The Hmong became more known in the early 1960s when the Central Intelligence Agency began to recruit and train the Hmong people in Laos after the North Vietnamese invaded Laos. These recruits of Hmong men (estimated 60 percent of Hmong men) in the CIA came to be known as the “Secret Army.” They were trained and supported force that went up against the Pathet Lao and People’s Army of Vietnam.

 

          With France losing their control over Vietnam and leaving the country, the US came into the picture of the Hmong. With the ongoing spread of communism in Southeast Asia, the United States CIA recruited the Hmong. The CIA wanting to disrupt operations of the North Vietnamese and not wanting to involve their direct military, they recruited the Hmong.  The Hmong having more knowledge of the jungles of Laos and Vietnam and already faced the communists before with the French, they were recruited by the CIA to help them against the communist revolutionists during the war. The CIA then trained the Hmong soldiers as their main ground platoon against the North Vietnamese, mainly deploying them on the Ho Chi Minh trail. The trail was a passage way that helped distribute weapons to the North Vietnamese. Helping the CIA train this Secret Army and leading them was General Vang Pao who was a military leader in the Royal Lao Army. Besides being deployed at the Ho Chi Minh trail, the Hmong soldiers other duties included rescuing downed American pilots and defending United States outposts in Laos. With the Vietnam War going on, there was another war going on at the same time, the Laotian Civil War or known as the Secret war by the CIA Special Activities Division. 

There were about 300,000 Hmong people living in Laos at the time of the Secret War and more than 19,000 joined the Secret Army. Within the first two years of both the Vietnam War and Secret War, almost 18,000 Hmong soldiers were killed in action. Because of the high casualty of the Hmong soldiers, children ages between eight and thirteen were recruited into the Secret Army and sent into the battle field to take upon the responsibility of their fallen fathers or older brothers as Hmong man. Many Hmong men and children joined the Secret Army is because of the payment of three dollars a month. At the time the Hmong did were hill tribe people so they did not have a lot of source of income. Hmong women were also part of this war as they were also trained as nurses and medics to care for wounded soldiers.

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        The United States was not only fighting this war but also facing a war on their own country with their own people which was the protesting of the war. A ceasefire and political agreement were signed in 1972 when the United States figured they were not going to win this war. The peace treaty required all United States and all foreign powers to withdraw from Laos and Vietnam. After the signed treaty, the United States quickly evacuated troops from the Southeast Asia countries and abandoned the Hmong and Vang Pao to battle against the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao alone. 

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       After the takeover of Laos by the communist parties, Vang Pao and the Hmong had to evacuate the country after the official Pathet Lao newspaper warned that the Hmong people would be exterminated “to the last root.” This was the start of the Hmong genocide. Hmong people were constantly being massacred and Hmong villages were being burnt down all because of their aid to the United States in the war. As the genocide was going on the United States could not come to aid their allies as the CIA wanted to keep the information of Secret War away from the people of the United States. There are some media coverage at the time of the Secret War and mention during the ongoing genocide, the CIA still denied involvement of the war. This is one of the key factors why the aid of the Hmong to the United States are not known historically is because of the silence of the war. Another key factor was the fact that the Secret War was being overshadow by the ongoing Vietnam War at the time.

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      Vang Pao, being the only Hmong political figure and leader figure for the Hmong lead thousands of the Hmong into exile. . Already knowing that his fate as the leader of the Hmong, Vang Pao was at risked of execution by the Pathet Lao, he had to make a difficult decision of abandoning the Hmong.  Before completely abandoning the Hmong, Vang Pao and his CIA case officer had already began planning an evacuation for the Hmong to refugee camps in Thailand, but with only one plane at the time but they were eventually able to get three more planes to help out with the evacuations. With limited resources, Vang Pao and his CIA allies could not evacuate all of the Hmong in time and were only able to airlift his top officers and their family, leaving many Hmong in Long Tieng, Laos. Many of the Hmong left behind in Laos would then follow Vang Pao to Thailand by either traveling on foot through the mountains of Laos, swimming or floating across the Mekong River that separates Laos and Thailand.  The ones who did not make it to Thailand were left to fend for themselves and led to the creation of the Chao Fa freedom fighters.

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     With the passing of the US Refugee Act of 1980, many Hmong refugees that were in refugees camps in Thailand were allowed to immigrate to the United States of America and majority of them settling in the states of California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Those who did not immigrate to the United States have settle in various parts of the world, with many still settling in Laos and Thailand but not as refugees.

Some of the settlers in Laos are still part of the Chao Fa freedom fighter movement and are still fighting the Secret War as documented by journalist William Lloyd George in 2010. These freedom fighters are located deep inside the jungles of Laos and are cut off from the outside world. He described them as “a tiny force of desperate people clinging to the hope that the CIA would come back to rescue them.” With this documentation, this opens up another question, did the Secret War really end?

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     The Hmong indeed deserves a recognition for the aid to the United States in times of the both the Vietnam War and Secret War. Without the proper historical teaching in history classes in education and higher education no one will know who they are and the many sacrifices they had to make just to resettle to a new country, the Hmong may be not known for their deeds and they will forever be known as “the forgotten allies”.

 

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Source:

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The Economists. 2011. The Montagnard Moses. [PDF File]. Retrieved from https://api.ning.com/files/dmRX4k5SKDw8EcNLAGCDTJFN4MYXiSMnXZr7WoMvZlzKPFK*UJiPJ5pf4huAXVx6Oc5EBnuVEbJ3RTV0AOdDEzjjcBSSAJ6M/The.Economist.15.01.11.pdf

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Hmong Involvement in Vietnam War and the Aftermath. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/historpedia/home/politics-and-government/hmong-involvement-in-vietnam-war-and-the-aftermath-fall-2012-1

 

Hmong Timeline. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://www.mnhs.org/hmong/hmong-timeline

Thompson, S. (n.d.). The Hmong People's Involvement in the Vietnam War. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://classroom.synonym.com/hmong-peoples-involvement-vietnam-war-23261.html

 

Thompson, Larry Clinton, Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975–1982, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010, P. 54

 

The Secret War and Hmong Genocide. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/historpedia/home/politics-and-government/the-secret-war-and-hmong-genocide-fall-2012

 

George, W. L. (2010, February 10). The secret army still fighting Vietnam war. Retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-secret-army-still-fighting-vietnam-war-1901755.htm