Secondhand Memory

In 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Lao government. Five years later, however, the Pathet Lao, backed by the communist government of North Vietnam, initiated a civil war that escalated, along with the Vietnam War, until 1975. Although the United States, which supported the Royal Lao government, signed an agreement with the Soviet Union and North Vietnam in 1962 guaranteeing that Laos would be neutral territory during the Vietnam War, Soviet-backed troops began ferrying supplies to the Viet Cong through Laos in 1964.In response, the United States dropped two million tons of bombs on the country to try to disrupt that supply line. Nearly a third of the 270 million small cluster bombs dropped on Laos never exploded, and by some estimates, at least 20,000 people have been killed by unexploded ordnance since the war ended. Roughly 400,000 Hmong people lived in Laos at the start of the war (out of a population of more than 2 million), primarily farmers who lived in the country’s highland and mountain regions, maintaining a distinct culture and language. The Hmong community largel...