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The Laotian Civil War was a war that was fought between 1959 and 1975 in Laos in Indochina between the communist Pathet Lao or Laos People’s Liberation Army and the communist government of North Vietnam against the Royalist government of Laos. The Laos government was supported by the United States and the conflict was effectively a spill-over conflict from the Vietnam War just to the east. The US was particularly active in training and supplying the ‘Secret Army’ of the Hmong tribes-people, the third-largest ethnic group in Laos, constituting approximately 10% of the Laotian population. The war ended in victory for the Pathet Lao in 1975 at the same time that the US withdrawal from South Vietnam was completed and Vietnam was reunified under communist rule. Communist victory in Laos led to the overthrow of the royalist government, the establishment of a communist regime and widespread persecution of the Hmong. 300,000 Hmong people fled over the border to Thailand and there is a considerable Hmong diaspora community there to this day and in other countries such as the US.[1]
Laotian Civil War chronology of eventsLaotian Civil War chronology of events
Laos was the last part of Indochina to be acquired by France as part of its colonial expansion here. It was only formally incorporated into French Indochina in 1893, decades after the French had begun acquiring control over Vietnam and Cambodia. It also only ever accounted for a small proportion of France’s economic exploitation of Indochina. Its history of decolonization was also unusual. Like Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos was occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War. France resumed its colonial rule post-1945 and, as in Vietnam and Cambodia, a communist independence movement known as the Pathet Lao emerged here. However, the French were not committed to maintaining controlling of Laos and by 1950 they had effectively abandoned efforts to retain control over the country in favor of focusing their efforts on the First Indochina War in Vietnam. Laos was consequently granted its independence in 1953 when a royalist Kingdom of Laos emerged.[2]
This new government was soon under threat from the Pathet Lao. Few foreign powers were concerned about these developments until the end of the 1950s, at which time the communist North Vietnamese or Vietcong, who were allied with the Pathet Lao, began using Laotian territory as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the jungle routeways used to send Vietcong soldiers from North Vietnam to South Vietnam in the developing war between the Vietcong and the United States after the Americans had replaced the French as the main western power in the region. In order to try and disrupt the passage of Vietcong troops through Laos, the US began covert bombing operations in Laos and began training the Hmong minority as the 'Secret Army' to fight the Pathet Lao guerrillas. The point at which this transformed into a Laotian Civil War is debatable. Most studies date its origins to 1959 when the North Vietnamese invaded the country, though it could be placed as early as 1953 when the Pathet Lao began their opposition to the newly independent Laotian royalist government.[3]
The Laotian Civil War pitted the royalist government of Laos, along with the United States, the Hmong 'Secret Army' and Thailand against the Pathet Lao communist guerrillas and the North Vietnamese. The fighting was never as bitter and bloody as what was occurring to the east in Vietnam, or indeed what would occur in Cambodia to the south under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. As such, it is a somewhat forgotten war, one which the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) termed the Secret War. It intensified in the mid-1960s when the US began bombing operations over Laos and Cambodia to interrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Laotian Civil War was always intrinsically connected to the Vietnam War. So too the way in which it was concluded was impacted by developments to the east. In the early 1970s, as the US began to try and extricate itself from South Vietnam, the Pathet Lao gained the upper hand in Laos and when the Vietnam War ended in victory for North Vietnam, the Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist regime at the same time in 1975. The communists ascended to power. Many of the Laotian royal family were detained and send to labor camps.[4]
Extent of migration caused by the Laotian Civil WarExtent of migration caused by the Laotian Civil War
As with any conflict of this nature, there was considerable displacement and migration of people in Laos during the course of a near two decades’ long conflict. However, the real wave of mass migration came at the end of the war. The fall of the royalist government and the rise to power of the Pathet Lao in 1975 led to a mass flight of people who feared persecution by the new government over the border to Thailand. In particular there was a huge exodus of the Hmong people to Thailand. An estimated 300,000 people fled there. Others who remained behind ended up embroiled in a brutal campaign launched by the government which has been identified as a genocide, though one of the twentieth century’s more overlooked instances of ethnic atrocity.[5]
Demographic impact of the Laotian Civil WarDemographic impact of the Laotian Civil War
The most immediate demographic impact of the Laotian Civil War was in the deaths of approximately 50,000 people in the fighting, primarily Pathet Lao fighters, North Vietnamese Vietcong soldiers and the Hmong 'Secret Army' troops. The longer lasting impact was in the flight of a substantial proportion of the Hmong people from Laos to Thailand in the mid-to-late 1970s as the civil war came to an end. Many of these people have remained in Thailand as the Pathet Lao communist regime has remained in power in Laos since 1975. The exact size of the Hmong diaspora community in Thailand is unclear, as they are often categorized as part of the larger hill tribe community which includes Mien and Karen people as well. These groups collectively constitute about three-quarters of a million people, primarily living in northern Thailand along the border with Laos. The Hmong are a large constituent part of this group. Thus, the impact of the Laotian Civil War on the demography of northern Thailand has been considerable.[6]
Hundreds of thousands of Hmong people moved onwards from refugee camps in Thailand to the United States, China and other countries in the years that followed the civil war.[7] The Hmong American community is over 350,000 strong today, with a particularly large concentration of Hmong people in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where large numbers of Hmong who made it to the US via Thailand in the aftermath of the civil war were eventually resettled. The largest community of Hmong Americans is found in the twin cities of Minneapolis-St Paul.[8]
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See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Laotian Civil WarExplore more about the Laotian Civil War
- Apocalypse Laos: The devastating legacy of the 'Secret War' at Centre for Economic Policy Research
- The Forgotten Genocide: Hmong And Montagnards Face Violent Religious Persecution at Human Rights Pulse
- Why Laos has been bombed more than any other country at History
References
- ↑ Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos (Boulder, Colorado, 1995).
- ↑ ‘The Independent State of Laos’, in The World Today, Vol. 13, No. 10 (October, 1957), pp. 432–441.
- ↑ https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/apocalypse-laos-devastating-legacy-secret-war
- ↑ Patit Paban Mishra, ‘Laos in the Vietnam War’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 62 (2001), pp. 873–885.
- ↑ https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/the-forgotten-genocide-hmong-and-montagnards-face-violent-religious-persecution
- ↑ https://www.thailandhilltribeholidays.com/hmong-hill-tribe/
- ↑ https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2012-13/volume-4/issue-4-forgotten-people/laos-and-america-the-secret-war-and-the-forgotten-hmong-people
- ↑ Juan Flores and Tony Vang, ‘The Hmong Americans: Identity, Conflict, and Opportunity’, in Multicultural Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1999), pp. 9–14.