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I.
OPINION
II. EDUCATION
by Douangdeuane Douangdara by Douangdeuane Douangdara by Douangdeuane Douangdara
by Montha Phavongxay by Check Kirivong by Douangchit Mounghane
by Anonymous by Von PhrakonKham by Check Kirivong by Douangdeuane Douangdara by Von PhrakonKham
by Douangdeuane Douangdara by Von PhrakonKham by Von PhrakonKham by Douangdeuane Douangdara by Sounantha Phoumarath
by Von PhrakonKham
by Douangchit Mounghane
by Montha Phavongxay by Douangchit Mounghane |
By Douangdeuane Douangdara
Captions from "Conflict in Laos: the Politics of Neutralization"
By Arthur J. Dommen
Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. Publishers. September 1964.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-21661
Part 1: The Kingdom of the Million Elephants
When the sun set on France's Indochina Empire in 1954, the largest entity left by the cease-fire agreement, with an area of approximately 91,000 square miles, was the Kingdom of Laos. Of no
recognizable
shape, the Kingdom is a sparsely inhabited, landlocked territory lying in
the heart of Southeast Asia. Each of its sixteen provinces borders a more
populous foreign country, as if to affirm the paramount fact that throughout
its history Laos has suffered the consequences of an intimate and at times
destructive involvement with powerful neighbors. In understanding the reasons for this unhappy circumstance, however, a geophysical map will be of more use than a political one. Aside from the valley of the Mekong and its left-bank tributaries, the country's relief is one of complex mountain and plateau forms. The mountain slopes are covered by dense vegetation and are so steep, and the valley bottoms so confined, that little space remains for cultivation. Only here and there, in tiny upland clearings, men have managed to burn away the forest and establish their thatched-roof villages in a wild domain of torrents, precipices, and mist-shrouded peaks.
The Annamite Mountains stretch from southern China down to the Gulf of Siam, where they fade into vestigial hillocks in the alluvial plain of Mekong in southernmost Vietnam. The crest of these mountains forms the eastern border of present-day Laos. From the east, the general slope of the mountains is downward to the valley of the Mekong. This crest of the Annamite Chain also marks the dividing line between the two great cultures of Asia-the Indian and the Chinese. The Lao are a Hinduized people; the Vietnamese, a Sinicized people.
Except for small areas of Sam Neua Province and the extreme eastern end of Xieng Khouang Province, the entire area of Laos is drained by rivers flowing westward and southward from these mountains. Outside of these two areas and the valley in which Dien Bien Phu [mountain] is located, not a single river of any size crosses the border between Laos and Vietnam in its 800 miles of twisting through this rugged landscape.
Four natural passes cut through the Annamite chain. These are, from north to south: the valley of the Mo River, in eastern Xieng Khouang Province; the pass at Nape and the Mu Gia pass, both in Khammouane province; and the saddle in Savannakhet province at Lao Bao. Under the French protectorate, dirt roads were constructed through the passes in Xieng Khouang and Savannakhet, opening them to vehicular traffic. These roads, called routes colonials 7 and 9, were the most direct means of access to the sea from northern and southern Laos, respectively.
Except for these passes, footpaths until recently afforded the only passage across the Annamite Mountains. There is now a road from Sam Neua to North Vietnam, but only a rough pony trail connects Sam Neua with the main body of Laos.
Laos lies in the path of the southwesterly monsoon. For six months of the year, mist and cloud hang low over these mountains, and drenching rains turn footpaths into soggy, muddy rivulets.
At the center of northern Laos lies the Plain of Jars, a high, rolling plain of bright-green grasslands interspersed with clumps of trees on the hilltops. This plain, resembling the dairy land of southern Wisconsin, has an average elevation of 3,600 feet above sea level. It is ringed with mountains; one of these, to the immediate south, has a 9,240- foot summit, the highest in Indochina south of Hanoi. The plain takes its name from
the more than 100 ancient stone jars found strewn through the meadows near
its center. The jars, large enough to hold a small man in squatting position,
are thought by some scholars to be funeral urns. Tests have placed their
age at about 2,000 years, indicating that they were fashioned long before
the Lao people entered the area. Because marks on the inside of the urns
appear to have been made by iron chisels and because the only know iron-workers
in this part of the world 2,000 years ago were the Chinese, some scholars
believe that the jars are Chinese relics. In southern Laos is another lofty
plateau, the Bolovens, said by agronomists to contain the country's richest
agricultural potential. The great Mekong, which rises in Tibet and courses south through the gorges of China's Yünnan Province, enters Laos a few miles north of Muong Sing village, and then forms Laos' western border, first with Burma, then with Thailand. In April, just before the first monsoon storms, the Mekong is a narrow stream hiding among outcroppings of gray and black rock, its exposed bed presenting no barrier to the foot traveler. In September, the river is at its rain-swollen maximum; in the south it is a mile-wide, thirty-foot-deep, chocolate-colored stream carrying a heavy load of mud, tree trunks, and lesser debris on a long voyage to the sea.
Most of Laos is covered by a tropical rain forest. Dark green the year round, it forms a canopy of lofty treetops. Branchless tree trunks rise straight up from the sunless forest floor, their tops festooned by giant lianas, often a foot in diameter. Scattered in the crowns are orchids, fern, and wild figs.
Occasionally the rain forest gives way abruptly to less dense groves softwoods, their foliage not profuse, which are mixed with a heavy undergrowth of ferns, grass, wild ginger, tropical rhododendron, and bamboo thickets. Often there is a secondary cover of wild bananas and coconut and area palms. These are overgrow clearings, where the virgin forest was burned off long ago, either by natural fire or by a wandering tribal family needing enough bare ground to plant a year's crop of maize or hill rice before moving on to the next valley.
These vast forests are the home of tiger, panther, and herds of wild elephant and deer. When these forests provide the hideouts of armed guerrilla bands, new dispatches most often refer to them as jungles.
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