General Vang Pao. Source: Alamy Stock Photos
In late 1963, against American advice, Laotian President Phoumi Nosovan launched an offensive against the North Vietnamese forces established in eastern Laos. Forming an alliance with Kong Le’s Neutralist FAN faction, who had already been attacked by the Pathet Lao the previous November, the Royal Lao Army and FAN forces struck north east towards the Laotian border with North Vietnam, seeking to destroy NVA supply lines into Laos and isolate Hanoi’s forces based in the country. The fighting culminated in a drawn out two month series of engagements around the town of Lak Sao. The PAVN, deploying three battalions of experienced Viet Minh veterans from the First Indochina War, ultimately decisively defeated the RLA who fled in disorder, marking a significant setback for the pro-US Rightist government in the Laotian Civil War.
However other Rightist military groupings fared better in the renewed war with the Communists. An irregular force of Hmong guerrillas formed by General Vang Pao, who were loyal to King Savang Vatthana and therefore the Royalist government, and funded and supplied by the CIA, enjoyed military success against the Pathet Lao in late 1963. Most notably Vang Pao’s troops defeated the Pathet Lao on the Plain of Jars, reversing the insurgents’ earlier gains at the expense of the FAN and took the town of Sam Neua from the Communists with the help of US air support. The Hmong then established a formidable base of operations in the centre of the country.
At the time American military support for the Rightists in Laos was not acknowledged by the US government, leading this involvement to be termed the Laotian “Secret War”.