Laotian rebels trickle out of jungle to accept amnesty

1,200 seek new lives
after years of war

By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune

VIENTIANE, Laos—As many as 1,200 Hmong rebels who were fighting the communist Laotian
government have laid down their weapons and accepted amnesty in the past month, according to diplomats.

Whether that represents the beginning of the end of the rebellion remains to be seen. Diplomats were cautiously optimistic that a combination of factors may soon lead to the remainder of the 3,000 to 5,000 rebels surrendering their arms and being
resettled under a government amnesty plan.

Based in jungle pockets, the low-level Hmong rebellion is the last remnant of the Indochina conflicts of the 1960s and ’70s that included the Vietnam War. Some of the fighters who accepted the amnesty have come out of the jungle for the first time in almost 30 years, sources said. Others, who were born into the rebellion, have left the forest for the first time in their lives.

The CIA originally recruited and funded a group of about 30,000 Hmong to fight the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao armies more than 30 years ago.

Hmong fighters who were not able to escape Laos after the communists took over in 1975 fled into the jungles, where they and their decedents have lived ever since.

At that time the number of Hmong rebels and their family members in Laos was believed
to be 15,000. However, after nearly three decades of fighting, aging and desertion, diplomats now estimate the rebels number as few as 3,000.

U.S. officials said a group of several hundred people emerged from their havens in
the northeastern province of Xieng Khouang and about 200 came out of the forest surrounding Luang Prabang, the ancient capital about 150 miles north of the current capital city of Vientiane. Other diplomats put the total at 1,200.

The Hmong who surrendered were given food, and the government paid for them to shop at local markets, several diplomats said. Those who had family in other parts of the country were provided transportation, while others were given parcels of land to farm.

Though the rebels and their families have emerged from the jungle sporadically since the end of the war in 1975, this is by far the largest group to surrender their weapons and come out of hiding.

The government does not acknowledge any Hmong rebellion in Laos and refused comment. But diplomats say there has been a strong carrot-andstick approach by the regime for
the past year, which may account for the surrenders.

The army stepped up its campaign against the rebels after two high-profile attacks by the Hmong on buses last year that killed dozens of people, including three foreigners. However, the government also has sent envoys to the rebels offering them
full amnesty and resettlement with family members in Laos or on government-provided land.

Those factors, plus a severe drought in much of the country and possibly some conciliatory remarks late last year in the United States from their former leader, Gen. Vang Pao, all may have contributed to the exodus from the jungle.

“But we simply don’t know for sure what has triggered this now,” said Douglas Hartwick, the U.S. ambassador to Laos. He added that U.S. officials had no direct contact with the Hmong who surrendered.

According to Hmong who have emerged in the past and reporters who have visited their
camps in restricted zones in the jungle, many of the nomadic rebels and their families are in poor health and spirits. They live mainly off nuts and roots and practice slash-and-burn agriculture. Most have suffered battle wounds.

“There is a very deep pain in the people in the forest who have been waiting for a triggering event to come out, and it never happened,” a Western observer here said. “Meanwhile, life is hard. They cannot grow crops, and the Lao military has been
tightening the noose around their necks.”

Diplomats hope the recent surrenders are the first in a series.

No doubt this is a watershed event,” one Western diplomat said. “I don’t think [the rebels] can fully reconstitute after such a significant degradation of their insurgency.”

But it would be premature to conclude that the last conflict of the Indochina wars finally is coming to an end, he said.

©2004 The Chicago Tribune