Had the Communist-led Pathet Lao finally come this far??

The Pathet Lao forces held two northern provinces and openly took the offensive in three more.

We were told that to the Pathet Lao, a kidnaped American was worth at least $750, a fortune in Laos.

Now Pathet Lao propagandists were reported marching him barefoot from village to village, as evidence of evil American intervention.

The soldiers are fighting and the Americans are helping, he said, but in the fight against the Pathet Lao the key factor is the villager himself.

But the Communists aided the Pathet Lao at an even faster rate.

And after several correspondents went into Pathet Lao territory and exposed the huge build-up, administration spokesmen acclaimed them for performing a `` great service '' and laid the matter before the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.

Prince Souvanna Phouma, leader of the nation's neutralists and recognized as Premier by the Communist bloc, and Prince Souphanouvong, head of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao forces.

The Laos government said four major Pathet Lao rebel attacks had been launched, heavily supported by troops from Communist North Viet Nam.

* 1975 – Pathet Lao seizes power in Laos, and establishes the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

* Pathet Lao Day ( Laos )

The foreign relations of Laos, after the takeover by the Pathet Lao in December 1975, were characterized by a hostile posture toward the West, with the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic aligning itself with the Soviet bloc, maintaining close ties with the Soviet Union and depending heavily on the Soviets for most of its foreign assistance.

During the First Indochina War, the Indochinese Communist Party formed the Pathet Lao resistance organization committed to Lao independence.

* December 2 – In Laos, the communist party of the Pathet Lao takes over Vientiane and defeat the Kingdom of Laos which ends the Laotian Civil War but the ongoing Insurgency in Laos begins with the Pathet Lao fighting the Hmongs, Royalist-in-exile and the Right-wings.

* November 19-The Laotian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Laos and the Pathet Lao.

* August 1-The First Indochina War ends with the Viet Minh in Vietnam, the Khmer Issarak in Cambodia and the Pathet Lao in Laos emerging victorious against the French Army and the Viet Minh is reorganised into the Viet Cong.

In M. John Harrison's novel Light, the character Ed Chianese, while trying to get a job with the Circus of Pathet Lao, claims that he " rode navigator on Alcubierre ships.

A number of Hmong people fought against the communist Pathet Lao during the Laotian Civil War.

The primary evidence for the domino theory is the spread of communist rule in three Southeast Asian countries in 1975, following the communist takeover of Vietnam: South Vietnam ( by the Viet Cong ), Laos ( by the Pathet Lao ), and Cambodia ( by the Khmer Rouge ).

However, this didn't prevent both sides from violating Laos's neutrality ; the North Vietnamese by protecting and expanding their supply conduit, and by supporting their Pathet Lao allies ; the Americans by building and supporting a CIA-backed clandestine army to fight the Vietcong and constantly bombing the trail.

It began to muster forces which would eventually number 60, 000 North Vietnamese troops as well as several thousand allied Pathet Lao troops and Lao irregulars, outnumbering its adversary by almost three to one.

The Pathet Lao were never a particularly strong military force unless supported directly by the North Vietnamese army.

The Pathet Lao were backed militarily by the NVA and Vietcong.

Massive aerial bombardment against Pathet Lao and NVA forces was carried out by the United States.

In 1975, the Pathet Lao, along with Vietnam People's Army and backed by the Soviet Union, overthrew the royalist Lao government, forcing King Savang Vatthana to abdicate on 2 December 1975.

However, by this time, Pathet Lao forces controlled large areas of the country, and following the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh to communist forces in April 1975, removed any chances of a coalition government forming in Laos.

His rule ended with the takeover by the Pathet Lao in 1975, after which he and his family were sent to a re-education camp by the new government.

It's original name has been forgotten but in 1950 it was renamed the Pathet Lao, when it was adopted by Lao forces under Prince Souphanouvong, who joined the Viet Minh's revolt against the colonial French authorities in Indochina during the First Indochina War.

In 1953, Pathet Lao fighters accompanied an invasion of Laos from Vietnam led by Viet Minh forces ; they established a government at Viengxay in Houaphan province in northeast Laos.

With the fall of the South Vietnamese government in April 1975 in their minds, the non-communist elements of the national government decided that allowing the Pathet Lao to enter power would be better than to have them take it by force.

Half brother of Souvanna Phouma, Prince Souphanouvong, a staunch communist and the leader of the Pathet Lao, was supported by Kaysone Phomvihane ( later Prime Minister and President of the LPDR ) and the North Vietnamese.

Phoumi proceeded to attack Vientiane, weakened by a Thai blockade, on September 18 but the neutralists with the help of the Pathet Lao and the Soviet Union, repulsed the attack.

The Royal Lao Government had close relations with the United States, who gave the country aid and assisted it in the campaign against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Communist movement.

In August 1956 Souvanna and the Communist Pathet Lao, which his half-brother Souphanouvong headed agreed on broad proposals for a ‘ government of national union ’.

The Laotian Civil War ( 1953 – 75 ) was a fight between the Communist Pathet Lao ( including many North Vietnamese of Lao ancestry, and the Royal Lao Government in which both the political rightists and leftists received heavy external support for a proxy war from the global Cold War superpowers.

Note that at the time, Laos was allied with the United States, as the Communist Pathet Lao did not take over the country until later.

Starting as early as the late 1950s, members of the Pathet Lao sought to encourage support for the Communist cause by aligning members of the Lao sangha with the Communist opposition.

Following the Pathet Lao's ascension to control of the government in 1975, efforts to link Buddhism and Communism in the popular imagination continued, with the government stressing the fundamental similarities of Buddhist and Communist views with regard to equality and material possessions, while simultaneously discouraging religious practices seen as wasteful or otherwise at odds with Communist doctrine-such as the donation of large sums to monastic institutions.

Most of the latter were refugees from Laos who fled during the Vietnam War ( Second Indochina War ) from the Pathet Lao.

He retired from politics to pursue business interests from his base in Pakxe and Champassack but continued to be a major power broker until his exile in 1975, the year the communist Pathet Lao came to power.

The Viet Minh / North Vietnamese, in spite of the agreement, never really withdrew from the border areas of Laos and the Pathet Lao continued to operate almost as a branch organization of the Viet Minh.

Under orders from Souphanouvong, the Pathet Lao battalions refused to be integrated into the Royal Lao Army.

As they took ground from the Royal Lao Army, they moved in Pathet Lao as occupation troops.

Beginning on 1 January, a new coalition of Kong Le's Neutralists, Pathet Lao, and PAVN drove 9, 000 Royal Lao Army troops from the Plaine des Jarres.

As it expanded from its 1960 foundation, and as the fighting power of the Royal Lao Army was diminished and broken during the 1960s, the RLAF came to carry the weight of the battle against Vietnamese communist invaders and local Pathet Lao insurgents.

Also during June 1964, a flight of A Team T-28s bombed Kong Le's Neutralist headquarters at Khang Khay in a successful attempt to make him switch his alliance from the Pathet Lao to side with the Royalists.

Nouhak Phoumsavanh or Phoumsavan (; ; April 9, 1910 – September 9, 2008 ) was a longtime Pathet Lao revolutionary and communist party official who was President of Laos from 1992 to 1998.

( In fact, the province of Xekong itself is something of a repayment – during the war, Kaysone Phomvihane, the revolutionary leader of the Pathet Lao and later President of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, from 1976 until his death in 1992, promised the minorities of what was then referred to as " East Salavanh " their own province.

Besides the daily bombing ground combat took place between the Hmong army and the forces from Vietnam and Pathet Lao.

The Laotian Civil War began in 1953 when war escalated between the government forces and Pathet Lao, which received support from North Vietnam and China.

He was one of the two survivors ( the other being Pisidhi Indradat ), out of seven, to escape from a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos.

In 1977, during a time when he was furloughed from TWA, Dengler returned to Laos and was greeted as a celebrity by the Pathet Lao.

Mass migration from Laos to Cambodia peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s, consisting of both government-sponsored and privately-sponsored refugees from camps in Thailand, where they had fled due to the Laotian Civil War and the final victory of the Pathet Lao.