Word: usaid
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Among others sent to the camps: Khong Khetsakhorn, a machinery operator whose crime was to have worked on USAID construction projects, and Ut Philaphan-deth, a scion of an important Laotian business family, who was accused of harboring "a nest of spies...
...target of bribes, very few internal disturbances from which the peasants gain anything but lip sympathy from the government, very few land reform programs which leave large landowners or bureaucrats (often they are one and the same) poorer than before. Officials of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have a hard time understanding why the poor won't come to the government for help; they are not used to assuming that in nine cases out of ten a peasant will be better off if the government does not know who he is. These officials are probably like...
...drama; in Laos the scene is more like farce. Throughout much of last week, U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Christian A. Chapman had to suffer the jeers and insults of a ragged band of leftist students as he tried to negotiate an end to their occupation of the USAID offices in the capital of Vientiane. This was once the headquarters of thousands of Americans who dispensed millions of dollars a year. Now it held only three trapped Americans living on C rations and candy bars...
...students, charging that USAID was formerly a cover for CIA activities, and that much aid money tended to end up in the pockets of corrupt officials, seized the compound two weeks ago. They were supported, at least at first, by some Laotian employees of the agency who agreed with the students' charges; more important, they had the backing of the Communist-led Pathet Lao, whose soldiers lounged around the compound throughout the occupation. The Pathet Lao presence, in fact, became significant when, after several days of protest, a group of 200 Laotian USAID employees sent a delegation to neutralist...
Steady Stream. The students' victory was, in a way, Pyrrhic. USAID had been the largest single employer in the entire country after the Vientiane government itself, and it was still handing out $32 million in economic aid this year (the equivalent of $10 per Laotian). Pathet Lao representatives said they wanted U.S. aid to continue without any supervision, but that seems unlikely. As of last week, the steady stream of departing Americans had reduced the U.S. presence in Laos from more than 1,000 a month ago to about...