| |
Laos: Lieutenant Kham's forgotten
war
By Nelson Rand
CHIANG
MAI, Thailand - Lieutenant Kong Kham walked out of the
Laotian jungle last week where he has spent the past 28
years fighting a US-backed war that officially ended in
1975.
Kham joined the US-backed Royal Lao Army
in 1974 at the age of 18. His career came to a quick end
a year later when the communists swept to military
victory in Indochina. A vestige of that army, abandoned
by the defeated Americans, continues to hold out in the
eastern province of Sayabouri. On the run from Laotian
government troops, Kham and his men live in makeshift
jungle camps and relocate every 20-30 days. When they
are attacked, they fight back with their limited
supplies of arms left over from the Vietnam War and
ammunition that they buy and trade from nearby
villagers.
After crossing into Thailand to
obtain food last Thursday, Kham said that on June 22,
his soldiers walked into Mai Nam Ngurn village in Muang
Ngurn district of Sayabouri province looking for food.
At 6am they were attacked by 100 government troops from
Battalion 418. A 30-minute gunfight followed, leaving
two villagers dead and eight injured. Kham's soldiers
escaped into the jungle unharmed.
Four days
later Kham's men went back to the village to treat the
eight wounded civilians. As they carried them out to the
nearby jungle, they came under attack again. No one was
hurt in Kham's group but one government soldier was
injured, Kham said. They were attacked again on June 29,
but they escaped unharmed.
Since then, Vientiane
has sent 350 reinforcements to the area, Kham said,
corroborated by a Thai woman who left the Muang Ngurn
area on June 29 after she saw four trucks and three
helicopters carrying government soldiers into the area.
The woman, who didn't want to be named, walked for 21
hours back to Thailand in fear for her safety.
Communist Laos has been in the international
spotlight in recent weeks with the arrest and trial of
two European journalists and their Hmong-American
translator. The trio were arrested after visiting a
group of Hmong insurgents in the country's north.
Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise, French cameraman
Vincent Reynaud and translator Naw Karl Mua were
sentenced last week to 15 years in prison, officially
convicted of being involved in the death of a village
security guard after returning from an area off limits
to foreign media. Vientiane denies the existence of
insurgents in the country, blaming any attacks on local
"bandits".
Kham insists he is no bandit. But he
continues to oppose the communists as he did nearly
three decades ago.
"After the war the government
said, 'We are here to help you and guide you and develop
the country,'" Kham recalled of the months immediately
following the communist takeover of Laos. "But the
government put strict [tax] demands on the people, and
those who could not afford them or those who spoke out
were persecuted," he said.
Those who fought
against the communist Pathet Lao during the war were
also persecuted. Thousands were sent to re-education
camps and many of them simply vanished. Kham said he
knew former anti-communist soldiers who were taken away
by government agents and never returned. So when
government agents came for him at the end of 1975, he
fled into the jungle, where he remains. For Kham, the
war has never ended.
"The American government
left unfinished business for the people of Laos to carry
out," he said.
For now, this "unfinished
business" lies in the hands of Kham and about 20 other
groups of anti-communist soldiers and their families
still holding out in the jungles of Laos, including
remnants of a US Central Intelligence Agency-backed army
of ethnic-Hmong tribesmen. They live in dire conditions
with barely enough food and are constantly targeted by
Laotian government forces.
"We helped the
Americans" during the Vietnam War, said Kham. "But will
they help us like they helped the Iraqi people?" he
asked.
"The people of Laos suffer from
persecution, poverty, and have no freedom," he said. "We
have suffered enough under the government. [The Lao
people] are willing to fight the government and
establish a new government," he said.
And if the
government's policies of high taxation and repression of
its citizens continue, said Kham, then "there is no hope
for the Lao people".
"We ask the world to
intervene and save the people of Laos," he said.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
