Vang Pao

Vang Pao (RPA: Vaj Pov, Lao: ວັງປາວ; 8 December 1929 – 6 January 2011) was a major general in the Royal Lao Army and later a leader of the Hmong American community in the United States.

Vang, an ethnic Hmong, was born on 8 December 1929, in a Hmong village named Nonghet, located in Central Xiangkhuang Province, in the northeastern region of Laos, where his father, Neng Chu Vang, was a county leader.

Vang began his early life as a farmer until Japanese forces invaded and occupied French Indochina in World War II.

His father sent him away to school from the age of 10 to 15 before he launched his military career, joining the French military to protect fellow Hmong during the Japanese invasion.

While taking an entrance examination, the captain who was the proctor realized that Vang knew almost no written French.

The captain dictated the answers to Vang so he could join the army.

Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, said Vang did not express any embarrassment over this cheating.

Fadiman added "it is worth noting that in this incident, far from tarnishing Vang Pao's reputation — as, for example Ted Kennedy's fudged Spanish exam at Harvard University tarnished his — merely added to his mythology: this was the sort of man who could never be held back by such petty impediments as rules."

The term "Mèo Maquis" was originally used by Free French and Allied intelligence officers to describe the Hmong resistance forces working against Japanese forces occupying Indochina and China during World War II.

The name was in reference to the Maquis resistance in France, with Mèo being the then-current exonym for the Hmong.

After World War II, French Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (GCMA) authorities recruited Vang as a lieutenant during the First Indochina War to combat the Viet Minh.

He was the only ethnic Hmong to attain the rank of General officer in the Royal Lao Army, and he was loyal to the King of Laos while remaining a champion of the Hmong people.

During the 1960s/70s, he commanded the Secret Army, also known as the Hmong Army, a highly-effective Central Intelligence Agency-trained and supported force that fought against the Pathet Lao and People's Army of Vietnam.

He and his wife, May Song Vang, whom he married in 1973, initially moved to Montana before settling in California.

He remained widely respected by his fellow Hmong and was an esteemed elder of the American Hmong people, many of whom experienced the war or the reprisals that followed.

Though he was less influential among younger Hmong-Americans who had primarily grown up in the United States, he was considered an influential leader of U.S. Hmong community, enjoying great loyalty for his position of leadership and respect for his military accomplishments.

While in exile, Vang assembled other Lao and Hmong leaders from around the world to create the United Lao National Liberation Front (ULNF), also known as the Lao National Liberation Movement or simply the Neo Hom, to bring attention to atrocities happening in Laos and to support the political and military resistance to the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

Vang's ethnic Hmong and Laotian veterans and their refugee families who served in the U.S. "Secret Army" were eventually granted the status of political refugees by the United Nations because of alleged persecution by the Lao Marxist government and communist Vietnam who took control in 1975.

The Lao and Hmong refugees were allowed to resettle in the United States, France, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Many of Vang's former veterans formed the Lao Veterans of America, Inc. and the Lao Veterans of America Institute, with offices in Fresno, California, Washington, D.C. and other locales.

Vang emigrated to the United States after the communists seized power in Laos in 1975.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Vang, aided by his adviser, Philip Smith, and influential American diplomatic allies, Members of Congress, and vast numbers of Hmong-Americans, helped halt the forced United Nations-sponsored repatriation back to Laos of thousands of Laotian and Hmong refugees in Thailand.

It was a major human rights victory for the Hmong and Lao community and non-profit advocacy organizations who urged an end to forced repatriation, including the Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA) and the Lao Veterans of America.

Throughout Vang's residence in the U.S., the Hmong leader diplomatically opposed human rights violations by the communist government of Laos against the Hmong and Laotian people.

He was one of the eight founders of the organization in 1981, along with Prince Sisouk na Champassak, General Phoumi Nosavan and General Kouprasith Abhay.

Thousands of Vang's former ethnic Laotian and Hmong veterans, and their refugee families, in the United States also formed the non-profit veterans and advocacy organizations the Lao Veterans of America and the Lao Veterans of America Institute.

From 1993 to 2003, Vang relied on Philip Smith for much of his efforts with policymakers in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Congress.

Smith was a long-time friend of Vang Pao and many Laotian and Hmong American community leaders.

Over time, Smith was instrumental in helping Vang to meet with key Members of Congress and senior Administration officials as well as helping to organize Congressional hearings, briefings and research missions to South East Asia.

(Smith, a foreign policy, human rights and legislative affairs specialist, serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis.)

He was invited to speak at the U.S. Congressional Forum on Laos, with Members of Congress, about the persecution of the Laotian and Hmong people on several occasions in the U.S. Congress from 1999 to 2003.

In late November 2003 and early 2004, Vang shocked many of his closest advisers and supporters, and began to mysteriously, and abruptly, reverse his previous position in opposition to U.S. economic sanctions against the communist government of Laos.

Vang, in close cooperation with one of his highly controversial sons, Cha Vang, reversed his long-standing position and began to publicly advocate normalization of U.S.-Laotian trade relations with Laos in a highly controversial move that involved secret meetings with communist Vietnamese military and political officials and complex and questionable financial dealings involving Cha Vang and others.

This created suspicion and distrust among many of Pao's supporters and advisers who quickly began to abandon Vang Pao and his new direction in support of the Lao government's foreign policy, economic and military agenda.

The Lao Marxist government, and hardline Pathet Lao elements in the Lao military and government, backed by the military in Vietnam, continued to engage in military attacks and human rights violations against the Hmong in Laos.

Many of Vang's former veterans and their families, whose relatives were still being persecuted and killed in Laos, opposed Vang's change of stance on the issue of Normalized Trade Relations (NTR), or Most Favored Nation Trade Status (MFN), with Laos.

This included the Lao Veterans of America, the Center for Public Policy Analysis and others.

Following Pao's meeting with communist generals and officials from Vietnam, Vang's so-called "New Doctrine" was widely opposed by many of his closest advisers, family, supporters, and former veterans, and many in the Lao and Hmong-American community.

In March 2011, following Vang Pao's death, Smith wrote an editorial critical of the decision to not allow him to be interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

Smith persisted in his efforts and the CPPA, along with the Lao Veterans of America, helped organize national veterans ceremonies in May 2011 to officially honor Vang Pao at Arlington National Cemetery.