The rationales for the first joint accounting efforts for US prisoners of war/missing in action in Laos: a Lao perspective.

• Author: Sayalath, Soulatha

This article outlines the reasons behind the Lao People's Democratic Republic's (LPDR) decision to reach agreement with the United States in 1985 for the purposes of initiating joint efforts to account for US Prisoners of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) lost in Laos during the Vietnam War. The article attempts to explain why LPDR's domestic security concerns, as well as the government's desire to demonstrate autonomous decision-making in the conduct of the country's foreign policy, were the two main drivers of the 1985 agreement. Domestic concerns arose from the perceived threat of violence from American-supported Thai-based anti-LPDR resistance groups and private groups entering Laos illegally in search of alleged live POWs. (1) Moreover, the LPDR required from the United States mutual respect for its independent foreign policy-making: in other words, the LPDR wanted to be seen as acting as an independent sovereign entity in handling the POW/MIA issue. For the purposes of this article, sovereignty is broadly defined as "a state's ability to control actors and activities within and across its border" (2) and to project "authoritative decision-making". (3) As regards the LPDR's sovereignty concerns, the operationalization of this concept is relatively unexplored in studies pertaining to the POW/MIA issue. Examining the LPDR's sovereignty concerns enables one to better understand Lao's role in POW/MIA negotiations; a role that is clearly marginalized, given that it is the concerns and viewpoints of American scholars and policymakers that dominate the discourse.

The Secret War in Laos and the POW/MIA Issue

Before examining the 1985 US-LPDR agreement, it is useful to briefly recount the activities of the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) in Laos during the Vietnam War. (4) Although prohibited by the 1962 Geneva Accords --which supposedly legalized the neutrality and independence of the Kingdom of Laos--both the United States and North Vietnam secretly conducted military activities against each other inside Laotian territory. On one side, the United States conducted covert military operations, including an extensive air campaign, to disrupt and destroy North Vietnam's logistical supply lines--known colloquially as the "Ho Chi Minh Trail"--which ran through parts of Laos. On the other side, North Vietnam supported the communist Pathet Lao forces which aimed to overthrow the US-supported Royal Lao Government (RLG). (5) This "secret war" in Laos ended in December 1975 when the Pathet Lao took control of the country and renamed it the LPDR. Although no US military personnel were supposed to have been active in Laos during the Vietnam War, the US Department of Defense (DoD) recorded 575 men as Missing in Action (MIA) in Laos as revealed in Table 1 below.

Table 1 shows the number of American MIAs from the Vietnam War in four countries--Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China--and the record of repatriation and identification which is conducted by DoD's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) based at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. Data for those lost in Laos is recorded under "Americans Lost in the Vietnam War" rather than the "secret war" in Laos. Since the 1985 agreement, the US government has tried to resolve the 575 MIA cases in the LPDR. Between 1985 and 2015, 135 joint field activities were conducted in Laos. According to the DPAA, only 270 cases, or less than half, including 23 "no further pursuit" category, (6) have been repatriated and identified. Presently, approximately 50 US personnel, together with their Lao counterparts, conduct four joint field activities each year in the LPDR.

The origins of the joint US-LPDR accounting efforts are still little understood. This is surprising given the continued importance to Washington of the on-going field excavations, and counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism cooperation between the United States and LPDR, (7) as well as the need to better understand the background of the current bilateral relationship. The administration of President Ronald Reagan, which successfully initiated POW/MIA cooperation with the LPDR, laid out a condition to improve ties between the two countries that rested on "Lao sincerity" measured by the "progress on the POW/MIA issue" taken by the Laotian side. (8) The US commitment to pursue the fullest possible accounting of missing personnel has been repeatedly cited--for example, by David Lambertson, who, as the US State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is in charge of monitoring ties between the two states--as a "principle standard of measurement", (9) and by Carlyle Thayer as the "principal yardstick" used by the United States for gauging "progress or setbacks" in all aspects of US-LPDR relations. (10)

Diplomatic and Security Concerns

This section highlights two concerns of the LPDR regarding its need for independent foreign policymaking. The POW/MIA issue has a complex legal background. In 1973, the United States and North Vietnam reached a settlement to end the Vietnam War through the Paris Peace Accords. This gave rise to a question as to the extent of the LPDR's independent foreign policy-making authority regarding the resolution of the POW/MIA issue, even before the country was established in 1975. Put differently, the LPDR's ownership of the diplomatic process was technically absent due to the accords "applying only to the DRV". (11) In addition, the United States believed that the socialist revolution of the LPDR in 1975 had occurred under the direction of North Vietnam. Henry Kissinger, the former US National Security Advisor and chief US negotiator for the Paris Peace Accords, described the Laotian side as "stooges of Hanoi". (12) The LPDR was concerned about US perceptions that the country's foreign policymaking was not autonomous and instead was directed by Hanoi. Consequently, the LPDR's demand for recognition and respect from the United States could only be met through bilateral cooperation.

Equally important was the LPDR leadership's fear of subversive activities conducted by US-supported anti-LPDR groups based in Thailand. The anti-LPDR resistance consisted of groups associated with the RLG, which was overthrown by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) in 1975. The resistance movement mainly took refuge in Thailand, where different groups consolidated in refugee camps along the Lao-Thai border. In 1981, US DoD estimated their total strength to be between 6,000 and 8,000 people. (13) Soon after the establishment of the LPDR, the Lao leadership felt threatened by the activities of these groups, which included cross-border raids against Lao security personnel conducted from sanctuaries across the Mekong River in Thailand. Included in the anti-LPDR groups inside the country were remnants of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-trained Hmong resistance, which also posed a security threat to the newly-established regime. (14) Lao Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane, who served from 1975 to 1991, accused the United States of supporting anti-LPDR groups both inside and outside the country, and further claimed that they represented "the gravest threat to national independence, peace and stability". (15) LPDR leaders were also extremely suspicious of groups of US veterans of the Vietnam War who collaborated with the resistance to search for alleged live POWs in Lao territory. (16) In a speech delivered in 1986, Kaysone denounced the United States for engaging in behind-the-scenes subversive activities aimed at weakening and destroying the LPDR. (17)

Distorted Views

This section examines two misconceptions regarding the LPDR's policy towards the POW/MIA issue. The first concerns the view that the LPDR was incapable of independent decision-making because of its alliance with Vietnam. (18) The second is the view that the LPDR only cooperated with the United States in order to gain monetary rewards in the form of aid.

The view that the LPDR was an appendage of Vietnam was deeply rooted in the psyche of US officials involved in the POW/MIA issue. (19) For instance, in a report published in 1993 by the US Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Godley McMurtrie, the US ambassador to the former Kingdom of Laos from 1969 to 1973, averred that the leadership of the Pathet Lao was controlled by Hanoi. In his words, "anything that Le Due Tho [one of the DRV's chief negotiators at the Paris Peace Accords] said about Laos would be law in the Pathet Lao areas". (20) Similarly, Kissinger told the Select Committee that the American "perception of the Pathet Lao was that they were stooges of Hanoi, that they had no independence whatsoever, that they were totally controlled by the communists in Hanoi ... we had every confidence that Hanoi could make the Pathet Lao do what they wanted." (21) In reality, however, while the two countries consulted one another, the LPDR did not act at the behest of Vietnam. (22) In fact, Article 5 of the 1977 LPDR-Vietnam Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation required "each side to respect the foreign policy of the other", (23) and there were no Vietnamese civilian advisers in the LPDR's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (24) When the LPDR moved to improve relations with the United States over the POW/MIA issue in 1982, Hanoi opposed the move, thus proving that Vientiane was acting on its own initiative. (25)

The second view, that the LPDR used the POW/MIA issue to elicit US financial aid, has also been exaggerated. (26) Although the 1973 Paris Peace Accords stipulated that the United States should provide post-war reconstruction aid--aid that the US Congress was unwilling to appropriate--the LPDR was not a party to the Accords. (27) In any case, US financial aid during the Reagan era was mainly used to prevent developing countries from turning towards communism. (28) As a socialist state, the LPDR was not qualified...