Chapter 10 - War (Cont.)

The Hmong had their own reasons for defending the Royal Lao government, and thus, collaborating with the United States. They feared that the communists were more apt to threaten their autonomy. They knew the y wouldn’t approve of swidden agriculture and because the Hmong had sided with the French, they fear reprisals. Furthermore, the Hmong knew the region like the backs of their hand and were indispensable as a result. The greatest aspect of the Hmong involvement for the US was that it was cost-effective both in the amounts of supplies they had to produce, but also in American lives. Hmong lives came cheap. They were trained as pilots as well. For them, unlike the American pilots, there was no end to the war, no R and R, just “fly until you die.” So the mortality rate for Hmong pilots was ten times as high as American soldiers in Viet Nam.

Not all the Hmong became soldiers of their own accord. Some were forced to abandon their field by battles and other warfare, and some were coerced. General Vang Pao, the CIA-supported Hmong leader, often punished those who wouldn’t join his troops by cutting their food supplies and even sending his troops to attack villages that refuse to send their men into war. He was both the cornerstone of the war and its most cryptic figure. He was the sort of man who would never be held back by such petty impediments as rules. The CIA considered him as a charismatic, passionate, and committed man, and a patriot without a country. He was the one who realized the best way to guarantee Hmong collaboration was to support their opium trade, so CIA planes picked up blocks of opium for distribution, and they gave Vang Pao his own airline which flew opium from the Hmong military base to South Vietnam where it helped addict an estimated 30,000 American soldiers to heroin.

The CIA marveled at how quickly the Hmong, accustomed to crossbows and flintlocks, mastered the technology of modern warfare. They learned to use M-1 rifles in a day and were adaptable to any environment where they were asked to live. In the United States, the conflict in Laos was called the “Quiet War” – as opposed to the noisy one in Vietnam which had turned the Laotian civil war into a free-for-all. Younger and younger soldiers had to be recruited as the casualties mounted. In 1960, between 300,000 and 400,000 Hmong lived in Laos and it is believed as many as half of them died in the war. Ninety percent of the villages were affected – i.e. the inhabitants suffered casualties or were displaced, or both. By 1970, forced to adapt their migratory habits to wartime, more than a third of the Hmong in Laos had become refugees within their own country. In the provinces of Hous Phanh and Xieng Khouang, the war has reached into every home and forced every individual to make the agonizing choice of flight or death. Today, more than 200,000 people live in settlements and military bases, confined to a mountainous strip of only 50 to 90 kilometers. The rest of the provinces are in total desolation.

For the most part, the experience of “internal refugees” was a chaotic and involuntary crash landing into the 20th century for the Hmong. One reporter described the situation for the Hmong when they came to the United States as “people being transplanted from the Stone Age to the Space Age.” However, that is a gross underestimation of the complexity of traditional Hmong culture as well as ignorance of the immense social, cultural, and economic changes that many Hmong had already gone through during the course of the war itself. Their way of life had been irreversibly altered. One Hmong described it as “everything going upside down . . . with everyone moving round and round and round . . . there were no longer any forests.” The Hmong had seen during this war for the first time cars . . . flashlights . . . canned food . . . and cigarettes. They were forced to leave their villages to live in temporary relocation sites. Swidden farming was moribund and a market economy began to rise and they were quite unfamiliar with not being self-sufficient. Even their language was forced to adapt when many of their traditional onomatopoeic expressions expanded to make room for new associations. For example, plij ploj, the sound of bamboo breaking, gained the additional meaning of “bullet impact.”

For the most part, the experience of “internal refugees” was a chaotic and involuntary crash landing into the 20th century for the Hmong. One reporter described the situation for the Hmong when they came to the United States as “people being transplanted from the Stone Age to the Space Age.” However, that is a gross underestimation of the complexity of traditional Hmong culture as well as ignorance of the immense social, cultural, and economic changes that many Hmong had already gone through during the course of the war itself. Their way of life had been irreversibly altered. One Hmong described it as “everything going upside down . . . with everyone moving round and round and round . . . there were no longer any forests.” The Hmong had seen during this war for the first time cars . . . flashlights . . . canned food . . . and cigarettes. They were forced to leave their villages to live in temporary relocation sites. Swidden farming was moribund and a market economy began to rise and they were quite unfamiliar with not being self-sufficient. Even their language was forced to adapt when many of their traditional onomatopoeic expressions expanded to make room for new associations. For example, plij ploj, the sound of bamboo breaking, gained the additional meaning of “bullet impact.”

In January of 1973, the US signed the Paris Agreement pledging to withdraw all its forces from Vietnam. They withdrew support of Laos as well. The Pathet Lao crossed the cease-fire line and announced that the Meo (Hmong) must be exterminated down to the root. As a result, between 1,000 and 3,000 Hmong – mostly high ranking army officers and their families were airlifted by American planes to Thailand. They fought to board the aircraft to the point that some planes became overloaded and they had to physically throw some of the passengers off the planes. More than 10,000 Hmong were left on the airfield, fully expecting planes to return for them. Of course, they never did, and a collective wail rose from the crowd and echoed against the mountains. A long line of the Hmong the formed and, carrying their children and old people, they began to move across the plateau, heading toward Thailand.

Notes

This chapter at first seems absolutely unnecessary to understanding Lia’s condition and how it was treated by American doctors. However, once the reader understands how the entire Hmong culture in Laos was decimated, he can begin to see how it would affect the attitudes and resentment of the Lees. Americans had been partially responsible for the loss of their culture and once they were in the US, the Hmong faced further problems of understanding from American doctors. Is it no wonder that they feared and resented everyone who tried to help Lia?