LAOS: Tale of Two Cities

In Laos one rainy day last week, Premier Tiao Somsanith, 47, assembled the top members of his Cabinet and flew north from Vientiane to the royal city of Luangprabang on a matter of some urgency: the burial of the late King Sisavan Vong, who has been preserved in formaldehyde since last October. By long tradition, a Laotian King must be buried in a coffin made from a sandalwood tree that had been growing for centuries for this predestined purpose. This tree had just been found, and Sisavang Vong could at last be laid to rest. But even as Somsanith and his ministers were making funeral arrangements, a paratroop captain back in Vientiane was preparing a different sort of funeral for the Cabinet itself. Voice of America. A moody soldier trained in a U.S. Ranger course in the Philippines, Captain Kongle, 26, was under orders to take his battalion 40 miles north to hunt down pro-Communist Pathet Lao rebels. Instead, he moved east to a nearby Laotian army camp, where he won over an armored squadron with the fiery plea: “This fratricidal fighting among Laotians must cease!” Rolling back to Vientiane before dawn, Kongle’s 3,000 men swiftly captured the capital, its air port, two generals and a few minor bureaucrats at a cost of only six casualties.

Next, in classic revolutionary style, Kongle took to Laos’ newest radio station, just built with U.S. aid funds, to charge that Premier Somsanith had “exchanged our country for American money.” He called for a neutralist policy ‘leaning toward neither the free world nor Communism,” and demanded the ouster of the 125-man U.S. military training mission. Hopefully, he added: “I suggest everybody clap and cheer.”

En Famille. Even in Vientiane no one took this suggestion seriously—and Vientiane was all of Laos that Kongle controlled. Troops in Luangprabang were still loyal to Premier Somsanith. Each side was kept from having to attack the other by the fact that the road between Vientiane and Luangprabang was washed out by the monsoon. Most of the 28,000-man Laotian army scattered throughout the country either had not heard of the revolt at all or reacted with Laos’ soft, favorite phrase, “be pen nyan [it doesn’t matter].” To break this stalemate, Kongle suggested the formation of a new government headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma, half brother of the Communist Pathet Lao commander and onetime neutralist Premier of Laos. This suggestion worried the U.S. State Department, which now concedes that, despite $225 million in U.S. aid since 1955, Laos cannot afford open belligerence toward its Communist neighbors (TIME, Jan. 18) but fears that Souvanna Phouma would lead Laos into neutralism in favor of the Reds.

But the Laos-style bargaining had only begun. Into Vientiane two days after the coup flew portly General Ouane Rathi-kone, who is both Army chief of staff to Premier Somsanith and uncle to Captain Kongle. Ouane Rathikone airily announced that he would work out a solution “en famille.” But at week’s end a 43-man rump session of the National Assembly meekly gathered in Vientiane to vote no confidence in Somsanith, envoys still shuttled back and forth between the two cities, and no compromise Cabinet had been agreed upon. So far, the only solid accomplishment of Kongle’s coup had been to demonstrate how few men are needed to capture a capital city in sleepy Laos—a lesson that was surely being carefully studied by the Pathet Lao rebels.