Laotian history

The History of Laos covers a wide spectrum of time, and is linked to the existence of the Lao people, a Tai-speaking ethnic group who, like other members of that language group, migrated from present-day southern China to north of the sources of the Mekong River, spanning the entire Southeast Asian region due to population pressure from the Han Chinese since the 19th century XIII d. c.

Population of the territory of Laos

The first settlers of the current territory of Laos were the Ja (Kha), who around the V century B.C. C. lived under the Funan Empire. Subsequently, the territory began to receive the migration of Shans, Siamese, Laotian and Hmong-mien tribes, who They inhabited the mountains, adopting Theravada Buddhism from the IX century. All these ethnic groups shared the Thai language family, but lacking a sophisticated political organization, and divided into clans, they did not create a state of their own. Thus, these groups were successively dominated by their more developed neighbors such as the Chenla kingdom, which was later followed by the Khmer Empire located further south, in present-day Cambodia and with its capital at Angkor Vat.

Between the XIII and XIV centuries, the territory of Laos received strong immigration of people from the Lao and tai, especially after the destruction of the state of Nanchao, in the territory of present-day China, at the hands of the Mongols at the beginning of the century XIII. At this time the ethnic Lao clans and tribes began to group together as autonomous entities.

Lan Xang, the first Laotian state

Statue of the King Fa Ngum in Vientian.

The Lao people began to form a state organization from the progressive decline of the Khmer Empire, and in this way, when in the middle of the century XIV the Khmer king of Angkor, Jayavarman Paramesvara, married one of his daughters to the Laotian prince Fa Ngum began in 1349 the unification of various regions scattered throughout the Luang Prabang area by a powerful army of the Lao ethnic group, which in 1353 formed the kingdom of Lan Xang (which in the Thai language means a million elephants, alluding to its warrior potential)., establishing its capital in Muong Swa (the present city of Luang Prabang).

The kingdom of Lan Xang became the first effective ethnic Lao state organization, and Fa Ngum, its first monarch, soon established contact with other states such as the Kingdom of Ayutthaya (in present-day Thailand) and the kingdom of Annam (the latter occupied much of northern present-day Vietnam).

After Fa Ngum's death, his son seized power and further consolidated the kingdom, expanding its territory west of the Mekong and into the northern mountainous regions. In this context, war hostilities developed with the kingdom of Annam, who towards the middle of the XV century managed to reach the capital of the Lan Xang kingdom and take it by storm, but a short time later the invaders were repelled.

In the 16th century, in an expansionist attitude, the king of Lan Xang claimed and obtained the crown of the neighboring kingdom of Chiang Mai (in present-day Burma), which led to new and bloody confrontations with the Burmese, times in which the capital was moved to the city of Vientiane. In 1574 the Burmese destroyed much of the country in a fierce invasion.

After some time of anarchy, Prince Souligna Vongsa seized power as king of Lan Xang (between 1637 and 1694), managing to maintain peace with neighboring countries. Upon his death, a nephew of Souligna returned from his exile in Vietnam with troops from this country in order to seize power, which caused serious internal struggles that ended up dissolving the state of Lan Xang in 1707, dividing this kingdom into three Laotian states., smaller and facing each other: the kingdoms of Luang Prabang, Viang Chan (Vientiane) and Champasak.

Laos, between Siamese and Annamites

The three Laotian states suffered the Burmese invasion of 1763, which destroyed the Kingdom of Ayutthaya in 1767, after the reaction of the Thais, they not only expelled the Burmese from the old territories of Ayutthaya but placed them under their rule to the three Laotian kingdoms in 1778, making them "vassal states" forced to pay tribute.

This situation lasted until 1795, when the territory came under the control of the Vietnamese kingdom of Annam, which also imposed vassalage on the Laotian kings. In 1828 the Siamese managed to re-establish their power in the region when the Laotian kingdom of Viang Chan recklessly launched into a war against Siam. This project failed and the Siamese forces took Vientiane, the kingdom of Viang Chan being completely defeated and turned into a province of Siam.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Laotian territories were directly or indirectly subject to Annam, although the payment of tributes to the Hanoi court freed them from being closely watched by the Vietnamese. However, the decline of the "free" of Luang Prabang and Champasak was very severe, unable to re-establish their "national" due to infighting and the joint opposition of Annam and Siam.

French rule

Flag of the French Protector of Laos (1893-1954)

France, which had had imperialist ambitions in Southeast Asia for several years, had increased its military presence in the area since 1887. French troops had already established a protectorate in Cochinchina in 1862 after defeating the Vietnamese. The kingdom of Annam itself, weakened by decades of French threats, was unable to prevent France from launching an aggressive war campaign on Tonkin and Cambodia, to the point that in 1885 Annam was forced to become a French protectorate as well.

In the same year, further west, Britain ended its military occupation of Burma, destroying one of the traditional threats against Laos and Thais, but this put great political pressure on Siam, which, unlike Annam, had started a vast modernization plan to try to save its independence from the imperialist pressures of the French and British.

Auguste Pavie, French colonial diplomat in Indochina

The French conquest of Annam was interpreted by France as legitimizing its dominance over the Laotian kingdoms that were vassals of the Annamites. At the instigation of the French diplomat Auguste Pavie, prominent in the courts of Siam and Annam, a French military campaign was launched against Siam in 1893 when it was warned that the Siamese kingdom could be conquered for France or, at least France could get the Siamese territories east of the Mekong.

Without options of obtaining British military aid, in the same year 1893 the Kingdom of Siam ceded to France all its rights over the Laotian kingdoms located on the eastern bank of the Mekong. This Franco-Siamese agreement meant that, however, several thousand Lao people residing on the west bank of the Mekong remained within Siam's borders as an ethnic minority. The Laotian territories under French control were organized as an autonomous protectorate, shaping the current national borders of Laos, including this protectorate as an administrative region of French Indochina.

Colonial territory with few attractions

French colonial officials allowed the Lao king of Luang Prabang to remain in his post, but under the supervision of French officers who had the final say in the king's decisions. Unlike the French protectorate of Vietnam, Laos lacked a coastline that would allow it to trade briskly with the metropolis, and it also lacked raw materials valuable enough to justify a large investment of French capital. In both the colonial administration of Paris and Hanoi, Laos appeared as an agricultural hinterland of Vietnam, with few resources and little attention paid to it.

The main interest of France at the end of the 19th century was to occupy the territory of Laos in order to control the eastern shore of the middle reaches of the Mekong, as this important river was a valuable trade route to China. This situation caused the protectorate of Laos to be the least developed of the territories of French Indochina, although since 1919 France imposed its educational system for the Laotian aristocracy, trying to train native officials loyal to the metropolis, achieving greater cultural penetration in Laos.

This situation of comparative backwardness of Laos was included in World War II, when Japan invaded French Indochina in September 1940, establishing garrisons there while maintaining the French civil administration, while France itself it was occupied by the Third Reich since June 1940 and was unable to send war support to Southeast Asia.

The protectorate of Laos was largely unaffected by the Japanese Occupation of Indochina until March 1945, when, following the liberation of France and Japanese defeats in the Philippines, Japan destroyed the French administration with a swift military attack and imposed its rule directly over all of French Indochina, pressing for the Laotian king, Sisavang Vong, to proclaim Laotian independence. However, King Sisavang refused the request and was overthrown by the Japanese. Given this, his son and heir, Prince Savang Vatthana, proclaimed independence on April 8 while the territory was occupied by Japanese troops sent from Vietnam.

Barely five and a half months later, Japan was forced to capitulate to the United States and its allies, and a cessation of hostilities was ordered on August 15. With the imminent arrival of Allied troops in Indochina and the start of the Allied occupation of Japan, the Lao Issara (Free Laos) independence movement overthrew Prince Savang in October and created an autonomous Laotian government.

However, the Lao Issara regime received no help from the Vietnamese Viet Minh (which was also fighting against French rule) and faced serious internal difficulties in sustaining itself, especially as it lacked massive popular support. while the regime's support was only its followers in the cities (Laos being a country where 90% of the population was rural). Even the other allied countries (United States, China, and Great Britain) also refused to help the new regime. In March 1946, France reached an agreement with the Viet Minh where the independent Vietnamese administration was maintained in the Tonkin regions, leaving the French to occupy the remaining territories of Indochina. Soon after, French troops entered Laos and the resistance of Lao Issara was quickly overcome: at the end of April the French took Vientiane and in May they took Luang Prabang, forcing the leaders of Lao Issara to flee to Thailand.

The Kingdom of Laos

The following year, French forces crowned Sisavang Vong, the monarch of Luang Prabang, king of a unified Laos and a constitution for Laos was promulgated on May 11, 1947, and finally on July 16, 1949, the Kingdom of Laos it became an independent state as a constitutional monarchy within the French Union (from which it would withdraw in 1957).

The troubled independence of the Kingdom of Laos

Flag of the Kingdom of Laos (1952-1975)

Present statue of King Sisavang Vong in Vientian.

The new government was led by Prince Souvanna Phouma as prime minister, with King Sisavang Vong remaining as head of state, establishing the royal residence in Luang Prabang and the headquarters of the administration in Vientiane. However the Laotian dissidents were led by Prince Souphanouvong, and joined forces with the Viet Minh who were still fighting French forces in the area. The dissidents grouped by Souphanouvong formed an insurgent group called the Pathet Lao, of communist affiliation, and in 1953 they invaded Laos taking control of most of the rural territory in the north of the country.

In around 1954, in an agreement signed in Geneva, the Indochina War ended, forcing Vietnamese and French troops to leave Laos, and the Pathet Lao to withdraw to the northern provinces they had dominated for some time. In 1955 the United Nations took control of Laos in order to control the truce. In 1957 Prince Souvanna Phouma and Prince Souphanouvong formed a coalition government. This was opposed by the Laotian right who ousted the newly formed government and formed a new one in 1958.
The Pathet Lao went underground and began a guerrilla war with the support of the communist government. of North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, while the Laotian monarchical government was assisted by the US in arms and money. In October 1959 King Sisavang died and his son Savang Vatthana succeeded him.

In 1960 Captain Kong Le rose in revolt, managing to seize control of the country's administrative capital, Vientiane, and establishing a new government headed again by Prince Souvanna Phouma. This prince tried to add the communist rebels to his government, and thus avoid the worsening of the civil war that Laos was already suffering, but this led to a new confrontation with the monarchist military that forced Souvanna Phouma to flee the country, putting power to Prince Boun Oum, a conspicuous anti-communist. Meanwhile, the Pathet Lao took control of much of the country, launching a war campaign against the royal Laotian army.

The Laotian Civil War

During the 1960s, the Pathet Lao-dominated region became indirectly involved in the American fighting in Vietnam, as a result of the mutual support that once existed between the Pathet Lao and the Viet Minh. Now the North Vietnamese regime sponsored the communist Viet Cong guerrillas who aspired to overthrow the South Vietnamese regime and for this purpose the Vietcong received supplies of arms and ammunition through the so-called " Ho Chi Minh Trail", a network of rudimentary roads in the mountainous jungle that also passed through Laotian territory. The fight of the Pathet Lao sought precisely to overthrow the Laotian monarchy and ensure the proper functioning of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in favor of the Vietcong

In 1962 a new agreement was reached in Geneva whereby Prince Souvanna Phouma returned to power, incorporating communist ministers into the government and preserving the constitutional monarchy. But around 1964 new internal disagreements arose between the Laotian communists and the monarchy, causing the Pathet Lao to restart the armed struggle in 1965. By that time, the Royal Laotian Army had suffered heavy losses in men and materiel and was in recomposition, making the fight against the Pathet Lao increasingly dependent on US support, which launched a massive bombing campaign. over Laos, trying to simultaneously destroy the positions of the Pathet Lao and the "Ho Chi Minh Trail".

A Pathet Lao military campaign at the beginning of 1968 ended with a serious defeat of the royal Laotian army, and after this episode the Laotian civil war involved additional actors: the Laotian government was supported by guerrillas of the Hmong ethnic group, traditionally hostile to the Vietnamese, as well as Thai mercenaries and the US, which sent military advisers and numerous fighter pilots. On the other hand, the Pathet Lao received support from the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese armed forces, which in turn received arms support from the USSR.

Hmong ethnic anti-communist guerrillas in 1961.

In February 1971, the South Vietnamese army intervened, invading Laos but was defeated by a mixed force of Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops, and in the rest of the year the Pathet Lao managed to increase its control over the rural areas of Laos.

Beginning in 1972, the US government began withdrawing troops and personnel from Vietnam, also reducing its support for the Laotian government. The strengthening of the Pathet Lao forced the government of Souvanna Phouma to accept peace talks that led to the agreement of January 1973, in accordance with the Paris Peace Accords concluded between South Vietnam, North Vietnam and USA. The US government indirectly forced Souvanna Phouma to seek an agreement with the Pathet Lao as the US began a "withdrawal" of Vietnam, which also meant decisively withdrawing its military and financial support for the Laotian monarchy. At that time, Laos had the sad privilege of being the most bombed country on Earth.

In 1974, a new government coalition was formed in which only supporters of Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao participated, whose power was increased by the gradual withdrawal of US war advisers and the end of US financial aid. to the Royal Laotian Army while the Washington government aspired to focus only on supporting South Vietnam (and in a limited way). Meanwhile, North Vietnam continued to support the Pathet Lao militias with arms and financing. A heart attack forced Souvanna Phouma to temporarily step down from government in mid-1974, allowing Prince Souphanouvong to increase the political and military strength of the Pathet Lao, to the point of restricting opposition political activities in January 1975.

Soldiers Pathet Lao in Vientián in 1973.

The fragile coexistence between royalists and communists ended when in mid-April 1975 Khmer Rouge troops in Cambodia took Phnom Penh in neighboring Cambodia and at the end of that month Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, putting permanent end to the South Vietnamese regime. The Pathet Lao launched its militias to occupy strategic points in the country throughout the month of May, demanding the complete occupation of the government. The Souvanna Phouma regime lacked outside allies to resist a military coup by the Pathet Lao and tried to cede more power in an attempt to avoid a violent end like those in Cambodia or South Vietnam. Meanwhile, most of the emerging Laotian middle class began to flee to Thailand, including civil servants, professionals, merchants and army officers, with their families, generating a refugee flow of several thousand individuals crossing the Mekong River to the west..

After the Pathet Lao troops completely occupied Luang Prabang in June 1975 and Vientiane in August of the same year, the new government continued to be headed by Souvanna Phouma until on December 1 Prince Souphanouvong and the Pathet Lao occupied power and removed Souvanna Phouma. The following day the monarchy was abolished by proclaiming the Lao People's Democratic Republic, abolishing the monarchy.

The "clandestine bombings" from USA

In December 1964 the US government began Operation Barrel Roll, launching clandestine bombing raids on Laos to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy the Viet Cong logistics system. These attacks included bombing raids on the Laotian jungle with powerful aircraft such as B-52 planes, but the government in Washington insisted that, in order to avoid an international scandal in the middle of the Cold War for bombing the territory of a neutral country, the attacks were "clandestine".

Given this, US CIA agents dedicated themselves to falsifying military orders, maps, and crew diaries, to the extreme of even falsifying identity documents of their own pilots, to carry out a massive campaign of "secret bombing& #3. 4; over the territory of Laos, including conventional bombs and napalm in the same way as in Vietnam. To ensure the logistics of these attacks, the US government ordered the creation of "aeronautical companies" that would be the recipients of the fuel, tools and pilots that arrived in Laos. The attacks started from US bases in Vietnam, but the data and maps would be falsified for the crews so that they did not know the exact location of their operations.

US bombings continued intermittently until 1972, but they proved ineffective in their war objectives by failing to stop the flow of supplies to the Viet Cong and were soon after discovered and denounced by North Vietnam.

"The U.S. waged the Vietnam War and wanted to cut Laos' supply paths to its Vietnamese enemy and prevent the country from taking sides for communism. The way to achieve this is one of the most unknown and brutal war crimes ever committed: U.S. aircraft carried out more than 584 000 missions and dropped more than 260 million cluster bombs on the most populated areas of the country (an average ton of explosives per inhabitant). The American pilots themselves would admit years after they never tried to distinguish between civilians and soldiers. "If anything moved, we would bomb it." »

Evacuation of Hmong

The victory of the Pathet Lao made the situation extremely difficult for an ethnic minority in Laos, the Hmong, a people with rural characteristics and a tribal organization that had fought the Vietnamese and had put up armed resistance to the Pathet Lao. In fact, the US military leadership had been able to recruit large numbers of Hmong guerrillas as auxiliary troops for its war effort, with several Hmong getting advanced military training (including as US fighter jet pilots). USA).

The informal alliance of the United States with the Hmong even led to the construction of a large military base, the Long Chen base, located a few kilometers from the border with Vietnam, in a mountainous area of dense forests completely dominated by the Hmong. Officially Long Chen was a town that did not appear on Laotian or American maps, and its difficult access caused decades later to be called "the most secret place on Earth". At the height of the Laotian civil war, some 30,000 individuals lived in and around Long Chen, mostly Hmong civilians and US CIA agents.

Faced with the risk of massive political repression, already anticipated by the Pathet Lao against Souvanna Phouma, in May 1975 US agents managed to evacuate by air some 3,000 Hmong, including civilians and soldiers. The evacuees thus arrived in Thailand from the Long Chen base in just four small planes, but had to leave behind some 20,000 civilians.

In the following years about 20,000-40,000 Hmong from Laos also fled to Thailand after a risky journey through jungles and mountains, several thousand perishing on the way, almost a third of this ethnic minority having to go into exile. After 1975 the communist regime cracked down especially on the Hmong in retaliation for their alliance with the Americans, and in response several thousand of the Hmong still residing in Laos carried out armed revolts and sabotage against the Pathet Lao government for several years. In 1979, Hmong Laotian refugees emigrated to Argentina.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic: Laos since 1975

The Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed in December 1975, headed by Souphanouvong and governed by the Pathet Lao as a single party, following the communist political and economic model. The communist leader Kaysone Phomvihane was appointed prime minister and soon became the true ruler of the country, seconded by General Khamtai Siphandon. Shortly after, King Savang Vatthana was arrested along with his wife and several members of the royal family and deported to a prison camp on the Vietnamese border, where he died shortly after of illness; similar political repression suffered other opponents of the Pathet Lao who had not managed to flee into exile.

Kaysone Phomvihane in 1982, visiting East Germany.

The leaders of the new regime tried to maintain friendly relations with Vietnam, a country already reunified since April 1975 and with a government of similar communist affiliation. Although Laos did not break relations with the US, US influence was replaced by the Soviet Union, which with other Warsaw Pact countries became one of the first senders of financial aid to the new regime.

The economic situation of Laos was very bad when the republic was proclaimed. The Pathet Lao had carried out a broad political repression that had led to the exile or imprisonment of most of the civil administration personnel, while its top leaders, almost all related to the old elite and educated in France or the USSR, lacked cadres. subordinates sufficiently prepared to face government tasks, even more so considering that the Pathet Lao as a political party proper had 30,000 members in a country of three and a half million inhabitants. The main economic activity in the country was agriculture (to which almost 90% of the population was dedicated), and most of these peasants produced for their own subsistence, while the control of the few large landowners had been annulled many years ago. years by the pressures of the civil war.

Since basing the regime on a "proletariat" non-existent, Pathet Lao leaders tried to copy the Vietnamese model of "introducing Marxist economic relations" and they proceeded to an immediate collectivization of agriculture in 1976, merging small farms into large state-run estates and eliminating commerce in the cities. Collectivization was strongly resisted by small landowners while the paralysis of trade caused economic unrest in the urban population.

Alignment with Vietnam and the USSR

In 1977 a treaty was signed with Vietnam to strengthen economic relations, granting both countries preferential treatment to mutual trade, and allowing Vietnam to station some 30,000 soldiers in Laos; This agreement strengthened the Pathet Lao regime but increased its dependence on the Hanoi government and renewed discontent as the majority of the Lao ethnic group showed a historical distrust of the Vietnamese, aggravated when on December 25, 1978 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and they will take Phnom Penh after two weeks of fighting, destroying the Khmer Rouge regime.

Political pressure from Vietnam led Laos to break diplomatic relations with China, which, coupled with an economic boycott of Thailand since 1976, in turn caused the Laotian government to become increasingly dependent on Vietnam, a country with greater natural wealth and fifteen times more populated. Laos' economic difficulties caused the Pathet Lao regime to initiate economic liberalization on the advice of the USSR in mid-1979, trying to copy the outline of Lenin's New Economic Policy in the 1920s, which it could not generate on its own. only an evident progress in the standard of living of the population, keeping Laos as a mainly agricultural country with little industrial development.

Vietnam's own economic difficulties caused the Hanoi regime to reduce its influence over Laos, although the Hanoi government kept troops stationed in Laos until 1990. As Vietnamese influence weakened, Pathet Lao relations with China gradually improved in the 1980s as Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane followed some principles of economic liberalization borrowed from Deng Xiaoping but without giving up his monopoly on power.

In 1989 the Soviet Union, embarked on the perestroika process initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, announced a severe cut in financial aid to Laos due to the economic problems of the USSR itself. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-1991 caused Laos to lose its main source of financial aid.

Transformation of the economy

After this situation, Pathet Lao leaders sought to avoid an economic crisis by asking for help from France and Japan in 1990, as well as from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, while intensifying the application of capitalist policies preserving the system similar to China (a method that Vietnam had also adopted after the disappearance of the USSR), this being evident when, after the retirement of Souphanouvong in 1991 and that of Kaysone Phomvihane in 1992, General Khamtai Siphandon, a septuagenarian, assumed command as prime minister. chief of the Pathet Lao and veteran of the civil war.

The "Puente de laosiana-tailandesa" about Mekong, in March 2006.

On April 6, 1994, the Friendship Bridge was inaugurated over the Mekong River, uniting Laos and Thailand and sealing the reconciliation between the two peoples. Coincidentally, the political and economic influence of Vietnam began to be further reduced, although maintaining good relations, Laos beginning a process of rapprochement with Thailand, while at the beginning of the 1990s Laos' full diplomatic relations with China and the United States were completely reestablished.. However, the poverty of the Laotian territory, with its chronic scarcity of raw materials and a largely rural population with a low standard of living, have prevented Laos from appreciable economic growth, lagging far behind in comparison to China or Vietnam. In fact, the United Nations is still developing food and health assistance programs in Laos.

General Siphandon resigned in 1998, being replaced as the country's prime minister by Sisavath Keobounphanh, a 60-year-old Pathet Lao leader who was not part of the leadership at the proclamation of the Republic in 1975, thus showing a "generational change" while maintaining the Pathet Lao as the only allowed political party and reaffirming state control over the media, with the consequent censorship and absence of political freedoms.

21st century

Keobounphanh was in turn replaced by Bounnhang Vorachith for the period 2001-2006. Since 2006 the post of prime minister has passed to Bouasone Bouphavanh, with the last two holders of this position belonging to the "second generation" of Pathet Lao leaders, with senior positions in the Pathet Lao party only after 1975. Internet access is moderately censored and is available in most cities. Laotians are also quite free to travel to Thailand and indeed illegal immigration of Laotians to Thailand is a problem for the Thai government. Those who defy the communist regime, however, receive harsh treatment. Amnesty International has continued to document the illegal detention and torture of political prisoners. Various opposition groups operate in Thailand and the United States, but there appears to be little evidence of active opposition within Laos.

In March 2006, Khamtai resigned as party leader and chairman, succeeded in both positions by Choummaly Sayasone. Like Khamtai, Choummaly had a military background, and he was generally considered unlikely to initiate major reforms. In January 2016, Bounnhang Vorachit succeeded Choummaly Sayasone as president and leader of the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP).

In January 2021, Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith became the new secretary general of the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party, replacing the retiring Bounnhang Vorachit. The leader of the ruling party remains the most powerful position in the country. In March 2021, Thongloun Sisoulith was also elected as the new President of Laos.

Bibliography and references

• Die grösste Militäroperation der CIA (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last).
• "Kriegsschrott in Laos - Gartenzäune aus Fliegerbomben" in the German daily Der Spiegel. July 2010] (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last).
• Stuart-Fox, Martin (1997). A history of Laos. Cambrigde University Press. ISBN 052159746 |isbn= incorrect (help).