On the surface, Laos seems like an improbable place for a study of conflict resolution. Politically speaking, for the 700 or so years of its existence, its longest period of peace lasted approximately fifty-seven years. During its history, it has been under constant threat from various neighbours – from Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Khmer empires, and the international presence of the French, Americans, Chinese, and Soviets. Religious artifacts have been stolen and re-stolen, monarchs starved and murdered, and monetary tribute has flowed from its coffers to pay off powerful neighbours, sometimes even warlords. Still, as a nation that has been living under occupation, poverty, and general military and economic weakness for the past 300 years, it has somehow managed to survive, and is even beginning to show signs of health and strength. Even if the Vietnam War stripped it of its status as a kingdom, there is still a very strong Lao identity that delineates it from its Thai ethnic and linguistic family, and the Vietnamese political system to which it has such strong ties.
What is so interesting about Laos is that, in spite of the political turmoil that has plagued its existence, its extremely complex social structure and diverse population have largely been peaceful and respectful. The people of Laos consider themselves to be a multi-cultural society with multiple groups of different ethnic heritages, incorporated into a common national identity. Different political powers through Southeast Asian history have managed to wage wars for every imaginable reason, from ideology to resource expansion, but the diverse groups seem to find peace with each other relatively easily. Why here and, equally importantly, why not elsewhere?
Many consider Laos to be the last vestige of ancient Asia. The way of life, customs, rituals, religion, and social and civic organization have remained largely unchanged since the great Thai and Khmer empires dating back 1,000 years. Indeed, Luang Prabang holds United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage status because it is one of the best preserved cities to still retain its social and architectural organization; an organization that was at one time the norm through most of East and Southeast Asia. Some of its temples have been operational since the sixteenth century, and its organization of ban, or villages surrounding a temple structure within a context of a larger city, is still in use today. Dating before the kingdoms of Laos, the mysterious Plain of Jars gives us clues about highly organized civilizations dating back to 500 BCE – 800 BCE (UNESCO World Heritage, 2014), and current archeological studies provide evidence of ancient nomadic groups occupying this region some 50,000 years before that (Demeter et al., 2012).
Since 1975, Laos has been officially called the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), a small, landlocked country in Southeast Asia which borders China to the north, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, Thailand to the west, and Myanmar (Burma) to the northwest. Being landlocked, it depends very much on its neighbors for trade and access to the sea. Much of Laos is very mountainous and densely forested. Sedentary agriculture is mostly limited to the Mekong Plains. Laos covers an area of 91,400 sq. mi. (234,804 sq. km) (Leibo, 2003). The country’s capital city is Vientiane, located along the Mekong River, near the border with Thailand.
Laos has an extremely diverse population of 6.6 million. The number of ethnic groups living in Laos ranges from 49 to 240, depending on which statistics are used. The largest ethnic groups are the Ethnic Lao, Khammu, and Hmong (CIA, 2009). Major centers see these groups co-habitating, but many smaller villages are still chiefly occupied by single ethnicities.
Since December 2, 1975, Laos has been governed by an authoritarian one-party Communist state, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). It was modeled on existing Communist regimes, specifically the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and China (Stuart-Fox, 2008). Laos is divided into sixteen provinces (kwang) with a number of districts or cities (muang) that are further divided into villages (ban). Villages do not necessarily refer to rural areas of settlement, but also communities, neigh-bourhoods, or sub-divisions. Traditionally, a temple exists in the center of a village and serves as a focal point of village life. Within a city, there can be many villages composed of a number of families that form different communities. Some villages consist of only a few families, whereas others include several hundred. A village chief or village leader (nei ban) manages each village. All ethnic groups have villages as their basic social and economic unit. There are more than 11,000 villages in Laos (Stuart-Fox, 2008).
Brief history
Based on various historical and anthropological sources (Leibo, 2003; Magocsi, 1999; Savada, 1995; Stuart-Fox, 1997, 2006, 2007, 2008; Stuart-Fox & Kooyman, 1992), the following section provides a summary of the history of Laos. The history of a unified Laos can be broken down into three different periods: (1) kingdom of Lan Xang, from 1354–1779; (2) Occupational and Colonial Rule, from 1779–1953; and (3) Modern Laos, from 1953 to the present, which is marked by the struggle for independence and renewed strength. In order to understand the patterns of violence and peace in Laos, it is important to have a brief understanding of each of these periods.
The kingdom of Lan Xang (the Land of a Million Elephants) represents the creation and foundation of the Lao identity in which the present country of Laos is rooted. As the first unified Laos, the kingdom of Lan Xang, was founded in 1354 by Fa Ngum, a prince of Muang Sua (modern-day Luang Prabang). As a child, Fa Ngum was sent to the Khmer Empire of Angkor, where he was educated as a prince and given a Khmer princess as his bride. By all accounts, he impressed the Angkor elite, who saw considerable potential in him as a leader and an ally. The great Khmer Empire was in decline and was being threatened on several fronts, notably by a growing Thai population, including the Lanna and Sukhothai empires in the north, and a smaller but powerful group to the south that would eventually form the Ayutthaya Kingdom (Coe, 2005; Wyatt, 2003).
The death of Fa Ngum’s grandfather led to a power dispute in Muang Sua, and Angkor recognized an opportunity to establish a buffer state between itself and the growing Thai threat. They gave Fa Ngum an army with the hope that he would be able to take control of a large region of Southeast Asia that the Khmer regime no longer had the strength to control (Coe, 2005). The campaign was very successful, and the kingdom of Lan Xang was established. It would soon become one of the largest and most dominant forces in Southeast Asia.
Lan Xang was a major contributor to Southeast Asian arts, including literature, medicine, law, music, and dance. Buddhists throughout Southeast Asia flocked to its cities to study the Theravada Buddhist traditions. Monasteries and other education centers wielded considerable cultural and political power, and their influence extended across political borders. As a whole, Lan Xang had significant military strength, a very capable government and political structure, a powerful sangha (religious clergy), and a strong economy (Stuart-Fox, 1997).
Nevertheless, there was a continual rotation between periods of peace and periods of war between Lan Xang and its neighbours. As a powerful player in Southeast Asia, Lan Xang was involved in violent wars against the Vietnamese Empire of Dai Viet between 1448 and 1479, the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya between 1540 and 1560, and successive Burmese empires between 1565 and 1590. The so-called “Golden Age” of Lan Xang culminated around King Sourigna Vongsa (1637– 1694), and Lan Xang experienced a period of peace lasting fifty-seven years, its longest-ever peaceful period (Ivarsson, 2008).
King Vongsa’s death in 1694 left no clear heir to the throne, and a struggle for power ensued. By 1713, Lan Xang was split into three Lao kingdoms: (1) Luang Prabang, the ancient royal capital to the north; (2) Vientiane, the business capital in central Lan Xang; and (3) Champasak, the former territory of the Khmer Empire in the south (Viravong, 1964). The three kingdoms frequently feuded with each other, contributing to their decline. By 1779, these kingdoms were too weak to exist independently, and each was forced into a suzerain relationship with its more powerful neighbours. Between 1779 and 1953, the various sections of ancient Lan Xang were subject to financial, artistic, and human plundering from Thailand, France, Japan, and Vietnam. There were several attempts at repelling the colonizing forces during this time, but none had any real measure of success. One particularly notable attempt was quelled in 1828, when Thailand finally had enough of Lao rebellions for independence. The Siamese-Lao War of 1826–1828 left Vientiane completely plundered, destroyed, and uninhabitable (Askew, Long, & Logan, 2007). The Thais resettled a large population of Lao people into an area known as Isan.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this resettlement. The political ramifications have had lasting effects even today. At the time of the resettlement, the entire area was under Thai control as an occupying force. But the political realities were becoming increasingly complex as the French began taking a significant interest in Southeast Asia. By the late 1850s, the French had a significant military presence in Vietnam, and by the 1880s had established an official protectorate over the empires in Vietnam and the kingdoms of Cambodia and Luang Prabang. The French continued to advance in Southeast Asia, resulting in the Franco-Siamese War of 1893. The next thirty years saw continual feuds between the Thais and the French, until they agreed to treaty terms in 1929. Part of the Franco-Siamese treaty established a border between Laos and Thailand, which once settled upon, incorporated the area of Isan into Siam, or modern-day Thailand (Savada, 1995; Stuart-Fox, 1997).
In essence, the Thais forced resettlement of Lao people from the east to the west of the Mekong River would eventually see those people being absorbed into modern-day Thailand. The area of Isan is now Thailand’s largest region, home to 21 million people. The majority of the Isan population are direct descendants of this resettlement, referred to as Thai Isan, Thai-Lao, or Lao Isan, and account for some 19 million people. The main language of Isan is a dialect of Lao, and the Isan people hold to their Lao cultural traditions, including cuisine, folk music, and celebratory rituals, many of which will be discussed later. Essentially, there are close to triple the number of Lao people living in the Isan area of Thailand as there are in all of Laos (Cummings, 1992; National Statistical Office, 2004).
It would be impossible to speculate how the Lao resettlement and subsequent border demarcation changed the future of Southeast Asia. Had Laos had the additional population, the upcoming Indochina Wars could have played out very differently. In Thailand, the recent political instability between the red-shirts (United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship – UDD), composed of rural farmers and the urban working class, and the yellow-shirts (People’s Alliance for Democracy – PAD), composed of royalists, ultra-nationalists, and the urban middle class, has been intensified by Isan support of the red-shirt movement, the largest ethnolinguistic group to support the Thaksin family (BBC News, 2012). This, however, is a topic for another book.
Ironically, for all the trouble the French went to in occupying Laos, they actually took very little interest in it. Partly due to Laos’ remoteness and lack of natural resources, the French did virtually nothing to develop it during its occupation between 1893 and 1945. Just like the Khmer Empire of the 1300s, the French saw Laos as a buffer zone between its interests in Vietnam and the strong, aggressive Thai kingdom of Siam, which had links to Great Britain.
The seeds of the Indochinese Wars were planted at the end of World War II, as the Japanese withdrew their presence from Southeast Asia. After their withdrawal, the French came back to Southeast Asia to reclaim Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as French colonial protectorates. Three royal Lao brothers, Princes Rattanavongsa, Souvanna Phouma, and Souphanouvong, founded a nationalist movement called Lao Issara, or “Free Laos,” to rid themselves of the French colonists who were trying to recapture Laos after the Japanese withdrawal. The movement was fledgling at best, and the French quickly retook Laos, which resumed its status as a French colony. Still, the princes would play a major role in shaping and re-shaping Lao politics (Conboy & Morrison, 1995; Stuart-Fox, 1997).
The French chased the three brothers out, with each going a different way, searching for outside help to advance their cause. In 1947, Lao King Sisavang Vong declared Laos an independent nation within the French Union and began building the Royal Lao Army. Prince Phetsarath Rattanavongsa was invited back to resume his duties as the king’s viceroy. Prince Souvanna Phouma also returned to Laos and eventually became the prime minister. Prince Souphanouvong went to North Vietnam and allied himself with Ho Chi Minh and the Communist movement. He became the head of the Communist Pathet Lao army and was heavily involved in growing this group from a small guerilla operation into a well-funded, disciplined, professional army (Savada, 1995; Stuart-Fox, 1997, 2008).
The French were far less successful in reclaiming Vietnam as a French colony. The first Indochina War (1946–1954) occurred between the French and North Vietnamese, who fought for control over Vietnam. By 1954, the French presence in Vietnam was tenuous and the North Vietnamese could smell victory. After the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, just 10 km away from the Lao border, the defeated French lost all hope of ever gaining stability in Vietnam. Without Vietnam, French interest in Southeast Asia entirely evaporated, and they withdrew their army and official presence from all of Southeast Asia. North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos all declared their independence (Dommen, 2001; Lonely Planet, 2014; Stuart-Fox, 1997, 2008).
The United States quickly moved into Southeast Asia to replace the French. The US involvement was ideological. Specifically, Laos must be saved as a buffer zone to prevent the advance of Communism from China and North Vietnam. The United States knew that the Pathet Lao had strong backing from the North Vietnamese, who were promoting Communist ideology and heavily recruiting military muscle. Thus began the Second Indochina War, a phase which would feed the minds and imaginations of conspiracy theorists the world over. The United States had no public mandate to go into Laos, and had even signed treaty documents forbidding such activities. However, they knew that unless they could control the flow of goods between North and South Vietnam that ran through Laos along the “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Communism would surely take over all of the previous French colonies (Dommen, 2001; Lonely Planet, 2014; Stuart-Fox, 1997).
In declaring its independence, Souvanna Phouma, who controlled the neutralist Royal Lao Army, and his brother, Souphanouvong, who controlled the Communist Pathet Lao, as well as several smaller, right-wing conservative factions, attempted to merge their respective groups into one government. The Americans believed that the best way to justify involvement in Laos was to destabilize the coalition ...
