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Price for Prisoners. One of Kong Le's big difficulties is the help the Pathet Lao gets from the Viet Minh, who have an almost legendary reputation in Laos. Neutralist and rightist battalions have been known to flee the field at the mere hint of Viet Minh troops in the vicinity. The Pathet Lao take advantage of this by broadcasting orders in Vietnamese over their radios. Kong Le, himself an inveterate radio listener, believes fully half the 75,000 Pathet Lao forces that oppose him are Vietnamese. Actually, there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Viet Minh fighting with the Laotian Reds, mostly in training and administrative posts. Though the Laotian government has offered a reward, consisting of an expense-paid weekend in Bangkok, to any soldier who can produce a Viet Minh prisoner, none has shown up.
Thanks to intimidation and a skillful infiltration, the Pathet Lao control fully two-thirds of Laos, though no more than one Lao in ten is a Communist. The Reds succeed by chipping away at the authority of village headmen, by threatening murder and killing the cattle of villagers who do not contribute aid and comfort. Though loose-lipped Laotians are notoriously bad conspirators, Pathet Lao agents have turned many back-country hamlets into what the French-speaking officials call pourri, or rotten, villages. Most Laotians have no use for the Pathet Lao, which they call "the party of slaves," find their incessant Marxist preachments boring, and countryfolk warn strangers away from villages pourris with typical Laotian indirection: "Don't go there; the mosquitoes are biting very hard."
On the Road. Last week Kong Le's ragtag army was surrounded by Red mosquitoes. His position astride the Ngun River—deep and swift in the rainy season—dominated tne high ground west of the Plain of Jars. His force was bolstered by thousands of bitterly anti-Communist Meo tribesmen armed with knives, spears and homemade flintlocks, who had fled their hilly homes in the north when the Pathet Lao began slaughtering them. Anchored on both flanks by steep, jungle-grown mountains, Kong Le's 30-mile-long defense line presents the Pathet Lao with a strong front. He is sending scores of infantrymen up the slopes of Phou Koutt, a strategically located peak near the edge of the Plain. If he could secure the knob, which has changed hands three times in the past week, he hopes he could then mount an offensive into the Plain itself. But he will do well if he merely stalls further Red advances.
With his well-worn howitzers and half a dozen Russian-built tanks left over from the good old days, Kong Le controls crucial Route 7, thus keeping two Pathet Lao armies from joining forces. If the Communist troops opposing Kong Le were to break through and join up behind him at the juncture of Routes 7 and 13, the Pathet Lao would have a clear, unopposed path to Vientiane. That would mean the end of the war in Laos.