The New York Times
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December 17, 2007
Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding Deep in Laos
By THOMAS FULLER
VIENTIANE PROVINCE, Laos - They call themselves America's forgotten
soldiers.
Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle
warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men
who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and
periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of
the men who sided with America.
"If I surrender, I will be punished," said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old
still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. "They will
never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former
American soldier."
In a small hillside clearing about nine miles east of the Mekong River, Mr.
Yang and four other veterans scratch out a primitive existence with their
wives and 50 children and grandchildren. Their hidden jungle encampment is a
15-hour walk up and down low-lying mountains from the nearest paved road,
across streams that are knee-deep in the dry season but can become roaring
torrents when the monsoon comes.
Mr. Yang said his group had been attacked by the Laotian Army twice this
year. In September, soldiers killed a 5-year-old boy, whose grave is on the
outskirts of the camp. In May, a predawn raid killed a woman and her
2-year-old child. The group moves camp every few weeks to avoid attack, he
said.
They are often miles from any rice paddies or hamlets, but sometimes they
travel at night, with their AK-47s, to get supplies from sympathetic
farmers. They say they got their guns and uniforms from Laotian troops who
fled a firefight in 1999.
The C.I.A. operation, from 1961 until 1975, became known as the secret war
because, unlike in Vietnam, America's military involvement in Laos was
covert. Instead of sending American ground troops to prevent a Communist
takeover here, the C.I.A. hired tens of thousands of mercenaries, most of
whom were Hmong, a hill-dwelling ethnic minority.
Today, the number of Hmong veterans and their families who remain hidden in
the jungle is somewhere in the hundreds to low thousands, estimates Amy
Archibald, a spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Vientiane, the
capital.
Their plight, though little known, has received more attention in recent
years, as human rights groups have issued reports condemning the Laotian
government for attacking Hmong who worked with the Americans.
Still, finding the veterans in their camps is an arduous undertaking,
requiring hours of trekking through the jungle. A recent visit to Mr. Yang's
remote hide-out by this reporter was the first by an American newspaper, one
of about a dozen people to have visited any camp of veterans of the C.I.A.
operation in Laos.
The former fighters and their progeny clearly welcomed the visit. When this
reporter and a photographer arrived at the camp, many of the group began
weeping and saying, in Laotian, "America help us, America help us."
Many in the group said they had not seen a Westerner since the war ended in
1975.
Each of the five veterans in the camp has relatives in the United States;
they say their fading dream is to be reunited with them. Mr. Yang's hope is
that Washington will "come back to help old soldiers like me to leave Laos
and make it to America."
"We want America to give us a place to live," said another veteran, Va
Chang, 60. "We want America to give us food and medicine.
"If the Americans don't want to do that," he said, "they should drop a big
bomb on us and end our misery."
Reports of Attacks
Human rights groups describe a mostly one-sided fight between the lightly
armed and ragged former C.I.A. fighters and a Laotian Army eager to dislodge
them from their jungle hide-outs.
An Amnesty International report released in March said that Laotian troops
had been involved in numerous attacks on the veterans and their families
across northern Laos in recent years, an assessment shared by American
diplomats.
"We find these reports very credible, and we know that there are human
rights abuses by security forces," Ms. Archibald said. "What we can't tell
you is who fired the first bullet."
The State Department's annual human rights report, released in March, cited
increased efforts by security forces to eliminate scattered pockets of Hmong
fighters. Pressure by the Laotian Army, the report said, "was intended to
starve the remnants of insurgent families from their jungle dwellings."
The Laotian government, perhaps wary of the effect the conflict might have
on the country's thriving tourism industry, denies that any clashes have
occurred or that any C.I.A. veterans are still in hiding.
"There are no Hmong C.I.A. in the jungles," said Yong Chanthalangsy, a
Foreign Ministry spokesman. "There are no clashes. As you may notice by
traveling in our country, there is a peaceful atmosphere."
He said Mr. Yang and his group were probably just "bandits."
On the run for the past three decades, the five men have no documents
proving they fought in the war. But they can cite the code names of C.I.A.
landing strips they guarded and some of the Americans they served with,
including a "Mr. Tony," possibly Tony Poe, the onetime leader of the
C.I.A.'s operations here who died in 2003.
Shrapnel is still visibly embedded in some of their bodies, and one veteran,
Jangwang Xiong, 57, has a damaged leg, from a clash in 1971 with forces
backed by North Vietnam, he said.
Missions for the C.I.A.
The C.I.A. initially hired the Hmong to back the Laotian government in its
fight against a Communist insurgency. Later, during the course of the
Vietnam War, the Hmong were instructed to intercept convoys of supplies on
the series of jungle paths known as the Ho Chi Minh trail, much of which ran
through Laos.
Mr. Chang said he was ordered to defend Lima Site 258, one of dozens of
mountaintop landing strips that the C.I.A. used to hopscotch around the
country with supplies and men.
The group is indigent even by the standards of rural Indochina. Its members'
diet consists mainly of wild yams collected from the jungle, bamboo shoots
and small animals hunted with bows and arrows. Occasionally they obtain rice
from villagers willing to risk secretive association with them.
Surrounded by their worn-looking children and grandchildren, the five men
appear older than their years and today bear little resemblance to the young
Hmong tribesmen who collectively earned a reputation as capable fighters.
Colin Thompson, a C.I.A. officer in Laos from 1963 to 1966, remembers the
Hmong recruits as rugged and loyal.
"There were some extraordinarily brave Hmong," he said in a telephone
interview from his home in Maryland. "They were a little tougher to beat
back than were the other tribal groups. They stood their ground."
Mr. Thompson's job included carrying stacks of Laotian currency for the
Hmong soldiers' salaries. He is sympathetic to the plight of the remaining
fighters but said Washington need not feel obligated to bring them to
America.
"It wasn't as if we dragooned them into anything," he said. "Their choice
was to defend themselves and we provided the means. We provided the weapons
and the courage."
That view is not shared by the Hmong, many of whom felt betrayed by the
United States when the war ended. Using battered radios, the veterans here
have followed what to them are the confusing events of recent years: the
friendship proclaimed between Vietnam and the United States and the arrest
in June of Vang Pao, the former Hmong general who faces charges in the
United States of plotting to attack the Laotian government.
Mr. Pao's indictment in California, after a federal sting operation in which
a government agent posing as an arms dealer offered him weapons, is
bewildering to the veterans here. Attacking Communists was the very job Mr.
Pao was paid to do by the C.I.A.
Mr. Yang and his group say they still hope for a democratic Laos but have
given up any notion that they can assist in the overthrow of the Communist
government.
Mr. Yang said he occasionally spoke with one of his daughters, Mao, a postal
clerk in California, who moved to the United States 27 years ago after a
year in a refugee camp in Thailand.
"I love my father," Mao Yang said in a phone interview from her home in Yuba
City in the Sacramento Valley. "He is hungry and he says he has no clothes."
She said she that recently sent him $1,200 through intermediaries but that
he received only $600.
About 250,000 Laotian refugees moved to the United States in the decades
after the 1975 Communist takeover, including more than 115,000 Hmong. Many
Hmong stayed in Laos after the war, living normal lives in cities or as
farmers. And others, including some members of the group visited here, had
the opportunity to seek refugee status in Thailand in the years after the
war but chose to remain in the jungle. With the newfound friendship between
Thailand and Laos, that window has now closed.
Thousands on the Run
Boon Thang Van, a veteran of the C.I.A. operation who is an adviser to a
United States-based Hmong activist group, the Fact Finding Commission, says
5,060 people - veterans and their families - are still in the jungles, most
of them in northern Laos.
The group keeps track of them through 12 satellite phones it has
distributed. It has compiled a list of clashes with government troops and
has video showing the bodies of five Hmong children after what it says was
an attack by government troops in May 2004.
Many Hmong have left the jungles in recent years and fled to Thailand,
including 7,800 refugees now in a camp in Phetchabun Province. Of those, 181
have battlefield-type injuries, according to Doctors Without Borders, the
international aid group.
"It's clear that the wounds are recent and caused by guns," said Gilles
Isard, chief of the group's mission in Thailand. Mr. Isard said many of the
people in the camp who claimed to be former C.I.A. fighters had photographs
of themselves as young soldiers and documents from the 1960s and 1970s that
they say confirm their service.
But their renowned fighting spirit has all but disappeared. Nou Chue Xiong,
68, another of the veterans here, seemed resigned to die in the jungle.
"I guess you will leave here and try to help us," Mr. Xiong told his
visitor. "But if you can't, don't be sad."
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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