LAOS: Getting Ready for Trouble

The other side of Communism’s smile was visible last week in Laos; the little landlocked Asian kingdom (pop. 2,000,000) which is menaced by two Red neighbors.

The terrorist technique was becoming monotonously familiar: well-trained Communist bands from North Viet Nam came out of hiding after midnight to attack isolated Laotian army outposts, retiring before dawn to let Laotian Communist groups of the Pathet Lao continue the fighting in daylight. This device hardly deceived anyone—everyone knew that Laos’ little war is sparked and sponsored by outsiders—but it kept up appearances.

After a two-week lull, the Communists were on the offensive again. Only 3,500 strong, but well-equipped and highly trained, the Reds seemed well on the way to taking over Laos’ important northern provinces. Phongsaly, which borders directly on both China and North Viet Nam, was heavily penetrated. Samneua was now almost entirely surrounded by a 20-mile-wide ring of Communists, and at least a third of the province was under Red control.

Grave Situation. “It’s real war here in Samneua,” reported Laos’ commander in the north, French-trained, 39-year-old Brigadier General Amkha Soukhavong, to a TIME correspondent visiting the general’s headquarters in the provincial capital of Samneua town, deep in a mountain valley not far from the fighting. “I’ve been losing men daily. My head is just about bursting. I’ve sent telegram after telegram to the Ministry of Defense explaining the gravity of this situation. I’ve not had any reply yet. I have asked Vientiane repeatedly, ‘Do you want to save Samneua or not?’ “

General Amkha was not seeking more troops; as the French learned in 1954, orthodox methods of war do not work in the jungles of Samneua province where there are no roads and where the monsoon has turned the few tiny airstrips into quagmires. What he wants is money, medical supplies, food and weapons to give to villagers in the threatened countryside. “We must win people’s hearts, arm them, organize them into guerrillas and send them after the Reds. We have a saying in our country: ‘When the hand is pierced by a thorn, use a thorn to remove it.’ The people are our thorn—they alone can save Samneua.” But in these two provinces (long occupied by the Pathet Lao), arming the villagers was in itself a risk: probably not half of the terrorized population of Samneua would remain loyal to the government once the Communists appeared.

Waiting for October. The tough Laotian army paratroops around Samneua are in good spirits, despite low pay and meager supplies; in recent weeks they have brought in 50 prisoners and killed 200 rebels in difficult jungle warfare. In general, however, Laos’ 25,000-man army is poorly trained and must fight piecemeal over large parts of the country. New Communist attacks in four other Laotian provinces last week were obviously designed to spread the defenses even thinner. Some Laotian leaders concede that

Samneua is doomed. If, as expected, the Communists launch a major new offensive in October’s dry weather, they will probably conquer much of northern Laos.

Hoping to forestall further attacks, Laos’ hard-pressed Premier Phoui Sananikone rushed his brother, former Defense Minister Ngon Sananikone, to New York to put Laos’ case before U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Peking promptly huffed that “serious consequences” would follow if the U.N. sent observers to Laos, and held secret conferences in Peking with North Viet Nam Boss Ho Chi Minh. Moscow’s Pravda blamed all the trouble on the U.S., and said that the Laotian government is pushing the country to “the abyss of civil war” by a policy of “terror and savage reprisals against the patriotic forces.”