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
Friday, April 02, 2004
Saturday, March 20, 2004
In Cambodia, a business is run at whim of river's rise and fall
MEKONG JOURNAL
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 3/20/2004
KAMPEE, Cambodia -- All along the Mekong, life ebbs and flows with the river's seasonal moods. In this village, a cafe rises and falls with it.
Each year in late January, when the river is low, Lon But Pun and six workers begin fastening the couple of dozen straw huts built on bamboo stilts that fit snugly into the rocks below. Then they lay straw roofs. And every year around April, as the Mekong swells with the melting snow in Tibet and later with the monsoon rains that sweep through Southeast Asia, the cafe is broken down. The important materials, such as the wood frames for the huts, are hauled back ashore, while the bamboo and straw are left and wash away with the rising tide that eventually spills into the South China Sea.
"We are only here for maybe four months every year. But it is a good four months," said Lon But Pun, 40. When the river is low in Kampee, a village of a few hundred people, small islands form, and rapids flow beneath the cafe.
Although the cafe does not make her much money, Lon But Pun said she enjoys the break from her other job. The remainder of the year, like the majority of people in remote Kratie province, she is a rice farmer.
For centuries, civilization here has been inexorably linked to the Mekong. The river, the world's 12th-longest and 10th-largest in terms of volume, also runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, providing a bounty of seafood and irrigation for rice crops.
Even in the 21st century, when motor boats have all but replaced paddle-driven skiffs and television antennae have sprouted atop many villagers' three-walled shacks, the basics of life have changed little. Lives are dictated not by a calendar or a school schedule, but by the river.
Recently, the river was doing its best impression of a grizzly bear in hibernation. It was a calm and soothing presence, and the cafe was drawing local tourists and a few backpackers along the section of the river from Cambodia to Laos.
It is not a fancy affair, and the menu (delivered verbally) is short. Seating consists of straw mats on the bamboo floors, while food and drink is limited to Angkor beer, potent Mekong whiskey, and such seasonal fruits as pineapple, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit.
The scenery is the big draw. The village is about 100 miles upriver from the capital, Phnom Penh. It takes two days to get here by water, the route demarcated by crumbling French colonial-era cement pylons. By car, on the recently reconstructed national highway, it is an eight-hour drive.
"It's so beautiful," said Riphy Ea, 32, a tourist from Phnom Penh who works for a foreign aid organization.
Across the small islands made of sand dunes and overgrown brush, the banks of the river rested 40 feet above water level. As four water buffaloes wallowed in shallow water bathed in the late-afternoon light, Riphy Ea smiled.
"I've never been here before, but look at how natural it is. I already want to come again next year," he said.
But before then, the Mekong will have its way. And if Lon But Pun has her way, and erects the cafe for a ninth year in 2005, it will be when the river says she can.
"Yes, I will try to build it again next year, but it is always different," she said. After the eight-month rainy season, the rocks and islands are never all in the same place.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 3/20/2004
KAMPEE, Cambodia -- All along the Mekong, life ebbs and flows with the river's seasonal moods. In this village, a cafe rises and falls with it.
Each year in late January, when the river is low, Lon But Pun and six workers begin fastening the couple of dozen straw huts built on bamboo stilts that fit snugly into the rocks below. Then they lay straw roofs. And every year around April, as the Mekong swells with the melting snow in Tibet and later with the monsoon rains that sweep through Southeast Asia, the cafe is broken down. The important materials, such as the wood frames for the huts, are hauled back ashore, while the bamboo and straw are left and wash away with the rising tide that eventually spills into the South China Sea.
"We are only here for maybe four months every year. But it is a good four months," said Lon But Pun, 40. When the river is low in Kampee, a village of a few hundred people, small islands form, and rapids flow beneath the cafe.
Although the cafe does not make her much money, Lon But Pun said she enjoys the break from her other job. The remainder of the year, like the majority of people in remote Kratie province, she is a rice farmer.
For centuries, civilization here has been inexorably linked to the Mekong. The river, the world's 12th-longest and 10th-largest in terms of volume, also runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, providing a bounty of seafood and irrigation for rice crops.
Even in the 21st century, when motor boats have all but replaced paddle-driven skiffs and television antennae have sprouted atop many villagers' three-walled shacks, the basics of life have changed little. Lives are dictated not by a calendar or a school schedule, but by the river.
Recently, the river was doing its best impression of a grizzly bear in hibernation. It was a calm and soothing presence, and the cafe was drawing local tourists and a few backpackers along the section of the river from Cambodia to Laos.
It is not a fancy affair, and the menu (delivered verbally) is short. Seating consists of straw mats on the bamboo floors, while food and drink is limited to Angkor beer, potent Mekong whiskey, and such seasonal fruits as pineapple, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit.
The scenery is the big draw. The village is about 100 miles upriver from the capital, Phnom Penh. It takes two days to get here by water, the route demarcated by crumbling French colonial-era cement pylons. By car, on the recently reconstructed national highway, it is an eight-hour drive.
"It's so beautiful," said Riphy Ea, 32, a tourist from Phnom Penh who works for a foreign aid organization.
Across the small islands made of sand dunes and overgrown brush, the banks of the river rested 40 feet above water level. As four water buffaloes wallowed in shallow water bathed in the late-afternoon light, Riphy Ea smiled.
"I've never been here before, but look at how natural it is. I already want to come again next year," he said.
But before then, the Mekong will have its way. And if Lon But Pun has her way, and erects the cafe for a ninth year in 2005, it will be when the river says she can.
"Yes, I will try to build it again next year, but it is always different," she said. After the eight-month rainy season, the rocks and islands are never all in the same place.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company.