Decades after aiding American soldiers, Hmong set to leave Thailand for U.S.

WAT THAM KRABOK, Thailand – For five hard years, he fought in a secret army alongside Americans he can remember today only by their first names: “Mister Jim, Mister Jerry, Mister Pat, Mister David.”

In jungle battles along the Laotian border with North Vietnam, Wang Neng and thousands of Hmong (pronounced MUNG) tribesmen allied with the United States sought to sever the infamous North Vietnamese lifeline known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. After the shadowy war in Laos ended in 1973 and the Americans went home, Wang and the rest of the CIA-backed Hmong army fled the approaching communist tide and settled – temporarily, he thought – in neighboring Thailand.

Now, more than 30 years later, he is finally preparing to leave. But Wang still can’t go home. Laos is governed by his old enemies in the Communist Pathet Lao. Instead, he’s bound for the United States, which last year offered the Hmong a last chance to settle in the land of their former allies. This summer, Wang, 52, and almost 15,000 other Hmong refugees will join fellow tribesmen who long ago started new lives in places like Minnesota, California and Wisconsin.

“It’s very difficult to be a refugee here. Surviving is hard enough, but there’s no future, no schooling for our children. No nothing,” he says.

Wang and more than 1,100 other ex-soldiers in this camp are relics of an era when the nations of Southeast Asia were the focus of U.S. foreign policy. Leaving the White House in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the new president, John F. Kennedy, that communist expansion in Laos was the most dangerous challenge the United States confronted.

To preserve the appearance of Laotian neutrality, Washington refrained from openly deploying GIs in the tiny nation. Instead, even as it built up a huge army in neighboring South Vietnam, the United States employed tribal groups as surrogates against the North Vietnamese and Laotian communists. The Hmong army was the lynchpin.

“They were the largest single element in the U.S. program to arm guerrilla forces to hold off the (North) Vietnamese,” says James Glerum, a retired CIA officer. “They were good soldiers. … They were brave and effective, and they gave up a lot.”

After the war, tens of thousands settled in the United States, but others stayed behind. Ironically, the Hmong, themselves leftovers of a controversial U.S. war, are today benefiting from the unintended consequences of a new conflict: the war on terrorism. Tighter immigration controls after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks reduced the number of refugees the United States accepted each year. That’s left room in the annual 70,000-refugee quota for the Hmong.

The United States agreed to accept the Hmong under pressure from Thailand, which provides no aid to the refugees and regards them as irritants. The Thai government says it will close the Tham Krabok refugee camp later this year – and move anyone who doesn’t accept or qualify for resettlement in the United States to a remote part of Thailand or another country.

“We can’t allow them to stay forever. … It’s time we settle the problem,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Itti Ditbanjong said recently.