Lao Civil War
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The Lao Civil War was an armed conflict within Laos between 1953 and 1975 between the procommunist movement Pathet Lao and the troops of the government of the Kingdom of Laos . The latter were at times divided into rival wings that also fought each other. The war took place against the background of the Vietnam War and is combined with this and the Cambodian Civil War to form the Second Indochina War. On the side of the Pathet Lao, the troops of North Vietnam intervened , on which the royal government and army temporarily Thailand, the United States (initially with money and military advisers, later also directly military) and South Vietnam .
Since the USA, unlike the Vietnam War, was able to keep its participation in the war a secret from its own people and the world public and it attracted much less international attention than that, it is also known as the "Secret" or the "Forgotten War" designated. The Laotian Civil War is one of the proxy wars between the blocs of the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War . It ended with the victory of Pathet Lao in 1975 and the establishment of the People's Republic of Laos.
End of the First Indochina War in Laos (1953–54)
The first stage of the Lao civil war is actually the final phase of the First Indochina War in Laos. In this, the national liberation movement Lao Issara, like the Việt Minh in Vietnam and the Khmer Issarak in Cambodia, fought against the French colonial power. When France finally granted independence to the Kingdom of Laos in 1953, the Pathet Lao, who had emerged from the radical and pro-communist wing of the Lao Issara, did not recognize the royalist government and continued to fight against it. The conflict ended for the time being as a result of the Geneva Indochina Conference of 1954. Unlike Vietnam, Laos was not divided, but the Pathet Lao were given two northern provinces as “areas of influence”. They should then be reintegrated into the state association if the Laotian Patriotic Front (the political wing of Pathet Lao) became involved in a national coalition government.
First Lao Civil War (1958-61)
After elections in 1958, a national coalition government was actually formed with the participation of the Pathet Lao under the neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma . However, it collapsed in August of the same year when Souvanna Phouma was overthrown under pressure from the USA. Fighting broke out between the north-based Pathet Lao with their North Vietnamese supporters and the troops of the government of the kingdom, which escalated to war in July 1959. This is also known as the First Lao Civil War. Its first phase ended on August 9, 1960 with the coup of the neutralist paratrooper captain Kong Le against the government in Vientiane. Under his leadership, the government made peace with the Pathet Lao.
However, right-wing forces under Prince Boun Oum and General Phoumi Nosavan set up a counter-government in Savannakhet in southern Laos . They had the majority of the Royal Lao Armed Forces behind them and were supported by the US with cash payments and military advisers, as well as by Thai troops. The then Thai Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat was Phoumi's cousin. Since the USA did not want to intervene with ground troops at the time, the CIA raised a so-called secret army , which consisted primarily of fighters from the Hmong ethnic group and fought with guerrilla tactics . It was led by General Vang Pao and was active in the north of the country, where it fought against the Pathet Lao. The First Lao Civil War ended through international mediation at the Geneva Laos Conference on June 16, 1961. A year later, a national coalition government consisting of conservatives, neutralists and Pathet Lao was formed under Prince Souvanna Phouma.
Second Lao Civil War (1963-73)
Pathet Lao, the right wing and neutralists continued to struggle for power in the state. The conflict was fueled by the escalation of the war in neighboring Vietnam. The USA continued to try to weaken the Pathet Lao by supporting the Hmong rebels in the north, because they did not want to accept the communists' participation in the government as part of their containment policy . In addition, the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail , on which the North Vietnamese communists transported their support supplies to the Viet Cong of South Vietnam and which the USA wanted to interrupt, ran through Laotian territory.
In March 1963, open fighting broke out between Pathet Lao and Kong Les units. Presumably the communists wanted to expand their sphere of influence into the central Laos controlled by the neutralists. The units of the right wing of the Lao Army did not come to the aid of their rival Kong Le. Parts of the neutralist troops also overflowed to the Pathet Lao, so that they were largely wiped out. In April 1964, various officers fought among themselves for control of the capital Vientiane within the right-wing advancing into the central region. The conservatives were weakened lastingly.
In May 1964, the USA and South Vietnam then actively intervened in the war. The original intra-Laotian conflict faded more and more into the background to that between the parties to the Vietnam War. Until 1973 the American Air Force carried out bombing raids on the communist-controlled areas (Operation "Barrel Roll") . On average every eight minutes around the clock, a Boeing B-52 load , a total of 260 million bombs, was dropped over Laos, especially over the province of Xieng Khouang , where the plains of the clay jugs are located. Three times as many bombs fell over it as over the whole of Japan during World War II, making it the most bombed area in the world, according to historian Alfred W. McCoy . Since almost a third of them did not explode immediately, duds remained a major problem in Laos for a long time after the end of the war.
In March 1968, the North Vietnamese troops were able to achieve a decisive victory in the battle of Phou Pha Thi , on which the American secret base "Lima Site 85" was located. In view of the massive losses suffered by the Hmong rebels of his “secret army” against the superior North Vietnamese armed forces, Vang Pao increasingly force-recruited child soldiers , a large number of whom were only 13 or 14 years old. He financed his operations by trading heroin , which was approved by the CIA and in some cases even actively supported by the stealth airline Air America .
The North Vietnamese People's Army brought more and more troops to Laos, the units of the Laotian government were in retreat. The South Vietnamese Operation Lam Son 719 , which was supposed to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Southeast Laotian border area in February 1971, failed. During the communists' "Easter Offensive" in South Vietnam, the Americans increasingly focused their attention there and reduced the intensity of their attacks on Laos. As a result of the Treaty of Paris of January 27, 1973, they finally withdrew. On February 22, 1973, the Laotian government and Pathet Lao signed a peace treaty. In April 1974 the communists were again accepted into a coalition government. On December 2, 1975, they finally took power in a bloodless manner and proclaimed the People's Democratic Republic of Laos.
consequences
After the Communists came to power, some of the Hmong rebels resumed the fight. They were now persecuted as traitors and "lackeys" of the Americans, although the government and its Vietnamese allies did not always differentiate between armed rebels and Hmong civilians. The incipient conflict between Vietnam and China also played a role here. The Hmong were not only accused of having fought on the side of the Americans, but also of being supported by China. Over 40,000 people died in this conflict. A total of up to 300,000 people fled from Laos to neighboring Thailand, including not only the Hmong but also other Laotians who did not want to live under the government of the Pathet Lao.
King Savang Vatthana disappeared after his abdication. He probably died, like his Queen and the Crown Prince, in one of the communist labor camps. Other representatives of the anti-communist camp, such as Boun Oum, fled abroad when they were not already there, such as Kong Le and Phoumi Nosavan. The “red prince” Souphanouvong, on the other hand, became President of the People's Democratic Republic. Souvanna Phouma was also able to stay in the country as his advisor.
Web links
- Sven Hansen: The largest military operation of the CIA. taz.de, February 16, 2010 (review of the Arte documentation "America's Secret War in Laos")
- Jürgen Kremb: The city that nobody was allowed to know. One Day, Spiegel Online, November 14, 2008 (via Long Cheng , the base of the CIA secret army)
further reading
- Mervyn Brown: Was in Shangri-La. A Memoir of Civil War in Laos. Radcliffe Press, London et al. 2001, ISBN 1-86064-735-9 .
- Kenneth Conboy, James Morrison: Shadow War. The CIA's Secret War in Laos. Paladin Press, Boulder CO 1995, ISBN 0-87364-825-0 .
- Martin Stuart-Fox : A History of Laos. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1997, ISBN 0-521-59746-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mary Beth Norton et al. a .: A People and a Nation. A History of the United States. 10th edition, Stamford CT 2014, p. 801.
- ↑ Indochina (First Indochina War). ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. War archive of the research group on the causes of war, Institute for Political Science, University of Hamburg.
- ↑ a b Laos (First Lao Civil War). ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. War archive of the research group on the causes of war, Institute for Political Science, University of Hamburg.
- ^ Daniel Fineman: A Special Relationship. The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 1997, p. 243.
- ↑ a b Laos (Second Lao Civil War). ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. War archive of the research group on the causes of war, Institute for Political Science, University of Hamburg.
- ^ A b Kenton Clymer: Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War. In: The Columbia History of the Vietnam War. Columbia University Press, New York 2011, pp. 357-381, here p. 363.
- ^ Ian MacKinnon: Forty years on, Laos reaps bitter harvest of the secret war. In: The Guardian , December 3, 2008.
- ^ John Prados, Safe for Democracy. The Secret Wars of the CIA. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2006, pp. 356-357.
- ↑ Laos (Meo (Hmong) first guerrilla war). ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. War archive of the research group on the causes of war, Institute for Political Science, University of Hamburg.
