The fighting in Laos was, of course, in flagrant violation of the cease-fire provisions of the Vientiane Agreement (1, 2-C and 3-A) and of the prohibition against "intrusion or threat of intrusion against the areas under the control of the other party" (II, 14-A). In the circumstances in which the Laos cease-fire was put into effect, it was childishly simple for either side to engineer a provocation, and the PPL unquestionably appreciated this fact. It is fair to say that in none of the cease-fires ordered in Laos in the past 20 years has any agreed map of the extent of control of territory by each side been produced, and the 1973 Vientiane Agreement and Protocol were no exception. The Protocol provided for the setting up of "temporary cease-fire landmarks" in 27 "areas" where forces of the two sides were in contact (II, 12-A). However, the precise locations where they were to be emplaced were left to be shown on a map to be drawn up subsequently. As a result, only 17 "landmarks" had

The dividing line between the two sides' areas of territorial control In the period 1962-75, running for some 1,000 miles, cannot properly be described as a "front." Prevention of a sudden breakthrough at any point, however, required large reserves of manpower (as the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese learned to their Cost in the spring of 1969, when Vang Pao broke through onto the Plain of Jars). In this respect, the Pathet Lao were immensely helped by the presence of highly mobile North Vietnamese troops.

of them on the front where the fighting actually broke out.10 Pathet Lao troops had been active in this particular area, raising flags on territory claimed by them, and it was the removal of these flags by Vang Pao's troops that was one of the immediate causes of tension in March.

NLHS broadcasts denounced these actions as "land-usurping operations," and once the fighting began, they were quick to point an accusing finger at Vang Pao's troops. As in the case of previous cease-fire violations, no investigation was made by the International Commission for Supervision and Control, the body created at Geneva in 1962 for such tasks. The NLHS had consistently refused to permit Commission teams to enter territory under Pathet Lao control and had simply ignored provisions in the 1973 agreements reaffirming the Commission's 1962 mandate empowering it to initiate its own investigations (1, 12, and II, 25-D). In fact, for all practical purposes the Commission had ceased to exist.

Despite NLHS efforts to place the blame for the resumption of hostilities on Vang Pao, it is difficult to imagine what advantage he could have hoped to

10 See a Pathet Lao News Agency report of April 29, 1975, in FBIS, op. cit., April 30, 1975. (It should be explained that a number of activities under the 1973 agreements continued despite the outbreak of fighting in late March.)

gain by launching his Meo troops, tired and decimated by years of war, against an enemy that could count, as it had done in the past, on the massive retaliation if needed-of North Vietnamese Army units equipped with long-range Soviet 130-mm. artillery pieces. In the event, the fighting was Vang Pao's undoing. In the following days, Pathet Lao troops seized control of the strategic Sala Phou Khoun junction of Routes 7 and 13 and swept down the latter to Muong Kassy. Other fighting occurred in southern Laos. NLHS broadcasts quickly switched over from focusing on Vang Pao's violation of the cease-fire obligations imposed on both sides to emphasizing the effectiveness of the punishment being inflicted on the rightist forces. Said one NLHS spokesman in Vientiane; "The riposte will be tailored to fit the provocations." "1

11

Realigning the Coalition

While Pathet Lao troops were scoring advances in the field, the NLHS sought to turn the military situation to its political advantage. Nowhere was this more visible than its moves to gain control of

the Ministry of National Defense, long a priority NLHS target. The 1973 agreements had allotted the defense portfolio to the rightist Sisouk na Champassak. However, there was never the slightest hint of his having any authority over Pathet Lao forces; he was not even allowed in the zone which they controlled. By contrast, the NLHS-approved Vice-Minister of Defense, General Kham Ouane Boupha, loudly and publicly demanded information about the disposition of the Vientiane forces. (General Kham Ouane had earned NLHS approbation in 1963 when, as Governor of Phong Saly Province, he had sided with the Pathet Lao.) As the fighting continued, Radio Pathet Lao directed repeated broadsides at the rightist Minister of Defense. An example was this commentary of April 22, when Communist forces were on the offensive throughout Indochina:

If His Excellency Sisouk and the handful of ultrarightist reactionaries continue to follow in the footsteps of the US imperialists and place themselves as the enemy of the Lao people's ideology, they will undoubtedly end up with the same fate as the Lon Nol reactionary clique in Phnom Penh and the Nguyen Van Thieu reactionary clique in South Vietnam.12

11 Agence France-Presse dispatch from Vientiane, April 22, 1975, in ibid., April 24, 1975.

12 Ibid., April 24, 1975.

Such statements were in total disregard of the stipulation requiring the parties to the coalition arrangements "to settle the pending questions concerning them in the spirit of equality and mutual respect" (I, 13).

replacements. These appointments had to be negotiated with the NLHS and took better than a month to be resolved. In the interim, however, the NLHS took advantage of ambiguities in the 1973 agreements to make its weight felt in the crucial Ministry of Defense. It successfully pressured the PGNU (i.e., Souvanna Phouma) into delegating "full author

towns to demand the removal of Sisouk and other rightist ministers. Among observers in Vientiane, there was no doubt that the Communists were behind these demonstrations. Simultaneously, the NLHS launched propaganda activities-clandestine at first, because they were not allowed by the 1973 accords within the rightist armed forces. Their effectiveness was evidenced by mutinies in several loyalist units, where ad hoc committees were formed to demand the ouster of officers known to be unacceptable to the NLHS. Such occurrences were reported in the First, Fourth, and Fifth Military Regions. On May 10, NLHS organs reported mutinies involving Combat Unit 2, which comprised the 506th, 508th, and 509th Infantry Battalions; two artillery units; and a tank unit in the Muong Xieng Ngeum region of Luang Prabang Province."

On top of all these pressures, the failure of the US to save the legally-constituted governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam from final collapse heightened the mood of panic among the leaders of the rightist faction in the coalition government. During May, three rightist Cabinet ministers (including Sisouk) and two vice-ministers resigned and went into exile along with numerous military officers, including Vang Pao. At the height of the crisis most of the important figures in the PGNU were absent from Vientiane accompanying Laotian King Savang Vatthana on a six-day visit to a new NLHS "capital" at Viengsay, some 20 miles east of Sam Neua. (The confident and expansive mood of the NLHS was reflected in the great pomp with which they greeted the King, including the display of thousands of Laotian national flags-red and white with threeheaded elephants-where customarily only Pathet Lao flags normally flew.)

The rightist resignations left virtual control of the government in the hands of the NLHS. Formally, at least, the PGNU Cabinet-actually, Souvanna Phouma, acting with NLHS assent-agreed to have the Prime Minister serve as acting minister in all vacant Cabinet posts pending the appointment of

13 Ibid., passim.

Ouane, a representative of the NLHS-a move that violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Article 4-C of the 1973 Protocol, requiring that a cabinet vacancy be filled at the proposal of the party whose minister has previously occupied the post. General Kham Ouane then proceeded to sign an order dismissing all the absent generals, thereby forestalling any comeback attempt on their part. His action clearly violated the principle of "joint responsibility" (II, 1-B), but if one stretched things, it could be construed as legal under another Protocol provision (II, 4-C) which stated that "each party shall be responsible for the affairs of the ministries under its charge" (emphasis added). Only after the return of the rightist military leaders had thus been precluded was the NLHS willing to relinquish control of the Ministry of Defense to Pheng Phongsavan, Souvanna Phouma's trusted lieutenant, who had negotiated the Vientiane Agreement with the NLHS."

With the rightist camp in disarray, the NLHS also moved quickly to expand its control over the lower levels of the government hierarchy. Radio Pathet Lao set the line on May 16 with a call to "eliminate the reactionaries." In each ministry as well as in other official units such as the Vientiane mayor's office, all personnel unacceptable to the NLHS were forced out of office, usually by tactics of intimidation. NLHS sympathizers, after "investigating" the background of personnel in their offices, saw to it that petitions were circulated demanding their immediate removal. If resignations were not forthcoming, street demonstrations occurred. (The demonstrators also demanded the firing of all foreign consultants, exclusive use of the Lao language in official documents, and recognition of workers' committees as policymaking bodies.) Sometimes such demands were backed up by explicit threats of violence. This hounding of government employees from office again constituted a violation, in both spirit and substance, of the provisions of the 1973 agreements, one of

14 This was by a royal decree of June 7, 1975, with Pheng Phongsavan actually taking over as Defense Minister on June 26. Vientiane broadcast of June 26, 1975, in ibid., June 27, 1975.

which (II, 1-C) stipulated that "the functionaries of the two sides will be jointly assigned to their appropriate posts in accordance with modalities agreed upon by the two sides."

Consolidating Territorial Control

The tactic of street demonstrations was also used successfully by the NLHS in effecting the next step❘ in its strategy-the takeover of control in provincial capitals situated in what had been rightist-controlled territory. In Pakse, Savannakhet, and elsewhere, demonstrators, mostly students, occupied administrative offices on the pretext of demanding plausible I reforms but, foremost, removal of rightist officials. One cannot specifically link the Communists to these demonstrations, but a member of the PPL Central Committee, Sanan Soutthichak, was reported to have made several trips from Vientiane to Savannakhet during the demonstrations there.15 (Sanan had arrived in Vientiane to replace Sot Phetrasy as resident representative of the NLHS when the latter entered the PGNU.) To restore order, the PGNU then dispatched a delegation (on which the NLHS was represented) to negotiate with the demonstrators, and in particular to accede to removal of rightist administrators. Frequently the negotiations also involved demands by the demonstrators for the closing down of foreign establishments, such as USAID. Personnel of such establishments were subjected to much harassment in the process.

In these negotiations, the NLHS granted the demonstrators another so-called "concession"-that traffic be reopened between the two zones. In fact, "freedom of movement" had been explicitly guaranteed by the Vientiane Agreement (1, 1-D), which had also called for stepping up "normal relations between the two zones" and creating "favorable conditions for the population to move about, earn their living, exchange visits, and make economic, cultural and other exchanges with a view to consolidating national concord and unifying the country at an early date" (I, 10-B). However, the NLHS, for reasons of security, had never really accepted the

15 The New York Times, June 10, 1975.

16 From a personal interview in Washington, DC.

17 The return of refugees to Communist-held areas did not actually commence until January 29, 1975. On March 24, two Soviet aircraft landed at Vientiane to assist in the movement of refugees back to the Plain of Jars. See FBIS, op. cit., Feb. 4 and March 21, 1975.

principle of free movement between zones, as was made clear by Prince Souphanouvong in 1974 in a conversation with Pheng Norindr, then Lao Ambassador to the United Nations.16

By the spring of 1975, the only interzonal traffic that the NLHS had actually consented to involved the land route between Nam Tha and Ban Houei Sai and river traffic between Ban Houei Sai and Luang Prabang. Before the fighting, the CJCIA had briefly proposed opening Route 13 along the Mekong near Thakhek, but the NLHS withdrew its previous agreement to take up the matter, apparently because, as was generally known, the area involved was occupied by North Vietnamese troops. It should be added that the NLHS had also been slow in fulfilling its 1973 commitment (II, 19) to help refugees return to their former places of residence, even while it berated the Vientiane "reactionaries" for allegedly placing obstacles in the way of the refugees' return."

Having now "conceded" the demonstrators' Communist-inspired demands for the opening of traffic between the two zones, the NLHS proceeded to utilize it for one particular form of traffic-the movement of Pathet Lao tanks and heavy artillery, all traveling westward. On May 22, the Pathet Lao News Agency attempted to justify this movement of military forces-which was in clear violation of the 1973 agreement calling for the preservation by the two sides of separate zones of control until the hold

ing of elections to reunify the country (1, 1-C and 10-A)-in this fashion:

A number of units of the patriotic forces on May 19-20 took part in the defense of the provincial capitals of Pakse, Savannakhet and Thakhek, and several district capitals along the Mekong River in southern Laos. This action was taken in response to the requirement of the steering committee of the struggle waged by civilian and armed forces in these Vientiane-controlled localities and in accordance with the complete agreement reached by the Lao Provisional Government of National Union.18

Once Pathet Lao units had thus taken control in the rightist zone, it was but a short step to unification of the armed forces of the two sides on NLHS terms. While such unification had always been mentioned as an eventual goal in a final settlement between the rival factions, its actual implementation had been fraught with difficulties. In 1962-63, the two sides had barely broached the topic when the coalition fell apart. As a result, unification had not even been mentioned in the 1973 agreements; in fact, Articles 11 and 12 of the Protocol (dealing with the cease-fire) appeared to imply indefinite continuance of separate commands.

However, the situation was now drastically altered. In a written interview in June 1975, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma declared:

to all units from company level up to the Defense Ministry (an ironic reminder of the wartime situation when these units had had US advisers). He added that this request would be granted and would constitute the initial step toward unification of forces. Asked whether Pathet Lao units would reciprocally receive rightist advisers, he appeared surprised and answered, "It isn't necessary." He continued: “We don't need them. We are patriots. They are not yet patriots, but they are beginning to realize that they were puppets of the reactionaries and imperialists and committed crimes against the people." While this process was getting under way, the mixed police forces that had been established in Vientiane and Luang Prabang, were dissolved and put under undisputed NLHS control.

Prince Souphanouvong summed up the situation in an interview on July 12. "The current changes in the situation in Laos," he said, "do not conflict with any stipulation in the 1973 Vientiane Agreement and its Protocol. On the contrary, such changes have only resulted in a correct, speedy and prompt implementation of these accords." And he added, "Certain clauses in the accords on the problems in achieving unification between the two armed forces, unification of the two administrative systems, and unification of the two zones have been accomplished more successfully than expected." "1

21

Communist Success in Perspective

We have examined in some detail how the NLHS managed to turn the situation in Laos growing out of the 1973 cease-fire and the formation of the new coalition government in its own favor. Seen from the perspective of the NLHS, the changes that have been wrought represent nothing more than the product of changes in the "objective realities" brought about by the just struggle of the "patriotic forces" and, as such, are entirely consistent with the "true" aims of the 1973 Vientiane Agreement and Protocol. From the viewpoint of an impartial observer, however, such an ideologically-inspired interpretation of events is manifestly inadequate. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, it is clear that the success of the Communists' coalition strategy stemmed from a number of practical factors, which may be summarized as follows.

The first and most important of these factors

21 Radio Pathet Lao, July 21, 1975, in FBIS, op cit., July 21, 1975.