A Nation of Refugees
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
LAOS' MEO TRIBESMEN: A Nation of Refurees BY ARNOLD ABRAMS VIENTIANE THE SOUTHERN migration of Meo hill tribesmen, which started from China several centuries ago, is ending now in Laos as a...
...So in addition to furnishing arms, equipment, training, transportation...
...he says...
...To help insure they do not, U.S...
...Nobody knows, so not much is being done...
...If the troops up front start worrying about their families in the rear, they're invariably going to start drifting back...
...The cost to Washington in this grim bargain, however, can be measured in money and materiel...
...A sapper attack and subsequent firefight killed six civilians, wounded 17 others and prompted more than 5,000 resettled refugees to flee into the surrounding mountains...
...Some believe the tribesmen eventually must make peace with the people they have been fighting so long...
...Accordingly, the North Vietnamese have started striking directly at the civilian tribal population to demoralize Vang Pao's forces and disrupt their supply system...
...The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle...
...We can't provide security...
...The U.S...
...Most of the facts about the refugee situation can be culled from charts, maps and statistics of American officials in Vientiane...
...most of the rest are too newly resettled to harvest crops...
...embassy officials hold "pep talk" sessions with the mercurial Vang Pao, hoping to bolster his spirit and keep his forces fighting...
...For once, more money and bigger bombs are not the answer...
...The only effective progovernment fighting force in Laos, the Meos have lost their livestock, lack adequate farmland, and, like Laos itself, have become totally dependent on American aid for survival...
...A fleet of Air America planes carries them in every morning and returns them to Vientiane before sundown...
...Their owners have started new settlements in what they hope will be safer surroundings...
...But earlier this spring, after boldly giving advance warning, the North Vietnamese struck Ban Son too...
...Of course, officials add, North Vietnam's determination to hold strategic areas keeps Laos in a precarious state...
...Although this assessment is largely correct, the Laotian conflict has taken a new and nasty turn that is inadequately reflected in the charts ARNOLD ABRAMS, who often reports from Southeast Asia, described his visit "With the Meo Tribesmen in Thailand" in our July 6, 1970 issue...
...The enemy's goals are to fully secure southern supply routes leading to South Vietnam and Cambodia, and to establish firmer control in the north by eliminating the approximately 10,000-man force headed by General Vang Pao, the flamboyant tribal leader...
...and statistics...
...EVEN BEFORE THEN the complex, including numerous tribal hamlets scattered on the nearby mountain slopes, may find itself abandoned...
...They catch up...
...must bear the burden of blame for this, the critics say, because Washington callously used these people to wage war by proxy...
...officials, who have no satisfactory solutions...
...the recently started rainy season should provide needed respite...
...They have nowhere to go and nobody to turn to but U.S...
...The wreckage of traditions and the degradation of the human spirit are not as easily quantifiable as enemy bodies or weapons captured, but they could prove far more significant...
...the Meos' loss must be calculated in blood and land...
...negotiations with the Pathet Lao representatives have resumed...
...One of these mornings," remarked George Cosgrove, the center's deputy director, "we're going to come back and find the whole place burned to the ground...
...to move to the lowlands, which would mean adopting a new, distasteful way of life...
...Ban Son is so vulnerable that dedicated field workers of the U.S...
...Sieng admits he and his wife are terrified by the prospect of another enemy attack against the center...
...Because it is as sleepy and dusty and delightfully decadent as ever, Vientiane provides little sense of what is happening in this unhappy kingdom...
...For that it is best to go about 70 miles north, to Ban Son, an American-run transport center and supply depot servicing more than 100.000 refugees—mostly Meos— in the surrounding area...
...or to reach an accommodation with the North Vietnamese, which would entail subservience to a country they detest...
...The Meos' situation reached a critical juncture after Hanoi lost its Cambodian sanctuaries last year...
...For many Meos, Ban Son, overlooking the southwestern edge of the strategic Plain of Jars, will be the last stop along the painful line of retreat...
...More than one third of the approximately 300,000 Meos in Laos are fleeing from battle...
...But security is a rare commodity in northern Laos, and new mountain strongholds are no longer available...
...Others insist that—precisely because the Meos have fought so long—they will not give up now...
...This complex has been northern Laos' main refugee gathering point since March 1970, when enemy forces overran Sam Thong, the former center about 20 miles farther north...
...And it may not be too long before the rest of these people are driven out...
...for most, it is only the latest in a series of such moves...
...policy here, the overriding irony is that the Meos' present choices are essentially the same ones that faced them 10 years ago—except that the tribesmen have lost at least a fourth of their population and all of their land and livestock...
...Supporters of U.S...
...They arrive looking lost and bewildered, carrying possessions on their backs in bulging bags, often unsure of just where they have come from, not knowing where they are going...
...Agency for International Development dare not stay overnight...
...Relocating and providing basic services for these people costs about $20 million annually, with the bill mounting each year...
...I've had four different homes in the last two years...
...Numerous large and substantial thatch huts, built last year by tribesmen anticipating a long stay, today stand empty...
...The enemy can return any time...
...The North Vietnamese did a real job of disrupting operations here," one American official at the center confided recently...
...His units are already so seriously depleted that barely adolescent youths are being recruited and rushed into action...
...The tribesmen's alternatives are to continue fighting, which would require additional American aid without any assurance of victory...
...Washington surely made pawns of these people, but they were willing to be used...
...It's not a bad idea," says one American refugee worker about the enemy strategy...
...They follow everywhere now...
...To critics of U.S...
...policy contend that the Meos were fighting for their territory long before Americans entered the picture, and that the tribesmen were grateful for the weapons and support supplied them...
...Those who have stayed behind are either too lame or disheartened to flee again...
...I'm too old and tired to run anymore," says Sieng, a tall, gaunt and toothless man...
...Opinions about the Meos' future vary widely among ranking American personnel in Vientiane...
...What can anybody do...
...That is enough...
...Yet even as Meo leaders contemplate these unpalatable prospects, the widening combat is turning their people into a nation of refugees...
...The Americans, they say, are taking them someplace where it will be safer...
...After more than a decade of battling for their territory against encroaching Communist forces, the once tough and proud tribesmen have been pushed to the mountains' edge with nothing but hated plains below...
...The war's victims come streaming through here, dozens, often hundreds per day...
...advice, and combat support to Meo soldiers, as it has been doing covertly through the CIA for nearly a decade, Washington now must also feed virtually the entire hill tribe population...
...I will stay in Ban Son...
...The successful allied invasion prompted North Vietnamese forces to dig in on the Bolovens Plateau in southern Laos, and to increase pressure on the hill tribesmen up north...
...But when you are old like us, what is the use of running...
...All told, the endless war in this country has generated an estimated 700,000 refugees out of a total population of three million...
...LAOS' MEO TRIBESMEN: A Nation of Refurees BY ARNOLD ABRAMS VIENTIANE THE SOUTHERN migration of Meo hill tribesmen, which started from China several centuries ago, is ending now in Laos as a march of misery...
...The overall picture, they say, is not too bad: Government forces have weathered another enemy dry-season offensive...
...They are people like 73year-old Sieng Man and his 68-year-old wife, who spend much of the day sitting in front of their hut staring out at vacant surroundings...
Vol. 54 • June 1971 • No. 12
