VIENTIANE PROVINCE, LAOS – We set out at nightfall. Four thin Hmong men dressed in faded khaki uniforms and clutching AK-47’s, those ubiquitous hallmarks of the world’s most troubled regions.
There was no moon when we crawled out of our hiding spot between thickets of bamboo and onto the lightly graveled road through the jungle. After sizing us up, the Hmong whispered to us that our trek to their hidden camp could take up to 24 hours. Wearing flip-flop sandals and carrying only their rifles and small bags of rice, they claimed they could make the journey alone in only 12 hours.
We moved along the road without any lights. Two of the Hmong advanced far ahead, and their silhouettes merged into the inky darkness. One man fell into position behind us, and the fourth one walked close to myself and my colleague, Bangkok based journalist Thomas Fuller. I reached into my pocket to take a GPS reading and mark the start of our journey.
As the night advanced, my mind drifted widely between states of heightened alertness and a drowsy acceptance of our interminable footfalls. Moments of anxious uncertainty roused me: the appearance of a mysterious torch flickering across the patty fields, the sudden sound of an approaching vehicle. Midway through the night, the moon rose and revealed we were walking through a section of forest stripped by recent logging activity. A massive and oddly shaped tree, denuded of leaves, was all that remained of the jungle near the trail. Three times during the night, we removed our shoes and waded across rivers. The cool water and textured rocks underfoot helped shake off the accumulation of fatigue.
Toward the early hours of the morning, one of our guides, Fathi Ja, began to fall further and further behind. He pointed to his thighs and indicated that they were in tremendous pain. Since we had first encountered them, Fathi seemed the most sullen and fragile of the group. Eventually one of the other Hmong men explained that Fathi’s wife and child had been shot dead by Laotian army soldiers two months earlier. The decision was made that we would find a place to sleep for a few hours. We trekked far deeper into the jungle and then cut off the trail into a dense deadfall of bamboo. We strung up hammocks and dozed until daybreak.
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My mind retraced the steps that had brought me here. I first read about the plight of the Hmongs in a French magazine in 2003. Renowned for their guerrilla warfare skills, the Hmong were hired first by the French colonials in Indochina, and later by the US government to battle communists on the margins of the Vietnam War. During the 1960’s and 70’s the CIA ran a massive covert operation in Laos, known as the Secret War. Over 18,000 Hmong men were trained as Special Guerrilla Units and charged with rescuing shot-down American pilots. Later they were commanded to attack the North Vietnamese along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The main component of the war in Laos was arial bombardment, and the US spared no expense. By the time the US military was defeated in 1975, they had flown an estimated 600,000 sorties, and the tonnage of bombs dropped on Laos exceeded the entire quantity of bombs dropped over Europe by all sides during the Second World War.
When the time came to evacuate the Hmong after the communist takeover however, the CIA would only offer a single C-130 airplane to pick up the stranded American allies. A few of the highest ranking Hmong and their families made it out in the airlift. Some 300,000 Hmong eventually fled overland to Thailand. Thousands of Hmong were eventually resettled as refugees in the United States. Among those left behind in Laos or repatriated by Thailand, the Lao People’s Army began hunting and killing any that had collaborated with the CIA. The practice continues to this day.
Among most Americans, there seems little awareness that thousands of Hmong remain on the run in the jungles of Laos.
For various reasons, the American media often chooses not to run foreign news stories, even when they make headlines in other major publications around the world. On many occasions, I have noticed Newsweek and TIME cut stories from their domestic editions that are given top billing in their international editions. Such was the case with the story of the Hmong, which ran prominently in TIME’s Asia edition in 2003, followed by multiple appearances in French and British weeklies, yet barely reached the US readership.
On June 4th, 2007, Vang Pao, the commanding general hired by the CIA to oversee the Hmong secret army during the 1960’s and 70’s, was arrested in California. The sting operation involved a federal agent posing as an arms dealer and offering to sell weapons to Vang Pao.
The bizarre story of Vang Pao’s indictment made local headlines in California and then across the US, raising the possibility that their was finally enough interest within the American media to investigate the background story in the jungles of Laos. Two weeks later, I flew to New York City and tracked down Hmong activists who could help me get into the jungle.
What followed were months of waiting, and then a series of secret late night meetings with other Hmong contacts in Thailand. I also reached out to the large community of Bangkok based journalists, hoping to find a writer willing to accompany me into Laos, and to ask advice of those who had already been there. On my first night in town, photographer Roger Arnold invited me to Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondents Club. The FCC is perhaps the cleanest bar that I’ve ever seen journalists visit with regularity. The patrons are an unsettling mixture of serious working journalists, and retired Vietnam War era reporters that gesture wildly, stare with haunting eyes, and frequently launch into tirades of nonsense and profanities.
Roger recounted his harrowing trek to the Hmongs with vivid descriptions of wandering lost in the jungle for hours, suffering from foot rot and being served monkey stew. He has also done a commendable job following up on the people he photographed, months later when they appeared in Thai refugee camps.
Over bottles of Beer Lao, Canadian journalist Nelson Rand told me that once he had reached the Hmong in the jungle, they refused to guide him out. They unsuccessfully tried to use his presence as a bargaining chip, hoping in vain that the US or the UN would send an aircraft to rescue everyone. After three weeks, they lost hope and he left.
Belgian photographer Thierry Falise explained how he had been captured by the Lao People’s Army on his way out of the jungle and sentenced to 15 years in prison. During the two hour long Stalinist-style trial, the prosecutor claimed the cables from his video camera were meant to trigger explosives. He and his colleague were eventually released after massive international pressure was placed on the Lao government.
Most of the writers that I queried about joining me on the trek were either too busy with other projects or discouraged by the above mentioned tales. As the date of my planned departure neared, I grew concerned that I would have to do the trip alone, increasing the risks and decreasing the chance that the story would get published in the United States. Finally I had a breakthrough. I contacted Thomas Fuller, the International Herald Tribune and New York Times correspondent, and after a few phone calls, he agreed to do the story without even meeting me in person. It sounded too good to be true, but I went ahead and bought my plane tickets and assembled the necessary supplies including a satellite phone, hammocks, dry food, detailed topographical maps and the GPS.
I arrived in Vientiane ahead of Thomas to make the final arrangements, and then I had a few days to kill in the capital. A friend of mine had told me that Laos was so laid back, that the people even “take a nap after breakfast.” It didn’t seem far from the truth. Stretched along the shore of the Mekong river were simple wooden platforms dotted with cushions and parasols. Laotians and tourists languidly sipped beer and fruit juice as the sun slowly set toward the Thai border.
Most of the signs on official buildings were in French. Other traces of the colonial period remained: fresh baguettes all around, a few Citroën 2CV’s and the possibility of choosing between the multiple French restaurants by their provincial and regional specialties. When Paul Theroux passed through Vientiane in 1975, he described it as a country with “baffling pretensions to Frenchness.”
The river front area was swarming with tourists, though mostly not French. As I stopped to photograph the communist flag draped over the front of the Banque pour le Commerce Extérieur, I was approached by a German tourist. Over dinner she explained to me that “tubing” down the Nam Song river was Laos’s greatest attraction. According to the Lonely Planet Guide, floating downstream in an inflated tractor inter tube “has become such a popular rite of passage on the Southeast Asia backpacker circuit that several ‘bars’ have been set up on islands and beaches along the route.” I didn’t dare explain to her the true purpose of my visit to Laos.
I spent the next day visiting the Lao National Museum. Inside is a collection of rusting weapons and tatty black and white photos from the revolution. Among them are a few photos of Vang Pao, labeled as the “key henchman of the US imperialists.” On the other side of town, I later visited the Kaysone Memorial and Museum. Behind a thirty foot tall metal statue (standing with one arm extended in the classical dictator pose) of Kaysone Phomvihane, is an eight million dollar, gold plated structure, built to honor the late leader. Displayed inside are a number of Soviet metals and a bronze bust of Kaysone made by a North Korean sculptor.
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At dawn, we packed up our hammocks and continued our journey. Later in the morning, we left the trail for good and started picking our way down a steep ravine. Eventually we were pulling ourselves along with vines and crawling on all fours as often as walking. Before noon we stopped and the Hmongs began to prepare a meal. They chopped down two massive bamboo stalks, cut slits into the sides, filled each with rice and water, resealed the stalks and then set them over a fire to cook.
Though rice is considered the staple throughout Asia, it is a rare luxury to these jungle dwelling Hmongs, who have to move their camp so often to avoid army patrols that they can not grow any crops. This rice was bought secretly on the edge of the jungle from a local villager. “She overcharged me because she knew I live in hiding,” commented Xang Yang.
By mid afternoon, we arrived at the temporary Hmong camp. Upon seeing us, some of the adults broke down in tears. Many claimed not have seen a white person since the CIA pulled out of Laos more than three decades earlier. Soon, many of the children also began to cry, possibly overwhelmed at the sight of their parents in such an emotional state.
Having travelled to several war zones and natural disasters, I could not remember ever seeing such a ragged and desperate group of people. It took a while before people were calm enough to explain their situation to us and submit to Thomas Fuller’s interviews. Five men came forward saying that they were CIA trained veterans of the Secret War. They pulled forward family members to show their bullet and shrapnel scars from Laotian army attacks. As Thomas wrote down their stories, I wandered among the ramshackle bamboo huts of the makeshift village, trying to capture bits of their daily existence. The main food that the Hmongs were surviving off were roots unearthed in the forest. They looked like armored yams, and required more than 12 hours of soaking, grating and boiling before they are edible. Even then, the taste is terrible.
After many hours of photography, video recording and interviews it became clear that Thomas and I would have to take a break to eat. Skipping meals after an all night trudge through the jungle would diminish our strength and our capacity to keep focused on the reporting. Yet here we were, surrounded by 80 odd desperate people living on the margins of starvation. We had not brought nearly enough in our packs to share with such a large group. Eating in front of others without sharing is already considered extremely rude in Southeast Asia, and here the contrast between those with full bellies and those with the gnawing pain of hunger was thrown into sharp relief. We decided that we would leave behind all our extra food when we were ready to leave the camp, but until then, it seemed unwise to dole out piecemeal treats and risk a food riot. So under the terrible gaze of hungry children, we ate our dinner. I will not soon forget their aching stares.
When we took leave of the camp the next afternoon, in addition to the food, we left behind our extra clothing. It wasn’t much, just a gesture. I couldn’t help but think of the extreme difference in lifestyle between the Hmong that had been lucky enough to make it to America and those left isolated in the jungle. It was only a few days after Thanksgiving. Nightly news programs across America were surely talking about the yearly Christmas shopping frenzy. Many people in the US would undoubtedly be preoccupied with how to avoid gaining weight during the holidays. Here is Laos, such concerns seemed almost otherworldly.
Meanwhile at the CIA, their latest scandal was about to boil over. This time it was about destroying interrogation tapes. Among the unlikely characters that I crossed during my travels this year was Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, Britain’s intelligence and security service. Over mojitos on the veranda of Cuba’s Hotel Nacional, I prodded her for an opinion of the CIA after years of working in the intelligence trade. She responded dryly, “They haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory.”
Indeed, a careful student of history would be hard pressed to evaluate whether the American spy agency had actually caused more dishonor and instability to the nation than safety and security. From the Bay of Pigs, to the Shah of Iran, to the assassination of Patrick Lumuba, to the Iran Contra scandal, to the funding of the Afghan Mujahideen, and to the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction assessments, the CIA appears to be remarkably unlucky at placing its bets and consistently stingy at paying the ensuing debts.
Luckily, the the multi-branch system of government in the US offers more options for redress than are available in a totalitarian one-party state like Laos. Americans that are concerned about the abandonment of the Hmong in the jungles of Laos can contact their congressional representatives. Senators Brownback, Leahy, Coleman, Feingold, and Kohl have already expressed interest in this issue.
Non-Americans wishing to keep up pressure on this issue can contact the Carter Center and the International Crisis Group.
One thought for the future:
A pullout from Iraq looms closer on the horizon. What can be done to ensure it is not executed with same callousness and indignity that marked the CIA’s exit from Laos?
[photo reportage of the Hmong Secret War Veterans]
[Copyright Tomas van Houtryve. Do not copy, archive or re-post without written permission. All rights reserved.]
*UPDATE, May 2008: The New York Times Magazine has published an extensive article about Hmong leader General Vang Pao. One of my photos from the trek into the jungles of Laos is included in the spread.
