Forgotten Tragedy: Laos and Cambodia

   Tragedy in the Vietnam War has been acknowledged. We have built the Vietnam Wall in Washington DC to memorialize the 58,000 American soldiers that were killed. We know that it cost the American government billions of dollars and triggered wide social strife, culminating with the massacre at Kent State University. The social conciousness of Americans may even include empathy for the fact that Vietnam lost 2 million soldiers and civilians, in addition to devestating environmental destruction.

     Even still, while our school children learn about these tragedies, the atrocities in Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam's western neighbors, are far less known. And here lies a real tragedy. The history of Cambodia and Laos of the years during and after the Vietnam War are filled with misery. In addition to the conventional warfare and secret bombings, the people
of these nations were faced with starvation, cultural oppression, and genocide. These problems did not have an indigenous beginning. To look at the problems' beginnings,

     You start with the secret American bombing of Cambodia that
     began in 1969 and became public and massive afterwards. And
     you start with the entry of American troops into Cambodia in
     1970 and subsequent American support of a corrupt and venial
     government, propping them up so they could carry on a war
     against the communists. Before we started these things, there
     was no war in Cambodia. (Schanberg)

These problems were not new to Cambodia and Laos. Their existence has been plagued by international interlopers since the French imperalists first colonized the region. The American government has meddled in the affairs of this region since the late 1950s. But, the problems did get a lot worse in March of 1969 when President Nixon ordered the secret bombings of
North Viatnamese bases and supply trails that included areas of neighboring Cambodia. Within the next thirteen months, "B-52s had dumped 110,000 tons of bombs on the tiny country" (Boyer, 314). From this time on, "as a result of U.S. involvement, Cambodia was sucked into the maelstrom, with horrendous consequences for its people" (Boyer, 315).

     In order to deal with the Cambodian situation, the United States had created the Lon Nol as a puppet government as their proxy from which to fight the communist Khmer Rouge. The bombing of Cambodia was continued until August 15, 1973 under the direction of President Nixon, "in part to support Lon Nol against a determined Khmer Rouge offensive, in part to maintain Nixon's 'reputation for fierceness" (Herring, 288). But, the bombs did more damage than their explosiveness alone. "The Consequent devastation created two million refugees in a population of seven million and, ironically, hastened the collapse of Lon Nol's U.S.-backed regime" (Boyer, 371). With the United States refusing to commit to helping the people of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge "launched a reign of genocidal savagery" during which they "slaughtered as man as two million people - 25 percent of the population" (Boyer, 371).

     These numbers are staggering when put in perspective: "One out of every seven Cambodians was killed or wounded during that war - that works out to thirty million Americans if this happened to the United States. Half the population would have been turned into refugees - that would have been one hundred million Americans" (Schanberg). The situation was similarly bad, though even less publicity was given to it, in Laos. Beginning with the Eisenhower administration, the United States was a regular interloper in Laos military affairs. Clark Clifford, advisor to presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter wrote in his memoirs that, "[President Eisenhower] considered the fate of that tiny, landlocked Southeast Asian kingdom the most important problem facing the U.S." (Fadiman, 125). The two major American goals were to keep Communists from coming to power in Laos and cut off North Vietnamese supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There was a major roadblock here, however, in that the Geneva Conference of 1961-62, at which the United States was a participant, had agreed not to send "any foreign troops or military personnel" into Laos.

     To get around this, the United States sent CIA officials into Laos to recruit and train Hmong fighters. The Royal Lao army was already organized in Laos, "but its soldiers had never been noted for their bellicosity" (Fadiman, 127). It was thought that these soldiers would be likely to surrender easily, or even sell their weapons for a profit on the black market. "The Hmong, on the other hand - to whom the CIA, like the Lao, referred to as 'Meo' - had a four-thousand-year-long reputation as scrappy fighters" (Fadiman, 127). And, although it was reported that soon after their recruitment, Hmong soldiers would look under the fuselage of military airplanes to determine the gender of the plane, they adapted very quickly to high power weaponry. This force, known as the Hmong Armee Clandestine, was later supported by the Johnson and Nixon administrations and grew to include more than 30,000 heavily worked soldiers. They "fought the ground war, flew combat missions, directed air strikes by Air American pilots rescued downed American flyers, were dropped by helicopter and parachute to fight behind enemy lines, gathered intelligence on the movements of Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops, sabotaged roads and bridges, planted electronic transmitters in enemy units to pinpoint their locations for bombing raids, and intercepted material on the Ho Chi Minh Trail" (Fadiman, 126).

     The leader of the Hmong Armee Clandestine was the General, legendary Among his people, named Vang Pao. He and his forces were loyal allies to the whims of the United States. "Vang Pao had a commitment to his people and his country, and beyond that he had a commitment to the Americans" (Hamilton-Merritt). This commitment was very costly for the Hmong. During the war "more than 17,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians had been killed" (Herring, 300). Indeed, "Hmong soldiers died at a rate about ten times as high as that of American soldiers in Vietnam" (Fadiman, 129). In 1973, soon after the United States agreed to withdraw its forces from Vietnam by signing the Paris Agreement, Prince Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister of Laos, met with Henry Kissinger in Lao capitol Vientiane. The Prince told Kissinger that the "very survival of Laos" was on the soldiers of the Americans.

     'We are counting on you to make our neighbors understand that
     all we want is peace. We are a very small country; we do not
     represent a danger to anybody. We count on you to make them
     know that the Lao people are pacific by tradition and by religion.
     We want only to be sovereign and independent. We ask that they      let us live in peace on this little piece of ground that is left to us
     of our ancient kingdom... Therefore we must count on our great
     friends the Americans to help us survive' (Fadiman, 138).

This plea to help from the Americans was of little avail. "In one of the great human tragedies of the [wars of that region], America's loyal allies, the Hmong, were the victim of ... genocide" (Herring, 300). In a justifiable show of emotion, "Kissinger, whose shoulders turned out to be far less broad than the prince had hoped for, wrote, I cannot even today recall Souvanna Phouma's wistful plea without a pang of shame" (Fadmian, 138).

      As the United States pulled their military personnel out of Cambodia and Laos, a time of fierce misery set in. The domestic government of both countries fell to the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot communist regimes in Cambodia and Laos respectively. Each was culturally oppressive and physically brutal. In Cambodia "the Khmer Rouge imposed the harshest form of totalitarianism and began the forced relocation of much of the population" (Herring 300). The strict, and harshly enforced, policies of these administrations were comparable to that of the recently publicized Taliban in Afghanistan. In addition to this, "The country as a whole faced
starvation for the first time in its history" (Herring, 300).

    In Laos, the Hmong, who had helped the CIA were specially targeted. One Hmong man who had served in the Hmong Armee Clandestine said that the soldiers in his prison camp would sometimes bring in the wives of the male prisoners. "Then the soldiers take these women, play with [fondle] them and rape them. Sometimes the soldiers play with our wives for several days'" (Hamilton-Merrit, 390-391). But, these terrorizers did not stop withphysical abuse. They were attempting to get rid of Hmong culture. When these women became pregnant, against their will, "'The communists say that these children who are born are the 'government children.' The government raises these children and turns them into soldiers. They tell these children they have no parents, no relatives. There are many thousands of these 'government children'" (Hamilton-Merrit, 391).

     These atrocities were not kept within the borders of Laos. The Khmer Rouge's forced relocation brought great hardship to the Cambodian people. They moved 30,000 people from their homes to the Thai border where, "For the first few days, 30 to 40 people were dying of starvation and disease every 24 hours in extremely make-shift conditions - 29,000 Cambodians crammed into an area of less than 30 acres of flat, slushy waste-land still water-logged from the expiring monsoon" (Palling, 114). Another site, called Site 2, has nearly 200,000 refugees trying to survive within its borders. (Hall, 23) There were many other such sites and oppression and brutality was common to each. Those who were educated were executed by the Khmer Rouge, instilling much fear and causing a shortage of such necessary societal contributors as doctors. (The Killing Fields)

    The refugees were starved physically as well, with children suffering especially. "Their match-like limbs hung over empty skin folds of their bodies, they had almost no muscular control, and eight year olds looked like shriveled babies. For most of them there was no hope" (Shawcross, 348). It is believed that "at the very minimum, more than 1,200,000 men, women, and children died in Cambodia between April 17, 1975 andJanuary 1, 1977...400,00 or more during the first exodus; 430,000 or more from disease and starvation during the latter half of 1975; 250,000 or more from disease and starvation in 1976; 100,000 or more in massacres and by execution; and 20,000 or more during escape attempts" (Barron, 206).

     This story of Laos and Cambodia at this time is "an Asian Auschwitz that will take its place among the supreme crimes of this or any other century" (Getlin, 16). But, it is given very little recognition. In 1977, during and after the worst of the suffering in these countries, "under the Carter presidency, the Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 426 pages long, did not list the country of Laos" (Hamilton- Merrit, 399). The Cambodian situation enjoyed a brief segment of publicity and support. A number of media events contributed to this, including the visit of First Lady Rosalynn Carter to a refugee camp, a Time magazine cover of a dying Cambodian baby, and John Pilger's British documentary, "Cambodia, Year Zero." (Palling, 115-116) This attention, though it did draw some helpful support for the refugees, was short lived and ended abruptly after it started.

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