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Laos
Index
In spite of the regime's revolutionary rhetoric about
selfreliance on the march to socialism, Western aid was simply
replaced
over the 1970s and 1980s by aid from "fraternal countries"
of the
Soviet bloc. Living standards declined further.
Nongovernmental
organizations, including some from the United States, in
cooperation with local officials, established a few
small-scale aid
projects that reached out to real needs in the areas of
health,
education, and economic development.
Kaysone and his colleagues, following the well-known
examples
of Soviet and East European party leaders, led carefully
protected
lives behind the walls of their guarded compounds in the
capital,
secluded from public scrutiny and shielded from any
manifestation
of hostility, their movements kept secret. The minister of
interior, Somseun Khamphithoun, whose ministry was
responsible for
the operation of the seminar camps, was never seen
publicly in
Vientiane. Corruption, widespread in the years of the
United States
civilian and military aid programs, resumed with the new
opportunities presented by the "economic opening"
beginning in
1986.
The first Supreme People's Assembly, appointed by the
National
Congress on December 2, 1975, rapidly faded into
obscurity,
although its twice-yearly meetings were reported in the
controlled
press. In 1988, perhaps because the regime wished to give
itself
some semblance of popular underpinning, it suddenly
announced that
elections would be held for a new Supreme People's
Assembly.
Elections were held on June 26, 1988, for 2,410 seats on
districtlevel people's councils and on November 20, 1988, for 651
seats on
province-level people's councils. On March 26, 1989,
elections were
held for seventy-nine seats on the Supreme People's
Assembly.
Candidates in all elections were screened by the party.
Sixty-five
of the seventy-nine members of the assembly were party
members
(see Legislature
, ch. 4).
In the area of foreign relations, Laos joined the ranks
of the
"socialist camp" on December 2, 1975. Gone was any
pretense of
neutrality. In the new state of affairs where "peace" had
at long
last been achieved and no one paid attention to the
presence of
"fraternal" foreign troops on Laotian soil, the
delegations of the
ICC in Laos returned to their respective countries,
leaving behind
piles of unpaid bills.
In accordance with the organic links between the
Vietnamese and
Laotian parties that have been acclaimed by the highest
party
leaders, Laos has been tied more closely to Vietnam than
to any
other country. The term special relations (in Lao,
khan
phoua phan yang phiset) to describe the linkage
between the two
parties and governments had come into use as early as
November 1973
when Le Duan, first secretary of the Vietnamese party,
visited
Viangxai
(see Bilateral Relations
, ch. 4). Thereafter,
special
relations was the term increasingly emphasized in joint
statements.
In July 1977, Laos and Vietnam signed the twenty-five-year
Treaty
of Friendship and Cooperation. They also agreed to
redefine their
common border, which was demarcated in 1986. In early
1989, the
Vietnamese troops that had been stationed in Laos
continuously
since 1961 were reported to have been withdrawn.
Despite some incidents along their common border,
Thailand took
an accommodating stand toward the country. Opening the
border to
trade and eliminating the "sanctuary" problem were
affirmed as
goals in a 1979 joint communiqué between Kaysone and the
Thai prime
minister, Kriangsak Chomanand, which was subsequently
cited by
Laotians as the touchstone of their relations with
Thailand
(see Bilateral Relations
, ch. 4). Following a series of
shooting
incidents in 1984 involving rival claims to three border
villages,
a major dispute arose in December 1987 over territory
claimed by
Laos as part of Botèn District in Xaignabouri and by
Thailand as
part of Chat Trakan District in Phitsanulok Province. The
fighting
that ensued claimed more than 1,000 lives before a
cease-fire was
declared on February 19, 1988. The origin of the dispute
was the
ambiguity of the topographic nomenclature used in the 1907
FrancoSiamese border treaty over the area of the Nam Heung, up
which Fa
Ngum's army had traveled in the fourteenth century. After
1975 the
sanctuary problem also defied solution for a decade, with
the Hmong
and communist rebels occupying some of the old Lao Issara
resistance bases in Thailand. However, a series of
working-level
meetings between the two sides were arranged that served
to defuse
the conflict, and relations improved markedly in the late
1980s.
Although official relations between Laos and China were
strained by the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, the two
countries
maintained diplomatic relations, and local trade continued
across
their common border. The ending of the brief war saw a
rapid and
steady improvement in mutual ties and exchanges of visits
at all
levels. Kaysone visited Beijing, and a border demarcation
commission completed its work to mutual satisfaction.
Laos seemed at last to have achieved stable relations
with its
neighbors. Centuries-old conflicts that had repeatedly
seen foreign
invaders trampling Laotian soil with their elephants or
tanks,
Laotians conscripted by this or that pretender to the
throne,
pagodas built and then destroyed, and the countryside laid
waste,
had receded. Peace brought the prospect of a better life,
if not
yet participation in a multiparty democracy. It was as if
after so
much suffering Laotians had turned inward, seeking the
fulfillment
that had always come from their families, their villages,
their
sangha, and their pride in the moments of glory in
their
country's long history.
* * *
No complete history of Laos exists in English, but
there are
three very useful bibliographies. The most useful for the
beginner,
because of the annotations, is Helen Cordell's
Laos. The
compiler's introductory essay also provides an informative
overview
of the country and its people. A far more extensive
bibliography,
but lacking annotation except for subject matter headings,
is
William W. Sage and Judith A. N. Henchy's Laos: A
Bibliography. Finally, Martin Stuart-Fox and Mary
Kooyman's
Historical Dictionary of Laos contains a much more
narrow
selection of writings on Laos.
For the modern period before 1975, Arthur J. Dommen's
Conflict in Laos: The Politics of Neutralization
and Hugh
Toye's Laos: Buffer State or Battleground are still
standard. Maha Sila Viravong's Phongsavadan Lao
(History of
Laos), although flawed and somewhat dated, is still
useful.
MacAlister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff's Apprentice
Revolutionaries: The Communist Movement in Laos,
1930-85
provides detailed information on the civil war years. No
history of
the Lao People's Democratic Republic in English has yet
appeared,
and in view of the secretiveness of the regime, writing
about it is
difficult. Readers interested in following current events
are
advised to rely on the translations provided by the
Foreign
Broadcast Information Service's Daily Report: East
Asia.
Primary source materials are available in both the
French and
United States archives. The former deal mainly with the
colonial
period. The latter contain so far declassified diplomatic
correspondence of the Department of State through 1960,
with the
exception of that dealing with the POW/MIA issue for
1973-92
declassified at a Senate committee's request. All
Department of
Defense documents relating to the POW/MIA issue are
available at
the Library of Congress. Documentation of the CIA's role
in Laos is
still withheld by the CIA.
Foreign scholars have not had access to the archives of
the
Indochinese Communist Party, the Vietnamese Communist
Party, or the
Lao People's Revolutionary Party (with the exception of
some work
by Japanese scholars in Hanoi dealing with the period of
the 1940s
and early 1950s; e.g., Moto Furuta and Masaya Shiraishi's
Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s). These archives
seem
unlikely to be opened short of an upheaval similar to that
which
befell the parties of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Much scholarly writing on Laos history appears in
periodicals,
such as Asian Survey, Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies, Pacific Affairs, and Péninsule.
(For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of July 1994
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