Laos: Just a Little Rebellion

Vientiane, capital of Laos, Land of the Million Elephants, has had its share of troubles recently. First came floods—supposedly caused by an irate dragon after someone stole its eggs. Last week came bombs.

It was 8:30 in the morning, and the streets were crowded, when a dozen an cient T-28s rattled over the city from the south. Working with remarkable precision, they avoided civilian targets, unloaded on army headquarters, the airport, and the command post of Royalist Army Strongman General Kouprasith Abhay. At the same time, a military radio station began broadcasting a declaration from coup-happy Laos’ latest “Revolutionary Committee.” The government had become too divided, proclaimed the communiqué, and the fault lay with the Royalists. Therefore, it went on, Kouprasith and a handful of other right-wing generals must be fired and replaced by neutralist officers.

To enforce their demands, the rebels revealed they had taken three important prisoners: Royalist Army Commander General Ouane Rathikoun, the commander of the Savannakhet military region in southern Laos, and Prince Sayavong, brother of King Savang Vatthana. Not only that, announced the radio, but unless the terms of the edict were met within an hour, the planes would come back with more bombs.

Leader of the coup attempt was Brigadier General Thao Ma, the volatile young (32) commander of the Laotian air force. Although he washed out of a French air force pilots’ school and flunked his international-transport pilot’s test, Ma has logged something like 4,000 hours in the Laotian air force, most of them by leading daily bomb runs against Communist troops moving toward South Viet Nam along the Ho Chi Minh trail. For all his blustering threats, however, Ma’s objectives were limited. Royalist generals, who resented his refusal to let them use his transport planes in their more or less open dealings in the opium trade, had pressured the government to retire him as air force commander and give him a desk job in Vientiane. All he really wanted was to stay where he was.

The revolt failed. Premier Souvanna Phouma, a neutralist who might have shared Ma’s views, was out of the country. The three prestigious prisoners escaped. And, on the instructions of American Ambassador William Sullivan, U.S. officers from the nearby Udorn airbase in Thailand saw to it that Ma’s planes did not leave their base at Savannakhet for the threatened second strike. After a hasty conference with a government representative who flew to Savannakhet, Ma and eleven of his pilots fled across the border to exile in Thailand.