Resistance Coalitions in Laos

Abstract

IT IS PERHAPS not surprising that attempts by various resistance groups in Laos to forge a coalition against the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR) and Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) forces in that country have gone largely unheralded. Unlike the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), the LPDR derives international legitimacy not only from the socialist bloc, including China, and the nonaligned nations but also from the ASEAN states and the Western powers. There is no contestation over the seating of the LPDR in the U.N. General Assembly. But like Kampuchea, significant sections of the polyethnic communities of Laos have withheld their endorsement of the pro-Hanoi, pro-Soviet LPDR regime while several have entered into resistance alliances with external sponsors. The activities of the resistance in Laos, however, have tended to be overshadowed by developments in Kampuchea, namely, the attempts by the ASEAN states and China to weld together a coalition of anti-Vietnamese coalition forces. The actual formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (hereafter DK) by communist and non-communist factions on July 9, 1982, is not only of consequence for the survival of the resistance movement in Kampuchea but can only give further impetus to its analogue in Laos. Indeed, the degree to which the component factions of the anti-LPDR resistance cohere into a united is largely contingent upon the operational success of the National Army of DK within a broader China-sponsored, Indochina-wide resistance front. At the political level, it will be argued, this front represents a counterpoint to Hanoi's own avowed version of the acceptable relationship of the three Indochi-