Another Laos POD- Hmong not forgotten

During the VW the indigenous Hmong and other hill tribes of Laos fought loyally and vociferously as anti-Communist auxiliaries with CIA and Green Beret assistance, including 'Air America' secret weapons flights. Vang Pao's FULRO Hmong army was the most prominent anti-Pathet Lao resistance movement. After the US withdrawal, these brave warrior tribes were left to fend for themselves as the Americans pulled out of Indochina, and were subjected to intense repression by the Pathet Lao forces conducting search-and-destroy missions (including allegations of chemical warfare in the early 80s) which killed or uprooted the majority of the Hmong population- some 10,000 men, women and children were killed and another 100,000 displaced into refugee camps in Thailand, while thousands more were able to find refuge in the US, esp California, Minnesota and Wisconsin (http://www.jefflindsay.com/Hmong_tragedy.html). This continuing small-scale insurgency, with the ragged, ill-equipped Hmong survivors continuing to hold out in the remote mountains of Laos, continued unnoticed until last yr, when 2 Belgian journalists and a Hmong-American guide from Minnesota were able to get into Laos and join some Homng resistance fighters, before they were caught in the middle of a firefight with Lao govt troops and captured.

Could the US have somehow continued to support the Hmong after the withdrawal of American forces in 1973-74- instead of just cravenly leaving their staunchly loyal allies in the lurch, or was such continued support politically untenable given the admin's desire to get out of Indochina ASAP ? What PODs could be needed in order for the persecution and genocide against the Hmong to have been better known in the outside world ?

Melvin Loh said:

Could the US have somehow continued to support the Hmong after the withdrawal of American forces in 1973-74- instead of just cravenly leaving their staunchly loyal allies in the lurch, or was such continued support politically untenable given the admin's desire to get out of Indochina ASAP ? What PODs could be needed in order for the persecution and genocide against the Hmong to have been better known in the outside world ?

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Congress in the early 70s was dominated by evil, pro-Communist, collaborationist Democrats. They created a law prohibiting US military activity in Southeast Asia in 1974. Any continued support would have to be structured like the Contra aid system of the 80s. I dont think this was likely either given the Ford administration was pretty cowed after Watergate. The two likely POD I can think of is one where Nixon leaves office but not in utter and abject disgrace as he did OTL or Nixon Weathers the storm and ends his term. Of course with Nixon in the Whitehouse, I dont think a Communist victory in IndoChina is possible at all..............

" or was such continued support politically untenable given the admin's desire to get out of Indochina ASAP"

Probably. I think that once the US leaves SE Asia, it'd be difficult verging on impossible to keep the Hmong, Montagnard, etc. forces supplied. A Contra-style program through Thailand might work, though the Dems would probably try to short-circuit that one just as they did the actual Nicaraguan Contras (thus leading to all the international shenanigans of Oliver North).

Stay-behind Green Berets ?

Thanks for your contributions, guys. Just had a bit of an idea based on a novel I came across last yr, called RT NORTH DAKOTA (can't recall the author's name), which is all about 1 young guy who serves as a LRRP involved in clandestine SOG missions into Laos and Cambodia, including working alongside the indigenous MIKE FORCE Montagnards. There was 1 character in the book, a black Green Beret capt from Detroit called Carl Joyner, who, after word is received of Washington's intention to withdraw from Vietnam, starts ranting and raving about how the admin's violating his civil rights by not letting him stay and fight to the end. WI in Laos there'd actually been some Green Berets and CIA operatives who felt similarly, and decided to stay behind to, instead of leaving, help out their hilltribe allies against the Commies regardless of the odds ? I also recall reading a brief account in 1 VW book I read that, after France withdrew from Indochina in 1954, there were a few hundred Frenchmen who served with the Tai IIRC and other hill tribesmen against the Viet Minh, who decided to stay behind and continue helping their indigenous allies, and who intermarried into the local population, too. How much of a difference would such a leftover SF/CIA outfit have made to the Hmong's fight for survival, and could Washington have somehow been compelled to funnel covert assistance to their cause ?