Review

General Books

Twenty years after the conclusion of the United States' involvement in Viet Nam the agonies of the war continue. Nowhere is this more true than in the lives of the Hmong, a Laotian minority hill people. Jane Hamilton-Merritt's brilliant 1993 book, reissued in 1999 with a new preface, provides a passionate, riveting account of the Hmong's catastrophic involvement in the Indochina wars of the past sixty years. Basing her account primarily on more than one thousand interviews, the author unfolds a compelling story of the protracted tragedy of the Hmong as they served first the French and then the American effort to deny control of Laos to Vietnamese-led communist forces. She seeks to acquaint her readers not only with the nature of the "secret" war in Laos, but also with the culture and history of the Hmong in Laos.	1
After the French were forced out of Indochina in 1954, the United States assumed leadership of the resistance to the communist takeover. In Laos, the clandestine resistance was led by the CIA, sometimes using the Agency for International Development as a cover. The Hmong, numbering no more than 350,000-400,000 of Lao's estimated two to three million people, initially were recruited by the CIA to conduct guerilla operations against the North Vietnamese. Later, as the Ho Chi Minh trail assumed great strategic importance, the Hmong were used to protect American surveillance outposts, to rescue downed American airmen, and in conventional battles. For more than a decade, the 40,000-strong Hmong forces prevented as many as 70,000 Vietnamese troops from overrunning Laos. When the war ended in 1975, the Hmong were subjected to brutal attacks by the communist victors, who used vastly superior fire power and chemical and biological warfare (CBW) in an attempt to exterminate the Hmong. As many as 100,000 perished and another 100,000 fled Laos.	2
This remarkable book is a genuine contribution to our understanding of the Hmong, Laotian civilization, and the Indochina wars. Based on a prodigious amount of research, the book's scale is impressively broad and yet intensely personal. Writing from a Hmong perspective, the author illuminates the character of the "secret" war in excruciating detail. She skillfully weaves in the larger political and military contexts, showing how political and military decisions in Washington shaped the fate of the Hmong. For example, as the United States forces were withdrawn during the era of Vietnamization, American air power became less available to the Hmong, and this resulted in heavy losses of life and territory, setting in motion the events leading to the eventual communist takeover of Laos.	3
Among the book's many contributions, five are especially notable. First, the author unravels the confusing details of Laotian ethnic relations and politics. Because the war in Laos was always undeclared, and international agreements created a fiction of neutrality, a web of intrigue and misinformation cloaked the character of the conflict. Hamilton-Merritt cuts through the complexity to reveal the war and the role of the Hmong in stark detail. Second, the author's skill at presenting the events of the war through personalities such as General Vang Pao and "Colonel Billy" (William Lair, a CIA counterinsurgency expert) creates a unique human dimension to her account. Third, Hamilton-Merritt's investigation of the communists' use of CBW after 1975 underscores the horror of chemical warfare and also raises critical questions about the failure of the United States and the United Nations to address what appears to be a massive violation of international arms agreements. This, coupled with the Pathet Lao's use of slave labor and military force against the Hmong results in a disaster bordering on genocide. Fourth, the author unveils distinctive elements of the Hmong culture--such as the ba-sii rituals, animism, polygamy, and the value attached to personal honor and integrity--that help to illuminate not only the wartime struggles but also the tragic aftermath among the Hmong in Southeast Asia and the United States. Finally, the failure of the United States and the United Nations to come to the assistance of the Hmong after 1975 adds to the tragedy. Power politics, arms limitations talks, and other "larger" concerns relegated the Hmong to obscurity, despite their significant contributions to the Americans' secret war in Laos. Academic libraries and the libraries of scholars studying and teaching about the history of the Indochina wars will want to own this book. It might be profitably used--in whole or in part--as a supplementary text in courses dealing with the war as well as in international relations and peace studies courses. It is a fair, accurate account of the Laotian war, of American covert operations there, and the great human tragedy that has overtaken the Hmong.	4
Colorado State University   Loren Crabtree

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