to political talks before completing the armed conquest of the country, they can subsequently take control either through political maneuvers or further armed operations...

...sent military advisers in civilian dress to help the French in training Laotian troops...

...With Laos under Communist domination, the Communists, in time, can attempt a repetition of the same pattern in South Vietnam and Thailand...

...Prince Souvanna's request for Russian economic aid (quickly translated by the Russians into arms) during the brief time when he was Premier provided the Russians with formal justification for continuing aid to a Pathet Lao-dominated regime set up in northern Xieng Khouang...

...There are two major reasons why the Communist advance in Laos has not been stopped: One, obviously, is the weakness of the country itself...

...The risk of provoking large-scale North Vietnamese and possibly Chinese Communist intervention, however, was too great and a compromise solution was sought...

...aid given to the Laotian government...

...Spearheaded by a young mixed army-civilian group (the Committee for the Defense of the National Interests), encouraged and supported by the U.S., the Rightists united and formed a new government without Pathet Lao elements...

...Despite a military alliance with the Laotian Government, the French gave no combat military assistance in the fight against the Pathet Lao and were ineffective in training Government troops...

...The initial indulgent U.S...

...For another, not enough U.S...

...This justification included the argument that Prince Souvanna had been improperly displaced as Premier by a Vientiane Assembly dominated by General Nosavan and thus continued to be theoretical head of the Government despite the fact that he had fled the capital...

...He threw his considerable national prestige in the direction of collaboration with the Pathet Lao and the Communist bloc in general...

...decided to press for some concessions to the Left and the creation of a more neutralist government, perhaps even with some Communist participation...

...policy, soon lost heart themselves...

...Predisposed toward a neutralist shift, for a short time the U.S...

...gambling and prostitution flourished...

...But there was a chance that other means, properly applied, might have done the job...

...At the time, those princely and propertied Lao families that formerly dominated separate regional regimes came together to form a central government and inaugurate a parliamentary system...

...played along with Kong Le and Prince Souvanna...

...To be sure, there are local variations, suited to the peculiarities of the shambly, exotic Southeast Asia kingdom...

...In 1954, with reluctance and misgivings, the U.S...

...The move of the Laotian Rightwing and the U.S...

...Landlocked, mountain-ribbed Laos covers an area about the size of Great Britain...

...But it soon became clear that the Pathet Lao were using their new status to undermine the Government and promote the Communist cause...

...Perhaps the backward but unhappily strategic tropical state could have been saved only by full-scale Western military intervention, reinforced by an emphatic readiness to attack, if necessary, the North Vietnam sanctuary of the Communists...

...Laos had only two engineers, one native doctor and a scattering of others with modern technical training...

...When it attained independence...

...Durdin, who has for many years reported from this and other Southeast Asia trouble spots, also analyzes the checkered history of the beleaguered kingdom of Laos during the last six-and-a-half years...

...By Tillman Durdin The Communist Pattern in Laos Tiny kingdom's plight underlines Western difficulties with Moscow-Peking strategy Although the American public has only recently become fully aware of the critical Laotian situation, the roots of the present troubles—as Tillman Durdin points out in this article—go back at least as far as the Geneva Conference of 1954...

...in turning sharply against the Communist-led Left just possibly might have been successful but for an accumulation of excesses, tactical blunders and errors of judgment...

...Most Laotians know little of the outside world, and all of them, including the Buddhists, are greatly influenced by myths and superstitions...

...The Geneva agreement called on the Laotian Communist-led forces to accept the authority of the Government and integrate militarily and politically into the national community, but gave them the right to regroup temporarily in two northern provinces bordering North Vietnam...

...later supplied and backed General Nosavan in his takeover of Vientiane, the General and his Premier, Prince Boun Oum, were unable to rally support in the country and, as puppets of an uncertain, vacillating U.S...

...The Communists are now in a position to dominate all of Laos...

...The kingdom's scattered, mostly illiterate people, living in hundreds of little thatch-roofed villages and weakened by inadequate diet and intestinal parasites, are distinctly heterogeneous...

...After defeat in Indochina, the French despaired of keeping any of the area (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) out of Communist hands...

...Under Phoui Sananikone, the first Rightist premier after the Pathet Lao had been dropped from the Government in 1958, a moderate program was inaugurated that made considerable headway in education, building and general welfare...

...Aside from rice, fruits, timber and a little tin, the chief product—and major export— for generations has been opium, grown by the hill people and smuggled to the outside world...

...The French resented American intrusion and have intrigued against the U.S...

...When in 1959, Premier Souvanna Phouma effected the disbandment of the International Commission (Canada, India and Poland) that had supervised implementation of the Geneva agreements, the U.S...

...In 1957, when the Communist bloc was stressing peaceful coexistence, the Pathet Lao shifted to a parliamentary, coalition strategem and agreed to end hostilities...

...Aided by Russian airborne supplies and an estimated 2,000 Vietnamese in logistical and combat roles, the Communist-led Laotian forces have established clear superiority over the dispirited, demoralized Vientiane government troops...

...In 1958, various Rightist elements became alarmed at the prospect that the Pathet Lao and their newly recruited sympathizers among Laotian politicians might take over the country...

...aid operations...

...It disrupted and confused the Army and Administration...

...During the colonial period the French had done little to develop the country and had educated only a small elite...

...There are few roads, no railways...

...Illustrations are by Armand Weston...

...Even the present Westernbacked Prime Minister, Prince Boun Oum, keeps a human fetus as a charm to make him invulnerable to his enemies...

...Only U.S...

...began direct aid by paying military and other Government expenses and starting a small economic assistance program...

...With cynical deliberatness, the Pathet Lao have continued hostilities long after protesting their concurrence in a ceasefire and in the face of U.S...

...Later, however, the younger Rightists, headed by General Phoumi Nosavan, took charge and pursued more extreme policies which turned many nonCommunists into Pathet Lao sympathizers...

...In Laos the world is now witnessing the final stages of a Communist march to power in still another country once within the sphere of Western influence...

...He is married to a member of the Vietnamese Communist party...

...The second is the mistakes made there by the United States, France and, to a lesser degree, the other Western powers...

...and allied military intervention could have stopped them earlier in the crisis, and now any such action becomes increasingly more difficult...

...The present full-scale Communist-led military attack in Laos is the outcome of this sharp Left-Right schism...

...This money has completely financed the Army, police and much of the country's civil budget...

...aid reached the rural areas, and the successive governments were unable to organize effective programs that benefited the masses...

...Prince Souvanna, meanwhile, had turned bitterly against the U.S...

...but as the largest ethnic group, they have traditionally dominated the Meos, Changs, Yaos, Khas and dozens of other animistic mountain-dwelling tribes...

...These tribes have no love for the more cultured and sophisticated lowlanders...

...Within a year, the Pathet Lao returned to open rebellion...

...During this period, marked by sporadic guerrilla warfare with Government troops, they consolidated and indoctrinated their political followers and gathered a force of 7,500 men, led by Vietnamese and supplied from North Vietnam and Communist China...

...For the next three years, the Communist-dominated Pathet Lao refused to integrate and kept control in the North...

...Election-stealing on a flagrant scale created nation-wide resentment...

...in addition, they held about one third of the seats in the National Assembly, won in new national elections...

...They are a graceful, gentle, unwarlike people...

...The country has few important natural resources capable of exploitation without impossibly heavy capital investment...

...Within its present boundaries Laos has never been a unified country...

...The Pathet Lao leaders, such as Prince Souphanouvong and Phoumi Vongvichit, were hardened offspring of the Vietnamese Communist movement...

...When the U.S...

...The new money made Vientiane a city of gaudy new villas and shiny latemodel automobiles...

...In a subordinate role that barred them from tactical training, the Americans did not make great progress in improving the Laotian army...

...in Southeast Asia ever since, complicating and weakening American efforts...

...acceptance of their plan for a 14-nation conference to settle the crisis...

...It was ruled as a loose political entity for half a century by the French, who gave it independence as a result of the Communist-led Indochina rebellion in the early 1950s...

...It was difficult to attract Americans to duty in Laos, and among the many hardworking and able U.S...