The White Elephant
(See Cover)
High over the jungle green hills of Laos, unmarked U.S. transport planes loosed red and white parachutes that floated down the supplies of war: ammunition, clothing and food. Only a few miles away, across a canyon or a hill. Russian Ilyushins bounced onto rough turf runways bearing howitzers, mortars, assault guns and Communist technicians to man them. Among all the crises around the world, only in the remote and rugged northern Laos were Communist and anti-Communist armies lined up for war.
But strangely, once the arms glided down into the hands of the Laotians, very little seemed to happen. Rarely had the world's two great antagonists been more frustrated in their respective friends.
Images & Amulets. In the Royal Laotian Army, the soldiers were small, laughing men. floppy as rag dolls in their outsized American fatigues, wearing socks of rice about their chests. In five weeks, they had advanced exactly eight miles along Astrid Highway, a dirt scar grandly named to commemorate the visit years ago by a Belgian queen. They swam in mountain streams, stole pigs, got drunk on rice whisky, and occasionally fired their U.S.-supplied 105-mm. howitzers in the general direction of the enemy. (They disliked the idea of shooting at anybody with a rifle, since it is not permissible for any good Buddhist to knowingly kill another human being.)
The Communists were only slightly better served. On the commanding Plaine des Jarres, cut off from the Royal Army by deep ravines, the Pathet Lao fought without pay and kept their new Russian weapons clean. But the Pathet Lao have not yet dared risk a major battle. During three months of slow retreat, they have managed to kill just 50 of the enemy, almost all by means of land mines or long-distance artillery barrage. What could serious cold-warriors on either side do with soldiers who set up tiny clay images of Buddha to shoot at, deliberately missed, and then wore the statues as amulets on the theory that the enemy would now miss too?
Three Princes & a Soldier. To the minority of Laotians who know about the war at all, it was simply a fight between the princes. For Laos is a country of princes and peasants, where the democratic process has made no more impact than has the Communist cry of revolution. There is Prince Souvanna Phouma, who claims to be Premier and is recognized as such by the Russians, though he is off in voluntary exile in Cambodia, cultivating gladioli at a royal villa borrowed from Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk. Souvanna is a man so enigmatic that he persistently refuses to define what he means by his doctrine of "neutrality in neutralism," on the ground that Laotians dislike precision. There is Prince Boun Oum, recognized as Premier by the U.S., but frankly described by one Western diplomat as "a sort of Buddhist Falstaff." One of Boun Oum's supporters called him "the most representative personality of the kingdom"--by which was meant that he is excessively fond of drinking and wenching. In fact, Boun Oum owes his position to the strong man on the Western side--General Phoumi Nosavan. an anti-Communist soldier who captured Vientiane three months ago and forced Souvanna into exile.
And lastly, there is burly, mustached Prince Souphanouvong. the tough boss of the Communist-backed Pathet Lao rebels who have kept all Laos in turmoil for the past seven years. There is nothing enigmatic about Souphanouvong: he wants to take over Laos with Communist backing.
General Phoumi Nosavan, the one Laotian resolved to keep Communists out of the government at all costs, believes that the prince means what he says. Prince Souvanna Phouma doesn't believe him--on the ground that Souphanouvong is his half brother and therefore couldn't possibly be proCommunist.
Presiding over all three is King Savang Vatthana, who towers above most of his subjects at 5 ft. 8 in. Savang Vatthana is recognized by all Laotians and both Russia and the U.S. as the chief of state.
His most striking characteristic politically is a lethargy so profound that it is almost spectacular. Since the crisis began, he has taken two notable steps to safeguard his domain. He has kept close watch over an ancient golden statue of Buddha, on the theory that "as long as the Buddha is in our hands, the country is safe." He has preserved the body of his late father in formaldehyde for the past 17 months in a gilded sandalwood urn at the entrance to the palace in the royal capital of Luangprabang, on the ground that the powerful phis (spirits) that surround the corpse of a king will ward off all invaders.
Flat World. The kingdom of Laos* is about the size of Great-Britain, but is landlocked, lackadaisical, and so primitive that the currently favored adjective, "underdeveloped," would be an unwarranted compliment. A recent U.S. survey disclosed that 90% of all Laotians think the world is flat--and populated mainly by Laotians.
It is less a single country than an archipelago of small, lush river valleys, cut off from each other by sharp mountains and limestone plateaus where roam the elephant, tiger and gaur. In winter, the hills of Laos are alight with opium poppies, and in summer the floods brought by the monsoon rains lap under the stilted houses and over the 500 miles of meandering dirt roads. Years ago, someone built a railroad station in Savannakhet, but never got around to building a railroad. The Me kong River, crashing down from a canyon in China's Yunnan province, then slowed by silt and sewage on its 1,600-mile run to the South China Sea, is the principal means of transportation and is known as "the soul of Laos." In normal times, the principal exports are illegal opium and a little tin, but in 1960, the main export was words -- the $300,000 charged at the cable office to newsmen covering the "war."
The Chop. Laos lies, by historical accident, in the shape of a lean lamb chop among six quarreling neighbors. To the Communist countries beyond the mists and granite-blue mountains to the north, Laos in anarchy provides the vital corridor through which to fuel an incessant guerrilla warfare against South Viet Nam.
To Cambodia, Laos is the buffer that permits it a capricious neutralism. To firmly anti-Communist Thailand on the west, Laos is a geographic and ethnic neighbor and, if the Communists should take it over, a potential threat. To the U.S., Laos is primarily something to deny to the Communists, and just about as inconvenient a testing ground as can be found.
The U.S. is deeply committed in Laos, where it has spent $310 million in the past six years. This is $26 for every Laotian every year, or almost half the per capita income. A "retired" West Point brigadier, Andrew Jackson Boyle, directs the entire U.S. supply and training operation from headquarters in Vientiane--where the suburbia-like U.S. colony has taken on a stripped-for-action look since the evacuation of 200 dependents to Bangkok seven months ago. West Point's "retired" Major Eleazar Parmly does his best to help the government drive along Astrid Highway. In the hill country, Central Intelligence Agency operatives roam, dickering for the support of tribal chieftains.
Time & Temper. But the Laotian terrain and temperament are both frustrating. Military men view with distaste the prospect of fighting a sputtery war that could be fed endlessly across the long borders with the Communist world.
The development men find the Laotian people charming, but by Western standards, bone lazy. In other backward lands, it is popular to write this quality off to malnutrition, liver flukes and intestinal parasites, but in Laos (where these afflictions also abound) lethargy extends to the highest rank of princelings, raised on French cuisine. The favorite phrase in Laos is bo pen nyan, a vaguely negative phrase that means anything from "too bad" to "it doesn't matter." Peasants listen with interest when U.S. experts explain scientific agriculture. But when they learn that the aim is to double production rather than to halve the work, they give the new notions a cold shoulder.
Old Lan Xang. A branch of the Thai peoples, the Lao were driven out of southern China by Kublai Khan in the 13th century and fled south to the valleys of the Mekong behind a legendary king, Khun Borom, who rode "a white elephant with beautiful black lips and eyelids." There was, a century later, a brief foray at empire. King Fah Ngum, born with a set of 33 pointed teeth, grabbed all of present-day Laos and part of Thailand by elephant charge and labeled it all Lan Xang Horn Khao, "Land of the Million Elephants and the W'hite Parasol." He installed the golden Prabang Buddha that the present King guards today.
But it was not in the indolent Laotian manner to create a unified nation. The Lao stuck to the lush valleys, where the living was easy, and lorded it over the darker, aboriginal inhabitants who are still known in Laos today as Kha (slaves). To the hills came a fierce assortment of immigrants: Black Thai and White Thai, Yao and Youne and Meo. Adept with the poisoned dart, the crossbow and the animal pit, the 80-odd hill tribes dislike the valley-dwelling Lao and number about half the country's 2,000,000 population.
Gallic Grace. Throughout its history, as now, Laos has been buffeted by powerful neighbor states. It has been invaded so many times by the Vietnamese that the present King habitually refers to the threat from the north not as the Communist but as "the Annamese problem." About 1700, Laos split into three kingdoms, run by rival royalty, and it was still split two centuries later when the French, the last and by all odds the gentlest of the conquerors, arrived in 1893, seeking a buffer state against Siam and British Burma. The French looked around and proclaimed Laos living proof of Rousseau's theories about the noble savage.
With Gallic grace, the French colonials joined in the almost weekly Laotian festivals. They range in riotousness from the spring fertility rites known as Bang Fai, when the men wave bamboo poles topped with phallic symbols and copulating puppets and the girls look on and giggle, to New Year's, when the King's elephants are gathered and lectured on good conduct. Many a Frenchman learned to play Laos' unchaperoned game of love, conducted to the music of khen pipes, and one French administrator in southern Laos chopped down all bridges into his domain once a year out of fear that the annual inspection might include an inventory of his concubines. According to British Author Norman Lewis, French officers after a tour of duty in Laos are marked forever after by "gentle, rapt expressions" and a "vaguely dissolute manner."
In this land of love and laughter, the French showed little interest in social reforms. In the first 50 years French schools in Laos turned out just 61 high school graduates. But playing an old colonial game, they skimmed off the sons of the monarchy and subsidiary princeling families, sent them off to Paris for a taste of progress and the good life.
Puritanical Heir. Savang Vatthana was plucked away from home at the age of ten. He attended a lycee in Montpellier, got a degree from Paris' Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, where French diplomats were trained. After a decade, Savang Vatthana returned home both flattered and baffled by the experience. He no longer could speak Lao, and had to be instructed by a palace functionary for years.
Savang Vatthana, a rather puritanical fellow, found himself at sharp odds with his father. King Sisavang Vong, who considered polygamy a foundation stone of the Laotian way of life. Once a year it was his father's royal pleasure to take a leisurely 40-day boat ride down the Mekong to Vientiane, picking and choosing from the new crop of maidens in the villages as he passed. The palace swarmed with royalty who were all half or full brothers and sisters of the future King.
(The old King's offspring today hold posts ranging from doormen at the palace to the governorship of Sayaboury province; the governor, a bit of an oddball, recently decreed that every elephant in Sayaboury had to wear a license plate.) In total rejection of his father's strenuous love life, the prince married one woman. Princess Khamphouy, a plump cousin, stayed faithful and sired five children. The old King proved totally uninterested in Prince Savang Vatthana's new ideas about agriculture, science and education. "My people only know how to sing and make love," he said.
And after a while, the prince himself became discouraged. "What is the point of sending children to school?" he asked. "We are backward, and whatever we do shall never rise to the level of other peoples. Anyway, an educated population is difficult to govern." He grew increasingly impervious to Western influence, despite his summer visits to the royal villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera. By the time he took the throne in 1959, after the old King died at 74, Savang Vatthana seemed to have sunk into a torpor that could not be shaken by the fast-paced world around him. One Western diplomat, after a session with the King, said it was "like listening to a long Oriental movie dubbed in French." He is a fan of Margot Fonteyn and Italian opera, and at one recent soiree, after a performance of native dances, he gathered his French and diplomat guests in stuffed armchairs in a corner and attempted to start the conversation with a topical question. "Tell me," he asked: "What does the youth of today think of Anatole France?" Two Brothers. At about the same time as the future King, two other princelings returned from France. Prince Souvanna Phouma, 59, and his half brother Prince Souphanouvong, 48, belonged to a remote branch of the royal family. Both studied civil engineering in Paris and won high marks. Prince Souvanna, upon his return, slipped easily into the crowd of sleek sybarites who for the past six years have flitted in and out of office.
But Prince Souphanouvong, dazzled by his exposure to French socialism, turned left. He moved to Hanoi, married a Vietnamese girl, began consorting with the Viet Minh revolutionists, who were plotting the overthrow of Indo-China's French masters. In 1949, he set off on a 40-day trek through the northern jungles to a rendezvous with the brilliant Viet Minh ex-schoolteacher and field commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Over a bottle of warm champagne, which Giap bragged had been "taken from the body of a dead Frenchman," Giap explained how guerrilla warfare worked.
"Use the peasants as your eyes and ears and your main source of supply," he urged Souphanouvong. "Before cooking each meal, peasant women must take a handful of rice and put it in a basket. Even in hard times, they won't miss it, and you'd be surprised how soon it mounts up." Even children could be trained to deliver messages or carry grenades. As for the mountain tribesmen, "Teach them to shoot, guide them in killing a French soldier and, by implicating them in a crime, you implicate them in the war." Above all, counseled Giap, keep away from towns. "People in towns have chairs, tables, shoes, beds--you can't eat those things. Country folk have rice, eggs, chickens, pigs. Remember, those who rule the countryside rule the country." Prince Souphanouvong, though fuzzy on his Marxism, took the guerrilla lessons to heart. Equipped with a pair of black boots, Viet Minh aides and money, he marched off into the northern Laotian provinces, and in the next three years formed the nucleus of the Pathet Lao.
By the time the French surrendered at Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference declared Laos a neutral state, the "Red Prince" had established Pathet Lao control firmly in the two mountainous provinces of Samneua and Phongsaly.
No Zeal. The history of Laos since then has revolved around the fact that the central Laotian government has never been able or energetic enough to defeat Souphanouvong in war. or to deal with him in peace. The princelings who took over in Vientiane, led most often by Prince Souvanna, were not dedicated nationalists or zealous patriots toughened in a struggle for freedom from their colonialist masters--France had simply handed Laos its independence with chaotic haste in the closing days of its Indo-China disaster. By Geneva's rosy terms, the Pathet Lao were supposed to be integrated into a Royal Laotian Army that was to be trained and equipped by the French. But France, defeated and demoralized, had no interest in doing the job. Leaving behind a few advisers and a republic-style constitution, France quit Laos in 1954 as abruptly as she had come 60 years before.
Build Fast. John Foster Dulles, who had little confidence in neutralism, took an agonized look around and decided that the U.S. had to fill the vacuum. He concluded that the only solution was to build a Laotian army and build it fast.
Though a firm of economic consultants, Washington's Howell & Co., studied the primitive economy and advised that it could absorb a maximum of $24 million a year, the U.S. poured in about twice that amount. As naive in business as in politics, the Laotians hardly knew how to handle their new wealth--until a few sharp Indian and Chinese traders rushed into Vientiane to show them. Favorite device: the import license. Laotians with political pull got import licenses for everything from feather dusters to nail polish to television sets--though there is no TV station in Laos. They could then buy foreign exchange at the official rate of 35 kip to the dollar, sell the dollars on the black market for 100 kip or more, and then rush back to buy more dollars. Corruption became appalling.
Some $1,600,000 and a year's work were spent on a road linking Luangprabang and Vientiane, which proved to be under water half the year. It got paved for only eight miles out of Vientiane--to the tennis court of a former Defense Minister. There was, said an investigator for the International Cooperation Administration, "an almost fairy-tale implausibility" about the transactions. Stately homes and Mercedes cars blossomed along the dusty streets of Vientiane.
Almost all of the aid went to the army (of. the $34.2 million spent by the U.S. in Laos last year, only $590,750 went to agriculture, in a country where 90% of the people are farmers). The soldiers got shiny U.S. equipment and instruction as to its use from a band of U.S. soldiers in mufti euphemistically called the Programs Evaluation Office (since technically only the French, under Geneva's terms, were supposed to train Laotian soldiers).
Trouble was that the 29,000-man army, which even the Pentagon thought too large by at least a third, had no interest in fighting, particularly against other Laotians. In fact, Laotians who joined the ranks did not consider it a fighting job but a pleasant civil-service type career whose $130-a-year pay was twice the average Laotian income.
Tolerant Man. For much of the time, the man who presided over the distribution of military aid was quiet, ambitious General Phoumi Nosavan, who may have had trouble making his soldiers fight, but bluntly labels the Pathet Lao "the agents of a foreign power." Prince Souvanna Phouma, as Premier, was earnestly dedicated to the notion that his brother would call off the Pathet Lao attacks if people were just nice to him. Soon, Red Prince Souphanouvong flew in to see Souvanna, and the two half brothers hugged and wept at the airport and went off to a picnic with 50 of their relatives. Under Souvanna's tolerant eye, the Pathet Lao temporarily suspended fighting, and Souphanouvong entered the government as Minister of Planning, thus becoming the first Communist agent ever to administer a U.S. aid program. Even more alarming, the Pathet Lao and their allies won 13 out of 21 seats in the 1958 country-wide by-electioa.
Short Resolution. Understandably annoyed, the U.S. suspended its aid, which in Laos was enough to bring down any government. A Committee for the Defense of the National Interest, backed by General Phoumi Nosavan, emerged. In a belated show of strength, the army en circled a Pathet Lao battalion on the Plaine des Jarres and jailed Prince Souphanouvong on a charge of treason. The committee's candidates won blatantly rigged elections in April 1960.
But in Laos, such resolution does not last. One dark night, the entire Pathet Lao battalion, along with its women, children and cows, walked through the army guard. Asked how this was possible, an army commander in the area answered: "That would be difficult to explain." Just as easily, Prince Souphanouvong slipped out of prison and into the hills last May, taking his jailers along as new recruits. Within weeks, the Pathet Lao rebels were back in business and renewing their guerrilla attacks in the countryside.
One-Man Mutiny. The Royal Army now faced the prospect of renewed fighting in a war that seemed endless. The whole thing was too much for an ebullient, 5-ft. 4-in. fighting man trained at a U.S. Ranger school in the Philippines. In a one-man mutiny, Captain Kong Le and his battalion of paratroopers seized control of Vientiane in a predawn coup last August. Young (26) Captain Kong Le seemed to be against everybody and everything, acting from no clear motives except fatigue and frustration.
"Where are the roads that were supposed to be built with American aid money?" Captain Kong Le demanded. "I am willing to die for Laos, but not for incompetence and corruption. I am tired of Lao killing Lao. I have fought and I have killed many men, and I have never seen a foreigner die." Kong Le obviously had no solution in mind. He raced about town in a Jeep flying a three-starred flag with the legend "Chef de Coup d'Etat." He warned that the two cold-war camps were "like two scorpions in a cup. You must not touch either of them, since both can bite." And he asked the politicians: "What do I do next?'' He began by installing Prince Souvanna as his Premier, and Brother Souphanouvong soon emerged from the hills to talk peace.
Our Boy. But General Phoumi Nosavan, 41, with the influential support of his first cousin. Strongman Sarit Thanarat of neighboring Thailand, defiantly declared himself in rebellion against the new state of affairs. Though the U.S. had recognized the Kong Le-Prince Souvanna government, it soon shifted the bulk of its aid to General Phoumi. The aim, explained the CIA, who called General Phoumi "our boy," was to "polarize" the Communist and anti-Communist factions in Laos. Advancing from his army base at Savannakhet, General Phoumi managed to recapture Vientiane, mostly by means of an artillery duel that killed three civilians for every soldier. Prince Souvanna flew off to exile in Cambodia, blaming his downfall on U.S. "betrayal."
Kong Le retreated north to the Plaine des Jarres. Whatever the fuzzy aims of his revolt, he has now fallen under the thumb of the Communists. His troops, merged with the Pathet Lao, are commanded by Pathet Lao's Colonel Sinkapo and shout Communist slogans. The Plaine is crawling with Russian experts and Viet Minh cadres down to the gun-crew level (but not, so far, any Communist Chinese).
Flip-Flop. At this point the U.S.'s get-tough policy stalled. General Phoumi proved embarrassingly unable to win any more battles. Last week government Harvard trainers strafed their own troops by mistake, and the Pathet Lao opened up with 85-mm. Russian cannon. The Royal Army fled, abandoning the key road junction at Phou Khoun. And as Premier, Prince Boun Oum, whose ancestors long ruled in Laos' southern kingdom, insisted on staffing his government almost exclusively with his own relatives from the south, including a Minister of Cults confusingly named Boun Om. The prince named his nephew to the lucrative post of Finance Minister and General Phoumi's brother to the equally desirable job of Director of Customs. The Eisenhower Administration, in an abrupt policy switch, started looking around for some new "political solution" in Laos.
The Kennedy Administration enthusiastically agreed. With U.S. backing, King Savang Vatthana bestirred himself to suggest that Cambodia, Burma and Malaya dispatch an inspection team to stop the fighting. Last week the plan began to get somewhere when General Phoumi flew off to Cambodia for a talk with Prince Souvanna. After a long talk, the two men endorsed the commission idea, called for meetings between the rival Laotian factions as well as an international conference to guarantee the neutrality of Laos and pave the way for general elections. Prince Souvanna promised to try to sell the idea to the Pathet Lao--as soon as he gets back from a trip around the world.
To please Souvanna, any new government will have to be broad-based, which in Laos means including as many important families as possible, as well as some Pathet Lao, at least in minor positions. To avoid argument over whether Souvanna or Boun Oum is the "legitimate" Premier, both sides would deal through King Savang Vatthana. Any solution is likely to be makeshift. Says one U.S. diplomat: "Laos is going to be a problem throughout our lifetime and longer." But for Laos to be declared neutral is not necessarily an inevitable step toward a Communist takeover. The Pathet Lao, still a tiny minority, are generally disliked in the areas they control. Within the past year, the U.S. has begun the kind of aid program that could in time have some grass-roots effect: an $8,600,000 all-weather road between Thakhet and Nam Ca Dinh. Fortnight ago, the U.S. granted $1,000,000 toward a rural development program of small dams, wells, schools.
And pro-Western King Savang Vatthana is still widely loved by his countrymen for the same phlegmatic qualities that make him the despair of foreign diplomats. Last week, on the inscrutable advice of his bonzes, the saffron-clad Buddhist priests who abound in Luangprabang, Savang Vatthana decided that, whatever Westerners may think, the signs were propitious for Laos. He announced that at long last he would cremate his father.
He ordered workmen to build temporary housing to accommodate the 6,000 dignitaries he expects from all over the world. Six weeks hence, when the guests gather in a field outside the town, the torch will be touched, and the old King, in his gilded coffin carved from a sandalwood trunk chosen by the bonzes as predestined to receive the royal body, will go up in scented smoke.
That will climax seven days of feasting, since in Laos, death is thought to be a release, and a portent of happier times.
* Rhymes roughly with "cows," though President Kennedy prefers a secondary pronunciation that rhymes, appropriately, with "chaos."
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.