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grew to criminal proportions, and with it the role of the Hmong. Although they were best at
guerrilla warfare, the Hmong were increasingly involved in set-piece, conventional battles
against a determined North Vietnamese force; an estimated 25 percent of the Hmong who
enlisted to fight were killed in battle.
By 1968, Vang Pao's forces were no longer fighting for their homeland, they were fighting
for the US, pawns of the
war in Vietnam
. The institutionalization of the Laos war had re-
duced Operation Momentum to a bloated recruitment programme churning out war-weary
Hmong mercenaries. Half a world away in Washington DC, former ambassador to Vien-
tiane William Sullivan, questioned in Senate hearings as to whether the US had any re-
sponsibility for the well-being of Vang Pao and his people, made it painfully clear where
the Hmong stood: “No formal obligation upon the US; no.”
The tacit agreement
Following the second round in Geneva, Washington's priority was South Vietnam, where,
by 1962, it already had ten thousand military advisers and support troops. By October 1962
American and Soviet military personnel had withdrawn from Laos, but only forty North Vi-
etnamese had cleared the checkpoints, leaving an estimated five thousand troops in Laos.
The country was being drawn increasingly into the
Second Indochina War
, as North Vi-
etnam and the US undermined its neutrality in the pursuit of their agendas in Vietnam. Lao
territory was a crucial part of the North Vietnamese war effort. They could not risk allowing
the US to use northern Laos, in particular the Plain of Jars, to threaten North Vietnam and
they needed to control the mountainous eastern corridor of southern Laos in order to move
soldiers and supplies to South Vietnam along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail
.
The US saw no option
but to challenge North Vietnam's strategy. Eventually, all sides with a stake in Laos came to
the same conclusion about the Geneva Accords: while they would have loved to point an ac-
cusing finger at the opposition's violations of the agreement, they had much more to gain by
quietly pursuing their own agendas. So the right-wing Lao, the Americans and the Thais on
the one side and the Pathet Lao, the North Vietnamese and their Chinese and Soviet backers
on the other tacitly agreed to pretend to abide by the accords, guaranteeing Laos's neutrality
while keeping the country at war.
Even after the collapse of the second coalition government in 1963, patriotic Souvannaph-
ouma was determined to keep the vision of a neutral Laos alive. After negotiations with the
Chinese and Vietnamese failed, he returned to Vientiane and on April 18, 1964, he announced
his plans to resign, prompting Phoumi's rightist rivals to launch a surprise coup the next day.
But within a few days, the prince was back in power and the generals were out.
Excluded from the new government, the Pathet Lao went on the offensive, chasing Kong
Le's remaining neutralists off the Plain of Jars and into an alliance with Vang Pao and his
