Word: pathet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rice & Rifles. The main reason is U.S. escalation of the war in neighboring Viet Nam. U.S. jets, striking out of Thailand, Danang and the Gulf of Tonkin at supply routes from the north, have kept the Pathet Lao pinned down. Since North Viet Nam considers Laos a sideshow anyhow, the Laotian Communists recently have had short shrift in supplies from Hanoi...
What is more, the anti-Communist Laotian armies of Kong Le and rightist General Kouprasith Abhay have finally learned to fight effectively together. A joint operation not only cleared and held the northern sector of the Vien-tiane-Luangprabang road (see map) but has produced more than 300 Pathet Lao defectors as well...
Unlike their Viet Cong comrades in South Viet Nam, the Pathet Lao are a conventional fighting force equipped with trucks and armored cars that bog down in the monsoon mud. Moreover, the Laotian anti-Communists now have effective insurgent bands afield in Red territory. They consist mainly of 6,000 American-supplied Meo tribesmen, tough little primitives skilled in the savage techniques of ambush and night assault. Meo loyalty has been sealed by a U.S. airlift of rice ($6,500,000 worth this year alone), which feeds 160,000 tribesmen. Along with the kernels come rifles, grenades and ammunition...
...regime, the current Assembly mandate expired in April. In the coming elections, some 19,000 government officials, army officers, village headmen and merchants will choose Assembly candidates put up by the three parties. Then King Savang Vatthana will nominate 59 from that list to fill the new Assembly. The Pathet Lao are entitled to present their own candidates, but Red Prince Souphanouvong-the other Deputy Premier-has already denounced the process as illegal. Souphanouvong just might take the opportunity to add to the problems of Souvanna-his half brother-by formally walking out of the government in which he already...
Progress is more evident at Vang Vieng, the vital crossroads town 75 miles north of Vientiane where Kong Le maintains his 8,000-man neutralist army. When Kong Le moved in last year, after being pushed off the Plain of Jars by the Pathet Lao, Vang Vieng was a jumble of wrecked trucks, shattered huts and rusty barbed wire. Now tidy, white-washed barracks climb the hills around Vang Vieng's 4,500-ft. airstrip (recently resurfaced by U.S. aid), and a small sawmill snarls busily, cutting planks for a new school, shops and houses...