President Obama today will land in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, or the Lao PDR. It’s to be the first visit by a US President. Laos is the host of this year's Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.
If Americans know of Laos at all it’s with guilt for all the bombs we dropped on the country during the Vietnam War. The reality is that almost everyone in the country was born after the war and even while the war was in progress just about no one knew of any bombing. The war for most people was somewhere else.
Most bombing was of the Ho Chi Minh Trail which was way over in south east Laos, an area that even today is extremely isolated. The trail was protected by some 50,000 North Vietnamese who were also violating Laos’ neutrality. and protecting the trail with various surface to air missiles etc. There was also bombing of the Plain of Jars which is an entirely different part of the country. There Lao and Thai forces fought a years long effort of the North Vietnamese and Lao communists to expand southward. The war would ebb and flow with the rainy and dry seasons.
Of course for the actual combatants that I’ve talked to there are absolutely no hard feelings toward their former adversaries. Veterans seem to be glad for anyone who lived, not bitter because of those who died. I know many from both sides.
Currently Laos is ruled by a secretive communist dictatorship that allows no opposition or dissent. Advocating for multi party Democracy can lead to a multi decade vacation in a remote province. The civil society portion of the ASEAN meeting was held in Timor Leste as many would have felt uncomfortable in Laos.
That said I don’t wish to paint a negative picture of the Laotian government. The overwhelming majority of citizens like their government. The police corruption is minimal for south east asia and people fear the police not at all. Everyone is pretty much free to do as they please, as long as it’s not critical of the government. The ambiance is much more relaxed than Thailand just across the Mekong or Burma further up which is still at war in places. The head of the government changes with regularity and peacefully. Great advances are made in the standard of living, life expectancy, and education.
The American government unbeknownst to many has close and cooperative ties with the Lao government, especially in the areas of their shared interests. All drugs used to be legal in Laos. Pot and opium were sold at the market like everything else up until 01. Closer ties to the US brought the death penalty for large scale dealing, and imprisonment for lesser amounts. Laos is a country drugs are transported through, and certainly poppies are grown in the hills, but there are no laboratories, no large drug syndicates as in China, or Burma.
Laos and the US also work closely on unexploded ordinance left over from the war and in the repatriation of the remains of US service members. Every dry season there are new excavations to look for remains and every year we increase expenditures for UXO removal as ever more people are trained to detect and remove it. What’s left? The Hmong.
Our old allies in the war were a kinda rough hill tribe called Hmong. If you ever wished for allies in a war I couldn’t think of anyone better. When we left, we left the Hmong behind, and when Laos became a Communist country the Hmong did poorly. The Lao government and the Hmong who sided with the Americans were in a low intensity war for decades and many made the trek to Thailand and eventual resettlement in the US. Some relatives of US citizens are still in the forests of Laos never having surrendered.
I’m sure President Obama will raise the issue of human rights, he has to. I doubt it will have any effect at all on the Lao government.
Another thing I’m sure the two governments will discuss is the situation in the South China Sea with China. Vietnam has ties to Laos greater even than the thousand or so mile shared border or the close cooperation before, during, and after the war. Many Lao citizens are ethnic Vietnamese from the days of French colonialism.
www.nytimes.com/…
Laos and America are very closely tied together in another way. Having such a small population and a long and porous border with Thailand, after the war hundreds of thousands of Laotians escaped to Thailand and eventual settlement in the US. Virtually everyone in Laos has a relative in the US, often a close relative. The US is not considered a former enemy, but rather the place some family members live. The ties that bind Laos and the US are much greater than simply shared interests or trade or any long ago war.