InfoAnda - Vietnam War 'secret army' chief Vang Pao dies in US

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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Weekend Edition Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Vietnam War 'secret army' chief Vang Pao dies in US AFP - Saturday, January 8 Send IM Story Print Vietnam War 'secret army' chief Vang Pao dies in US LOS ANGELES (AFP) - – Former Laotian Hmong general Vang Pao, who died in the United States Thursday aged 81, was a controversial figure who led a CIA-backed "secret army" in the Vietnam war, and never abandoned the dream of leading his people home from exile. The legendary guerrilla leader commanded thousands of fighters in the 1960s and 70s in the US-funded covert war against Vietnamese and Lao communist forces. When the Washington-backed Lao royal government fell in 1975, Vang Pao fled to the United States, where he was credited with helping negotiate the resettlement in America of tens of thousands of fellow Hmong. For decades he remained a revered figure in the Hmong community. Many considered the fervent anti-communist their leader in exile, and he was an active defender of the minority, many of whose members, according to human rights groups, are still persecuted and killed in isolated Laos. But he was a polarizing figure, one who raised money from the Hmong community through a secretive organization some critics believed was being used to funnel funds to support of a new rebellion against Vientiane. In 2007 Vang Pao was arrested in California along with eight others on conspiracy charges after authorities allegedly "interrupted a plot to overthrow the government of Laos by force and violence," according to the justice department. The charges were dropped in 2009. "Vang Pao is a controversial figure," said Martin Stuart-Fox, professor emeritus at The University of Queensland. "Some will see him as a great patriot and others will see him as someone who, by allying himself with the US, caused his people untold suffering which they were subjected to during these wars." Vang Pao acknowledged the devastating impact the war had on his fellow Hmong, a mountain people who practiced slash-and-burn farming and grew opium. "I was able to kill many North Vietnamese troops and destroy equipment worth a billion dollars," Vang Pao said at the Heritage Foundation think tank in 1987. "I lost 17,000 men, almost 10 percent of the total Hmong population," he said. "The Hmong sacrificed the most in the war and were the ones who suffered the most." Vang Pao was born in 1929 in central Xieng Khouang province. A teenage soldier against World War II Japanese troops, he underwent French-run army officer training from age 20 and later fought against communist rebels. In 1964 he was the first Lao Hmong to become general in the Royal Lao army. The United States was then stepping up its undeclared war in landlocked Laos which borders Vietnam, training a proxy army and flying missions in unmarked aircraft of the CIA-run Air America. CIA operatives were looking for a courageous, motivating leader to help orchestrate the secret war. They found him in Vang Pao, a relentless warrior whose guerrilla skills were so legendary, and who could supply medical supplies to villagers and even control US air power, that followers began to see him as "a minor deity," according to historian Christopher Robbins. "VP, when I first met him, I think he was probably the greatest guerrilla leader in the world," CIA operative Bill Lair, who helped recruit Vang Pao in 1961, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2005. Vang Pao commanded Hmong, other Lao fighters and Thai mercenaries from his mountain headquarters in a campaign that some historians contend was part-financed by the opium trade. "But mostly his leadership rested on the force of his own personality, which was energetic, volatile, direct and fearless," Robbins wrote in "The Ravens -- Pilots of the Secret War in Laos." Vang Pao did not represent all of the Hmong, said Stuart-Fox. The community was deeply divided, with some fighting for the communist Pathet Lao forces. After 1975, the new communist government in Laos jailed thousands, and sentenced Vang Pao in absentia to death. Some fighters continued a low-level insurgency for years but a foreign diplomat in Laos said recently that there had been only "scattered" incidents since 2004, and no reports for 18 months. On Friday Vientiane was unmoved by Vang Pao's death. "He is an ordinary person, so we do not have any reaction," said Khenthong Nuanthasing, the Lao government spokesman. Close friend Charlie Waters said Vang Pao died after being hospitalized in Clovis, California with pneumonia, complicated by heart problems. He said the former general had been active until the last for the local Hmong community, which numbers some 30,000 to 40,000 in California. "He's been pushing for so many things for his people," Waters told AFP. "He'll be remembered as a great general, a great warrior, a great Hmong soldier." Thousands of ethnic Hmong and others are expected to attend his funeral, which Waters said will be held in Fresno, California. 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