Laos: Flower Power Struggle | TIME

The wild country where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand meet is infested with virulent snakes. Rogue elephants roam its valleys, tigers and pan thers patrol its hillsides. It hardly seems a fit place for man. Yet that inhospitable area has attracted as motley an assortment of tribesmen, fugitives, thieves, freebooters and smugglers as exists anywhere on earth. They come and they stay on for only one reason: be cause of certain distinctions of climate and soil, Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, finds the place unusually congenial. Each spring the hillsides blossom into white and purple waves of flowers. The annual harvest produces 1,000 tons of raw opium — 90% of the world’s supply.

For years, all the participants in the long, clandestine process from poppy field to market have worked together in comparative peace. Even renegade soldiers who support themselves by exacting tribute from every passing opium caravan have been accepted as part of the action. No more. Of late, the jungle has resounded to the crack of rifle fire, the roar of mortars, recoilless rifles and even fighter-bombers. An ugly, internecine little opium war is under way, and it rivals in complexity, if not in fire power, the struggle in nearby Viet Nam.

A Modern Warlord. The squabble is not concerned with the growing or gathering of opium; that job belongs for the most part to such primitive tribesmen as the Meo, Ekaw, Bolong, Wa and Yao, who slit the poppy-seed pods for their resin, boil it into sticky raw opium, and roll it into loaves of one to five pounds. The fight grows out of a jurisdictional dispute between tribute-collecting soldiers and smugglers who deliver the stuff into the hands of the two Chinese syndicates that control the opium export from Laos.

In the past, a large share of the smuggling traffic—most of which moves down through Laos—has bought immunity from trouble by paying off gangs of former Nationalist Chinese soldiers:

the “Third Army” of General Lee Wun-huan, headquartered near the Thai city of Chiang Mai, and the “Fifth Army” of General Tuan Hsi-wan, with a base camp near Chiang Rai.

They are the outlaw remnants, some 3,000 strong, of Chiang Kai-shek detachments that fled China in 1949 when the Communists took over. They still wear uniforms and sport impressive arsenals of mortars and recoilless rifles, as well as rifles and machine guns. But lately they have been bugged by increasing independence on the part of smugglers, such as Chan Chi-foo, a slender half-Chinese, half-Shan tribesman in his 30s who speaks softly but carries the big stick of a modern warlord, commanding the services of perhaps 2,000 well-armed men.

Masterly Confusion. Two months ago, Chan set out from the Burma fields on his way to Laos with a caravan of 300 men and 200 pack horses carrying nine tons of opium. He had no intention of paying the $80,000 in tolls usually collected on a shipment of that size passing through the Chinese generals’ territory. When the caravan reached the Mekong River and the Laotian border town of Ban Houei Sai, the Chinese irregulars were waiting.

Watching both antagonists from a hill were two companies of Royal Laotian infantry, ordered there by Laotian Commander in Chief Ouane Rathikoune, who depends heavily on his cut in the opium trade to buy the loyalty of his soldiers. When Chan tried to cross the Mekong in barges, the Chinese opened fire with everything in their armory. The Laotian commander tried to negotiate a truce and, failing, withdrew to watch the melee.

It soon became a masterpiece of confusion. Lao air force planes arrived and began bombing both sides; Lao river boats sprayed machine-gun bullets with a fine lack of discrimination. When it was all over, Chan’s forces had 82 dead, the Chinese soldiers some 200. Two Thais who had stopped to watch the action from across the river were killed, and the Laotian infantry counted several wounded. A goodly portion of the opium mysteriously disappeared, and has yet to be found.

Worst of all, the fight seemed to settle nothing. Both sides went off to lick their wounds, buy fresh armaments and ammunition, and presumably have another go at the flower power struggle with all cannon blazing.

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