The Ho Chi Minh Trail-Was Through the Mountains of Laos

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The Ho Chi Minh Trail-Was Through the Mountains of Laos

I22 CAMBODIA determined to force the integration of the Pathet Lao on ix terms. The new government, headed by Phoui Sananilrc:e backed by the United States, indicated that it would military control over those provinces that served as the ment areas of the Pathet Lao. That threat involved Laos :r Viet-Nam dispute, By 1958, insurgency had begun in South Viet-Nam,a and ern-born Vietnamese who had gone north after the Gener-a ment were trained and sent back to South Viet-Nam to suil the insurgents. The route these men used-now immortali.zed the Ho Chi Minh Trail-was through the mountains of Laos. Determined to exclude the Royal Lao Army from thi-' vital to the efiective conduct of insurgency in South Viet-\ the North Vietnamese Government after December, 19f,5. measures to establish efiective control of those parts of the I;:nfr border through which it was possible to pass to South Yiet-\"'qr and it moved two companies of regular troops across the bcedru a distance of six miles.5 The authority of the Laotian Governsed was more decisively undermined the following May by the ddnq- tion of a Pathet Lao battalion that had refused to accept the Erm* ernment's terms for integration into the Royal Army. Thereai'trm' Laos was subject to intermittent armed conflict with the Fa$m Lao. Fortified by North Vietnamese assistance, the Pathet 'T 'nn' consolidated its hold over the northeastern provinces, In the clap'' tal, the right-wing forces were ruthlessly determined not to ped any reconciliation with the Pathet Lao. Following the coup 'l'n Captain Kong L6 in August, 1960, the Pathet Lao began to estead its military operations in an attempt to increase its bargairrrrrg power before any impending negotiations, By early September. iln activities reached south of Pakse, where it blew up bridges on 'Sc road linking Laos to Cambodia. The trend of events in Laos after the fall of Souvanna Phor:ml Sihanouk' He in 1958 was a cause of great anxiety to Prince 'r-us alarmed by the prospect of factional conflict degenerating into e civil war that would be sustained by outside interference. Frcnm.

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