Shaky Rule

Under its new anti-Communist government, Laos got off to a shaky and cautious start last week. In the capital city of Vientiane, ravaged by three days of bitter fighting, homeless refugees poked about the smoldering bamboo ruins. Most utilities and water mains were knocked out of commission. The city's main hospital, jammed with 500 wounded, and desperately short of water, tapped the swimming pool at the nearby U.S. embassy residence. When U.S. Ambassador Winthrop Brown held a public distribution of rice flown in by the U.S., he was rushed by a hungry mob and had to flee across a back fence. Not for almost a week did anybody bother to repair the only radio station in town and tell the populace what had happened.

The carnage, highlighted by vicious artillery barrages that killed three civilians for every soldier, had ended in a rout for Rebel Captain Kong Le, the malcontent paratrooper who had seized control of the city last August to demand conciliation with the Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas and an end to six years of halfhearted jungle warfare. Kong Le and his Pathet Lao allies fled north into the jungle last week, dragging their Russian-supplied howitzers behind them over primitive roads. Into the city rolled Prince Boun Oum, 53, the new Premier, along with Laos' real strongman, General Phoumi Nosavan, 40.

Medicine & Mushrooms. The prince soon demonstrated the qualities that make Laotians the despair of Western diplomats. A plump sybarite who in quieter times is fond of repairing to the French Riviera, Boun Oum announced no ringing program. Instead, he flew south most nights to sleep in his quiet and safe former headquarters, Savannakhet. At lunch, his favorite companions turned out to be not candidates for the cabinet but girls from the Vientiane dance halls.

As Kong Le retreated through the jungle, Russian Ilyushin planes flying from North Viet Nam dropped supplies to his troops; his route of march would take him straight to the royal capital of Luang-prabang, where torpid King Savang Vatthana has sat for five months treating the whole civil war with lofty disdain. But General Phoumi made no attempt to pursue, airily declared that his jungle garrisons would take care of Kong Le along the way. General Phoumi's only announced policy is to "transform all Laotians into Laotians" (i.e., non-Communists). To which Prince Boun Oum added this sage advice: "One can get medicine even out of poisoned mushrooms."

Vital Stake. Seldom had the winds of war blown about such artless heads. But the danger was nonetheless clear and present. Six years of Pathet Lao insurrection had kept the countryside in turmoil, and had thus made Laos a corridor through which North Viet Nam moved men and supplies to support its guerrillas operating in South Viet Nam. This was a stake that the Communists were not prepared to lose. The Russian news agency Tass warned darkly that U.S. "intervention" could lead to "a second Korea." With the Russians supplying one side and the U.S. the other, the possibility was real enough for the U.S. State Department to express "serious concern" about the continuing Russian airdrops of supplies to the Kong Le rebels--while pointing out that U.S. aid was being supplied to the legitimate government.

Over stout objections from the British and French that the only feasible course for apathetic Laos was Kong Le-style neutralism, the U.S. had pushed for and helped secure the victory for General Phoumi. But once ensconced in Vientiane, Phoumi (who is a second cousin and staunch admirer of pro-Western Strongman Sarit Thanarat in neighboring Thailand) showed no more zeal than any of his predecessors for running the Communists to ground. Though he is described as a "strongman," was he strong enough, or determined enough, to battle the Pathet Lao into submission and enforce peace? It seemed doubtful. Perhaps the best that the U.S. could hope for out of Phoumi's victory in Vientiane was a chaos that calls itself pro-Western.

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