Laos and America: The Secret War, and the Forgotten Hmong People

Article by Alex Griffiths. Edited and Researched by Tom Burke.

Q: Which country, per square mile, is the most densely bombed country in the history of warfare?

A: Laos

Laos in the present day is perhaps best known as a niche travel destination for backpackers. Geographically situated in between Thailand and Vietnam – both more tourist-friendly destinations – people are increasingly becoming aware of the country’s stunning natural beauty. Yet behind the swathes of rolling, green hills, and idyllic rice fields, lies a far darker aspect to a country that’s people and traditions go as far back as the 3000 BC.

The Vietnam War hangs heavy on the consciousness of American military history. As one of the definitive conflicts of the second-half of the twentieth century, the estimated 3 million Vietnamese deaths, as well as the 58,000 American soldiers, are embedded into the narrative of international relations post-1945. To a certain extent, the spill over into Cambodia – and the genocide under the Khmer rouge between 1975-79 – is also still prominent, although perhaps not as much as it should be.

Far less known than these two is the spill over effect the war had into Laos. For over twenty years, between 1955-1975 the United States waged a secret war in the country that devastated the lives of the Hmong people. The number of deaths and refugees is unclear, but is somewhere in the region of 200,000. The roots of the Hmong ethnicity can be traced back as far as 3000 BC, where they occupied the Yellow River valley in China. It was during the 18th century that political unrest caused them to migrate south into Indochina, where they found sanctuary in the mountains of Laos; sheltered from conflict with arable land to farm. Throughout the following centuries their economy was based on a subsistence and cash crops; growing sticky rice and cultivating opium to sell to Chinese merchants. Their social structure saw them divided into tribes and clans, which had the tendency to generate fierce internal rivalries between leaders.

However, as the Cold War tensions started to develop, the Hmong soon found themselves as pawns in a superpower struggle. The story can be picked up in 1950. In August Prince Souphanouvong, member of the ruling royal family, broke away to form a left-nationalist coalition known as the Pathet Lao, who were allied with the similar Vietnamese revolutionary movement. Within the Cold War mind-set that inhibited all US politicians of the time, the threat of communism spreading throughout South-East Asia appeared very real. What followed was a decade of covert CIA operations that sought to block the influence of the Pathet Lao through the backing of numerous right-wing regimes, as well as funding the Royal Lao army.

As the war in Vietnam escalated, 1962 saw the signing of the Geneva accords, an agreement between the US and Soviet Union to respect the neutrality of Laos. This merely served to push military operations underground, where they were further concealed from both the American Congress and public. Over the next 18 months the CIA undertook the training of its 9,000 strong Hmong militia, transforming it into the ‘Secret Army’ of 30,000 men – approximately 60% of the male Hmong population. The main battleground with the Pathet Leo forces was to be the Plain of Jars, an ancient plateau of rolling grasslands, which has scattered amongst it thousands of stone jars believed to be associated with ancient burial practices.

Bombing of the region started in May 1964, in an effort to drive the Pathet Leo forces off the plain. Whilst only making up one faction of America’s secret war, its impact on the everyday lives of the villagers is the most harrowing story. By the time the bombing stopped in 1973, the country had absorbed approximately 2.1 million tons of bombs – the population of the country at the time was only 3 million. To place this number into context, that’s ten times the amount dropped on Japan during the Second World War. 500,000 tons of these bombs were on the Plain of Jars. As the war progressed the bombing – and the loss of males to the war – soon began to affect the fertility of the land, which their livelihood’s depended on. Villages started to become increasingly dependent on US food drops, which the CIA soon came to use as a form of blackmail; if the villages didn’t provide soldiers, then the food would be held back, and the village starve. Historian Timothy Castle is right to state that ‘the Hmong people, driven off their mountains by continuing communist pressure and facing hostility in the lowlands, had little choice but to fight’.

1975 saw America withdraw all of its forces and abandon its covert operations. Laos was soon under the rule of a communist government, who were swift in their reprisals towards the Hmong. Facing attack and persecution, hundreds of thousands fled across the border to Thailand. Many never returned to their homeland, and would spend the following decade in refugee camps. As late as 1991, Thailand, Laos and the United Nations signed an agreement to move some of the people back into Laos from these camps. Yet the majority still faced persecution upon their return. Many now live dispersed across the globe. Whilst the majority now live in China (approximately 2 million) there is an estimated 200,000 that now live in America, in particular California. As for the Plain of Jars, many of the cluster bombs remain unexploded and pose a very real threat to this day. There have also been concerns that an upsurge in tourism has been effecting the preservation of the stone jars, which are being considered for world heritage status. Comparatively little is understood about this aspect of the Vietnam War, with a relatively small amount of scholarship on events. Attempts have been made to bring this story into the public conscious of the west. Paul Hilmer’s 2010 A History of the Hmong, for example, received extremely positive reviews and is an accessible read for the non-academic. A fictional account simply entitled The Plain of Jars by Nicholas Lombardi, is also due publication soon.

Many would suggest the war in South East Asia has a case to answer as to whether American actions constituted war crimes. One gets the impression that the people of the region will never get closure until those responsible are held accountable. America’s Secret War – and the devastation it brought to the Hmong people – will remain just that.

Research

The USA’s official involvement in South East Asia is limited to the economic support and restructuring of South Korea from 1945, including the Korean War (1950-53), and the American support of the capitalist government in South Vietnam from 1955, concluding with the disastrous Vietnam War (1963-75). President Nixon ordered both the bombing and a ground assault on Laos in an attempt to cut off communist insurgent supply lines from North Vietnam. Both attempts failed. Since 1989 many of the Hmong have been forcibly repatriated into Laos from countries such as Thailand, whilst others remain in China and the United States.

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