LAOS: On the Road to Chaos

Vientiane—capital of the least of the three nations carved out of French IndoChina—lay in its habitual half-slumber beside the Mekong River. It was the Buddhist Lent in Laos. Temple gongs bonged in the viscous humidity; saffron-robed monks strutted about beneath gaudy parasols or sat cross-legged in the shade, puffing acrid French tobacco and sipping lemonade. Suddenly there was a stir. Official limousines swept out of the royal palace amid shrieking sirens and flapping royal banners (a three-headed elephant against a red background), bearing Prime Minister Prince Souvanna Phouma to the airport to meet his half brother Prince Souphanou Vong, who happened to be leading a Communist revolt against the government.

The half brothers hugged one another happily and headed back to the palace for talks. The agenda: how to terminate the Communist rebellion on terms acceptable to both sides. Two years ago the French bequeathed Laos to Souvanna Phouma’s Nationalists, but the Communists, headed by Souphanou Vong, illegally set up a puppet state in two provinces adjoining Communist North Viet Nam.

Last year, at Peking’s bidding, Souphanou Vong launched an unfruitful three-battalion attack against the Nationalists—but nobody now seemed to hold it against him. In the capital of Vientiane, the Laotians, eager for an end to civil war, insisted that mustachioed, Paris-educated Souphanou Vong is a Communist only because he hates the French and fears his domineering Communist wife. Word was that Souphanou Vong even washes his wife’s underthings in the family washtub “because she likes me to.” Some knew that he had been sent to Red China for indoctrination, but they did not take that fact seriously.

In this mood, agreement came easily. The half brothers decided that the fighting (such as it had been) should stop. The Communist districts would rejoin the rest of the little country (pop. 1,400,000), the Communist leaders would eventually join the Nationalist government in a sort of coalition, and the Communist Pathet Lao army would merge into the regular Laotian army. Eventually, the strength of the Communist infiltration would be tested in “nationwide general elections,” after a period in which “the Royal Government must recognize and guarantee the right to carry on legitimate activities throughout the country for a patriotic front … on the side of the Pathet Lao [Communist] forces.”

At week’s end Souvanna Phouma and Souphanou Vong relaxed at a family picnic with 50 of their relatives, and talked happily about the peaceful future. Souphanou Vong seemed such a reassuring fellow. Of course, if in the friendly atmosphere he should want to be less of a Communist, he could always remember that his wife and six of their seven children are now in Red-held Hanoi. The seventh is studying in Moscow.