Laos Falls Back on Security of Communist Grip

For nine years during the war in Vietnam, every eight minutes on average, U.S. bombers in search of North Vietnamese fighters struck to the west, at Laos.

Then, in 1975, the war ended. The supply route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which linked the two countries, was abandoned. North Vietnam’s soldiers went home. And Laos--landlocked, backward, impoverished, the most heavily bombed country in history--fell off the world’s radar screen.

No one paid it much attention again until the late 1980s, when its Communist leaders, like those in Vietnam, took the first daring steps toward a free-market economy. Foreign donors embraced Laos with armfuls of cash. Foreign investors began sniffing about. U.S. diplomats were soon speaking of a new spirit of cooperation between Washington and Vientiane and expressing the belief that the fundamental changes transforming Laos represented more than just a brief fling with reform.

But now, beset by an insurgency to the north, bombs here in the capital and growing public discontent, Laos’ geriatric leadership has ended its flirtation with reform and retreated into the cloak of communism, strengthening ties with China and Vietnam at the expense of relations with financial benefactors in Japan and the West.

The move toward tighter old-style controls and increased repression and press restrictions is forcing donors to reevaluate--and in some cases cut back on--aid to Laos, long a favorite of the international community. Foreign assistance accounts for about 16% of the country’s gross national product.

“I heard everyone clapping for Laos, and I saw the tree of reform growing, but I never saw any roots,” said the representative of one important donor. “I tried to tell the leadership, ‘You’re in big trouble,’ but I think what it boils down to is that the real commitment for change and democratization was never there. They killed donor trust by making agreements, then saying, ‘We never said that.’ ”

The World Bank has halved its aid to Laos, to $25 million (a cut officials attribute to budgetary restraints, not punishment). Germany has nixed a $3.1-million project, and Japan, Sweden and Australia are backing away from making new disbursements. The U.S. House of Representatives in November hinted at the possibility of sanctions when it passed a resolution condemning human rights abuses in Laos, the only country in Indochina that maintained relations with Washington during and after the Vietnam War.

Although U.S. diplomats praise Laos’ cooperation on drug control and the search for missing American servicemen from the war, relations with the United States have been decidedly cool since April last year, when two naturalized Americans went missing on the Thai-Laotian border. Their disappearance, and Laos’ unwillingness to provide information on their fate, has scuttled, temporarily at least, a trade agreement signed by Washington and Vientiane in 1997.

The Americans, Hua Ly, 56, and Michael Vang, 36, were Hmong, an ethnic minority, some of whom fought as mercenaries for the CIA against Vietnamese and Laotian Communists in Laos in the 1960s and ‘70s. Vang was the nephew of the Hmongs’ old resistance leader, Vang Pao, and Ly had served with the CIA-backed forces during the Vietnam War.

Thousands of Hmong were resettled in the United States after the war, and many are outspoken in calling for the overthrow of Vientiane’s regime. In Laos, other Hmong have carried on a low-level war against government forces for years.

With the end of the rainy season, Hmong guerrillas have intensified their rebellion in the central provinces of Xiangkhoang and Oudomxai. They have ambushed army convoys and burned houses and tried to defend families being involuntarily resettled on the plains. Vientiane makes no mention of the rebellion, other than saying there have been some attacks, but clearly it has stretched the army’s resources.

Western political analysts say Vietnam now has between 500 and 1,000 soldiers on the ground in Laos, fighting alongside Laotian troops. Although Hanoi and Vientiane maintain that Vietnamese military involvement ended in Laos a decade ago, eyebrows were raised in 1998 when a plane carrying Hanoi’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dao Trong Lich, and other top officers crashed in Xiangkhoang province, killing all aboard.

The stepped-up fighting came on the heels of what disgruntled students had intended to be the first public protest Laos had seen since the Pathet Lao Communists came to power in 1975. But the demonstrators--both students and teachers--had barely alighted from their tuk-tuks (three-wheeled motorcycle taxis) not far from the $7.2-million, Beijing-financed cultural center in October before security agents moved in.

Several of the dissidents who had planned to march with banners calling for economic and political reform escaped across the Mekong River to Thailand. But 10, including Thongpaseuth Keuakoun, founder of the Lao Students Movement for Democracy, were detained and have not been heard from since. Western diplomats believe that they are being held in Vientiane’s Samkhe Prison. The government contends that the incident never happened.

Vientiane has also been rocked by four explosions in the past two months. In one incident, six Western tourists were wounded March 30 when a grenade was tossed into a restaurant, and in another, 15 Laotians were injured May 28 when a crude bomb went off in a downtown market. No one has claimed responsibility, and it is unknown if the bombers’ motivations were political.

Although the eight Politburo members who run Laos--the youngest is 69--operate in secrecy, are accountable to no one and do not articulate official policy, what appears to have spooked them into backtracking on reforms was the regional economic crisis that began in 1997. It threatened their grasp on power and, as happened in Indonesia, raised the specter of political and civil instability.

Struck by the highest inflation rate in Southeast Asia (150%) and the biggest exchange-rate depression (a 900% drop in the value of the kip against the dollar), the government--widely regarded as one of Southeast Asia’s most incompetent and corrupt--froze in indecision. The kip has now stabilized with the help of an interest-free loan from Beijing, but most of the 5 million Laotians took a real hit. Even in the best of times, Laotians earn an average of $377 a year.

The only people who seemed unaffected by the crisis were well-placed members of the Communist Party, whose government salaries of $20 or $30 a month did not impede their construction of expensive new villas around Vientiane.

Political analysts doubt that Laos’ woes threaten the regime’s hold on power. There is no structure in Laos for political change, public dissent or opposition. Unlike Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has helped discredit the military government, Laos has no charismatic dissident figure for the international community to rally around.

The complacent Laotians seem to take their hardship in stride. They speak of wanting economic rights, but the notion of human rights is not yet in their vocabulary. Many say they sympathized with the goals of the aborted October protest, but in the next breath they will add that such actions are foolhardy.